DOCUMENTARY MAKER RESPONDS TO ILLINOIS VALLEY HEROIN PROBLEM

An award-winning documentary filmmaker is trying to help the Illinois
Valley fight heroin addiction.

St. Louis resident Curtis Elliott is attempting to contact local
theater owners and anti-drug coalition leaders so he can show his
documentary titled "HairKutt." The film won best social documentary
at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in May.

"I want to be able to get the kids a chance to see this, especially
for kids who haven't started," he said. "It's a very good opportunity
to show them that this does not have to happen to you."

Elliott said he became aware of the Illinois Valley's heroin problem
after reading NewsTribune stories from "Requiem for Heroin's Victims"
on the Media Awareness Project Web site.

The Media Awareness Project is an Internet activist nonprofit forum
created in 1996 by DrugSense to provide information relevant to drug
policy in order to heighten awareness and prove America is losing its
war on drugs.

"HairKutt" is about four friends from St. Louis -- Elliott is among
them -- who travel to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to a remote
mountain cabin hoping to break their friend Bryant "HairKutt"
Johnson's 15-year addiction to heroin.

The story shows the pain and suffering anyone addicted to opiates
must suffer in the detoxification process.

HairKutt, suffering from his ailments, tries to run away from the
cabin in an attempt to get back the streets of St. Louis, more than a
10-hour drive away. The drug has poisoned his body so badly that he
has to be rushed to the hospital to save his life.

If local theater owners decide not to show Elliott's documentary, he
is offering to speak to local schools about the dangers of heroin
addiction he has witnessed after growing up in inner-city St. Louis.

"I've had cousins and friends on that drug," he said. "I figure if
they had known what it's all about before, then they might not have tried it.

"There's a statistic that says 9 out of 10 people who try heroin
become addicted to it," he said. "I want to show people that 10 out
of 10 people who never try it, never become addicted to it, whether
it's through my movie or speaking to people."