HEROIN DEATHS IN PLANO, TEXAS, REFLECT RISING USE BY YOUNG

By Carol Marie Cropper

PLANO, Texas This suburb of about 190,000 people hardly looks like a
place where young people regularly die of heroin. Plano, 20 miles north of
Dallas' forlorn downtown, is all big and new, with sprawling houses, which
seem to vary only by shade of brick and shape of window, crammed side by
side.

People move here to avoid innercity schools and urban crime. It is a
modern Texas boom town, having grown from a population of under 4,000 in
1960. Many residents arrived for wellpaying jobs at companies like the
computer services concern EDS, with headquarters here. In 1989, Plano's
median household income of $53,905 beat the national figure of $30,056 by
79 percent.

But since January 1996, nine young people living in Plano or going to
school here have died of heroin overdoses, and another did so at a party
here.

Although the number of heroin deaths is startling for a city of this size,
drug experts say that the rising use of heroin among young people is a
growing phenomenon around the country. The number of high school students
nationally who have used heroin almost doubled last year rising to 2
percent of all students as what was once considered a narcotic for
downandout junkies became fashionable and moved to the suburbs, said Dr.
Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Heroin coming into this country is now much purer, allowing it to be
snorted like cocaine, ingested in a capsule or smoked with marijuana,
Leshner said, adding, "Kids who would never inject themselves will snort
it." At the same time, Leshner said, the price of heroin dropped and some
fashion industry advertising seemed to glamorize the use of heroin.

Plano Police Chief Bruce Glasscock said: "It's not just Plano. It's a
national problem."

He pointed to the 48 people who died in the Orlando, Fla., area in 1995 and
1996, 10 of them 21 years old or younger. Only 6 died from heroin overdoses
in the same area in 1994, said a medical official in Florida.

The latest Plano victim was a 16yearold Plano Senior High School student,
Erin Baker. She was found dead Nov. 9 after staying all night at a friend's
apartment in nearby Denton. The youngest heroin victim was a 14yearold
boy who was found dead in April in a church parking lot where officials
said friends had dumped his body. All were 21 years old or younger.

More than 1,500 parents and students came out for a town meeting Nov. 13 to
discuss the problem and to search for ways to prevent more deaths. Some
parents were surprised that they had to deal with heroin at all, that
teenagers reared in comfortable homes, with nice cars to drive and money
to spend, would turn to such a a hard drug.

"It's very bizarre," said Henry Kliman Nov. 17 as he picked up his
daughter, Aliyah, 16, a classmate of the dead girl, at her high school. "We
grew up in the '60s. Heroin was the taboo. We played with marijuana and
booze."

But then he eyed another parent picking up a child in a Porsche and said
that Plano might be a town where parents had "a little too much money and
too little time." Kliman told of friends of his daughter who spent the
night with her with their parents seemingly unconcerned about where they
were.

Some residents here recall the national attention Plano received in 1983
when seven of its young people committed suicide.

"Parents need to spend more time with their kids," said James Russell, as
he trimmed a customer's hair

at his Plano Barbers shop, one of a long block of turnofthe century
storefronts that hint at downtown Plano's quaint past. "My kids don't go
out and run the streets. I'd be standing in the doorway."

In 1994, the Plano City Council realized there was a problem and passed a
curfew to keep young people under 17 off the streets at night. Parents were
grateful, Chief Glasscock said. . For the last several years, school
officials have used drugsniffing dogs on school campuses and two drug
counselors were added to the high schools this year.

Few of the young people interviewed seemed surprised by the presence of
heroin in their community. "It started with my friends last year," said
Miss Kliman, 16, who said she did not use the drug and thought it stupid to
do so.

"It's like, 'Oh, I only do it once a week,' " she said, mimicking some drug
users. " 'I know what I'm doing. I'm only taking it in capsules.'

"No matter how you take it, that stuff will kill you," Miss Kliman said.

Jarrett Watkins, a 15yearold 10th grader at Vines High School in Plano,
said he had seen an eighth grader with heroin. "Last year was when the
scene got a whole lot bigger," Watkins said, an assessment seconded by
Chief Glasscock.

Trey Watts, 17, was a friend of Miss Baker, the latest victim. He and some
others had been playing pool at a friend's house that night and had tried
repeatedly without success to reach the girl on her pager. The next
morning, he said, her parents called a friend's home where he was, looking
for their daughter, only to learn later that she was dead in another
friend's apartment in Denton.

"We tried to stop her," Watts said of his friend and her heroin use. "But
she got back with other dealers. She was nice. She got hooked on a bad drug."

George Malina, 48, a consultant for business development, whose son, Milan
Malina, died of a heroin overdose in Plano after he had just turned 20,
said the family had moved to one of Plano's gated communities on a golf
course "to get away from these things."

Milan was 17 when his father noticed something wrong. "He became
lethargic," Malina said. "He became argumentative. He became unemployable."
Before that, Milina said, his son had been "extremely warm, loving, caring
nicest kid in the world."