INHALED HEROIN USE RISING AMONG SUBURBAN TEENS

PLANO (AP) When a friend offered 18yearold Marshall Hampton some
heroin, Hampton said no, not wanting to deal with a messy needle or take
the risk of AIDS. He considered himself a "smart user."

But when Hampton's friend told him the latest heroin from across the border
could be snorted like cocaine, he couldn't wait to try it.

Within a few weeks he was spending $200 a day on the drug. To support his
habit, he started pawning electronics, breaking into houses and stealing
money from friends.

"I couldn't get away from it," said Hampton, who is now in rehab. "It
started to eat away at my soul. I'd do anything to get it and anything for
it."

Hampton's hometown of Plano, a prosperous suburb of 188,000 people just
north of Dallas, has seen 11 teenagers die of heroin overdoses in the past
12 months all from inhaling the drug, a practice youngsters are
convinced is safer than using a needle.

Similarly, in the welltodo suburbs near Fort Worth, there have been four
heroinrelated deaths in the past year. The youngest victim was a
13yearold boy.

Law enforcement officials call people like Hampton a new kind of heroin
user, bred not on the streets of urban America, but rather in comfortable
suburban neighborhoods of soccer fields and good schools.

Jane Maxwell, chief of research for the Texas Commission on Alcohol and
Drug Abuse, said "They hear stories about people dying in the inner city
but they think, `They just didn't know what they were doing. They must have
used a needle.' "

The truth about the drug is that it is at least as deadly as cocaine, drug
experts say.

Colombian dealers competing with Mexicans for the suburban market are
increasing the purity of the drug to levels nearing 90 percent, researchers
say. They are also mixing it with other drugs to increase the bulk of the
product. Taking the drug is like playing Russian roulette.

The high concentrations allow the drug to be snorted, but in the end, most
suburban addicts turn to needles, because "there is only so much you can
get in through your nose," Maxwell said. "And the use of needles will
inevitably lead to an increase in AIDS in the suburbs."