YOUNG HEROIN USERS NO SHOCK TO COUNSELORS

One day this summer, Maggie Flores found a young heroin user sleeping on
the roof of her apartment building in Mott Haven.

"He looked like he was 40," said Flores, a senior substance abuse counselor
at Daytop in Boerum Hill. "You could see the track marks on his arms. It
looked like he had been using for 15 years."

He was only 23.

"I hope he took my suggestion and went to a program," Flores said.

Flores counsels adults at Daytop's Brooklyn Outreach Center, an outpatient
site for substance abusers that offers evaluation, referral and counseling
services. With 26 sites across the country, Daytop counselors see more than
their share of hard-core addicts. The vast majority are adults, but a small
number are adolescents.

For them, the tragic news last week of two college students overdosing in
Manhattan was hardly shocking.

"I live in an urban community and a lot of adolescents, they start pretty
young," Flores said, "as young as 16 and 17 ... It's a very powerful
substance, cocaine and heroin. That's a bomb."

Authorities believe the two girls, Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez, both
18, had combined the two drugs.

Most of the adolescents at the Boerum Hill Daytop are there for lighter
substances like marijuana, employees said. Still, youth counselor Dorothy
Morrow said hard drugs such as heroin are getting easier for adolescents to
obtain. And they are too young to have witnessed much of the drug's
destructive characteristics.

"The last time I saw a junkie nodding was about 20 years ago and most of
our adolescents are not 20 years old," said Morrow, referring to the days
of widespread heroin use in the 1980s.

Joe On, 39, another youth counselor, said parental awareness is key to
preventing drug problems. Sometimes, he said, children start by sniffing
glue as early as 11 years old because of emotional issues or peer pressure.

"Parents do not listen," On said. "They're too busy following their
careers. The parents do not listen."

Jerome Burdi is a freelance writer.