WASTED YOUTH: PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FUELING HEROIN EPIDEMIC

BROCKTON -

Second in a two-part update of the Wasted Youth series on heroin
addiction and the vise-like grip it has had on the region for more
than a decade.

Part 1 in Sunday's Enterprise: Eastern Massachusetts outpaces much of
the nation in heroin-fueled emergency room visits and admissions to
state treatment programs for painkiller addictions.

The findings in two recent federal studies that heroin addiction
has a firm grip on Eastern Massachusetts come as no surprise to
police and drug treatment professionals working in the greater
Brockton and Taunton region. They've been seeing and talking about it
for years, ever since powerful prescription painkillers including
OxyContin, became the preferred way among young people to get high.

It begins when someone chasing a high pops a stolen prescription
painkiller, they say. Soon, he's hooked and has a habit he can no
longer afford to feed. So, he turns to a much cheaper way to feed the
addiction: heroin.

"These prescription drugs, Oxycodone, Vicodin, Percocet, they're like
just using heroin. They're the same as heroin," said Carol Kowalski,
director of Brockton High Point Treatment Center in Brockton, which
also has sites in Plymouth and New Bedford.

Half of the center's patients are 29 or younger, and 75 percent say
they've used heroin and other opiates, she said.

The Enterprise in its ongoing series "Wasted Youth," began reporting
five years ago on the local heroin epidemic and how the increased
availability and potency of prescription painkillers has been feeding it.

Two recent federal studies confirm what local drug treatment workers
and police have been saying: Eastern Massachusetts outpaces much of
the nation in heroin-fueled emergency room visits and admissions to
state treatment programs for painkiller addictions.

The problem is both in the cities and small towns, the reports from
the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
say. And things haven't improved, despite the efforts of police to
take illegal drugs off the streets and drug treatment centers to get
addicts clean and keep them that way.

"I haven't seen any of this get better in the eight years I've been
doing it. I've not seen it slow down," said Joanne Peterson, founder
of Learn to Cope, a local support group for families of opiate addicts.

She blames easy access to prescription drugs and the companies that
make and sell them for the ongoing heroin epidemic.

"Someone's got to draw the line somewhere on these pharmaceutical
companies that are making more powerful opiates," Peterson said.
"They know damn well what's going to happen to those drugs. They end
up in the wrong hands of the wrong people."

One such drug is Percocet tablets, known on the street as "blues" or
"threes." Percocet, and its generic equivalent, began appearing in
the region in recent years as tougher laws and increased awareness
made it harder to get the near-pure narcotic OxyContin.

Newer, more powerful Percocet pills are known as "Perc 30" and have
six times the opiate of a regular Percocet, which contains five
milligrams of oxycodone.

Perc 30s sell for about $30 each, and addicts turn to shooting heroin
into their veins through a needle when they can no longer afford the
pills, East Bridgewater Det. Sgt. Scott Allen said.

Allen, the head of the WEB Major Crimes and Drug Task Force which
includes police from West Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Bridgewater,
Whitman and Bridgewater State University, described a typical scenario.

A person starts taking Perc 30s and is soon addicted and taking five
pills a day. That's a $1,050-a-week habit. That's when the switch to
much cheaper heroin happens, Allen said.

"It's skyrocketed," he said of the Perc-30 problem. They have
replaced OxyContin as the prescription painkiller of choice of people
in their teens and 20s, he said.

And once they're hooked, their lives are no longer their own, Dr.
Joseph Shrand said. He treats addicts between the ages of 13 and 17
at the Clean And Sober Teens Living Empowered program at High Point
Treatment Center in Brockton.

"They steal our stuff, they rob people," Shrand said of addicts. "But
the stuff that's really been stolen is that person. Drugs have really
stolen that person from us. It's up to us to be vigilant and to give
a helping hand."