DRUG DEATHS SHOW DRAMATIC INCREASE

Heroin and opiates, often in toxic combination with alcohol, claimed
the lives of more than 200 people North of Boston and in Southern New
Hampshire in 2003 and 2004.

The dramatic death toll reflects the consequences of drug traffickers
flooding the region with potent, inexpensive heroin and an explosion
in abuse of prescription Oxycontin tablets as available as your
grandmother's medicine cabinet. Among the dead were teenagers and
20-somethings who graduated from snorting crushed OxyContin pills to
injecting some of the $4-a-bag ultrapure heroin readily available.

Families are left to mourn the dead -- a Marblehead teen athlete dead
from OxyContin poisoning, a former newspaper carrier and football
player who died when he tried heroin for the first time, the beloved
college-age daughter of a Lynn firefighter.

Meanwhile, the best minds in law, medicine and education struggle to
contain the problem and find help for those most in need.

Data released in recent weeks confirm what some say is an epidemic of
heroin and Oxycontin overdoses.

* Massachusetts reported a sixfold increase in deaths from narcotics
in the past 13 years. More people in Massachusetts die from drug
overdoses than in motor vehicle crashes, according to a recent
Department of Public Health report on opioids. In 2003, some 574
people died of drug-related causes and 521 in car accidents.

* New Hampshire drug deaths tripled in a decade, with 114 such cases
reported in 2004, including 86 where heroin and other opiates were
used, according to the office of the state medical examiner.

* The rate of drug-related deaths in Essex and Rockingham counties is
higher than every other nearby geographic region except Suffolk
County -- which includes Boston -- according to a June report by the
Drug Abuse Warning Network of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration. Essex County counts 126 deaths per
million, Rockingham County 107, and Suffolk County 194.

* In 2003, there were 106 drug misuse deaths and suicides in Essex
County and 37 in Rockingham County in New Hampshire, the June report
shows. From his first days in office in 2003, Essex County District
Attorney Jonathan Blodgett was stunned to learn the enormity of the
problem. His first clue was a meeting of police chiefs he had
assembled to discuss important law enforcement issues. Heroin
overdoses, both lethal and not, were their biggest concern. "The
first step was awareness," Blodgett recalled. "I found out a lot of
people were aware of this, but it was a dark secret. People didn't
want to talk about it." Blodgett would go into schools to lead
meetings about drug abuse, and people would approach him afterward to
share concerns about their nieces and nephews and neighbors who were
addicted to opiates or OxyContin. "It became apparent that this was
not a problem just in the urban centers of Lawrence and Lynn," he
said. "It was across the board." He heard stories of high school
students who would steal OxyContin from their grandparents or buy it
from a friend. When the cost became prohibitive at $80 a pill, they
would turn to heroin at $4 a bag.

"What was shocking was the breadth of the problem across
socioeconomic lines, across the communities, across the county,"
Blodgett said. "It was really eye-opening to see how bad a problem it was."

In New Hampshire, James Chamdalares of the alcohol and substance
abuse bureau said the rising rate of heroin use adds to the shortage
of beds in government treatment facilities.

"We've been hearing for a while that the use of heroin has been
increasing," he said. "We are utilizing our resources as best we can,
to as many people as we can possibly accommodate. Most of our
treatment facilities are at capacity." By putting numbers to the
heart-wrenching stories of drug overdoses, officials hope to generate
more government money for treatment and prevention. Blodgett said
that state police investigators assigned to his office estimate that
170 people were killed by opiates or by a combination of opiates and
alcohol in 2003 and 2004. Many of those cases were in affluent
suburban communities, including Andover and North Andover, he said.
Even that number is an undercount, the district attorney said.
Blodgett believes there are as many as 20 percent to 25 percent more
fatal opiate overdoses, but those deaths are reported as heart
attacks or organ failure, partly to protect the privacy of families.

"I'm absolutely convinced there's more than that," he said. The
district attorney supports state legislation that would require
hospitals to report overdoses, both lethal and nonlethal, to law
enforcement authorities.

"We are trying to ask the hospitals to be open," he said. "It is
important to get information in real time to the streets, and to help
people get the medical treatment they need. Until we have the true
numbers, we're not going to be able to get the funding we need for
beds (for substance abuse)." Contrary to what hospital officials
fear, he said, "we are not looking to handcuff them to the gurneys."

While hospitals like the one in Lynn report an upswing in heroin
overdoses, Dr. Patrick Curran said he has seen the opposite in the
emergency department at Lawrence General Hospital. He has seen only
five overdose cases in five months, none of them fatal. That is a
far cry from the days a decade ago when hordes of people would show
up at the emergency room, sick from the strychnine and
other chemicals cut into poor quality heroin.

Curran wondered whether the overdoses today are so lethal that people
die at home, never making it to the hospital.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health report on escalating
deaths from heroin and other narcotics comes at a time when nearly
$11 million has been cut over three years from money to treat and
prevent drug and alcohol abuse. The administration of Gov. Mitt
Romney recently increased funding by $9 million for the substance
abuse bureau, but some say there are still not enough treatment beds
to care for people with addictions.

The state is now aiming to reach out to parents of young children in
the third, fourth and fifth grades, to point out that youngsters
model their behavior on what they see and hear at home.

"While we've been really concerned with heroin and OxyContin," said
Michael Botticelli of the Massachusetts Health Department substance
abuse bureau, "We also know the earlier kids use, the likelier they
are to develop significant problems. That hasn't changed. What has
changed is what they use, and that's a matter of culture and
availability. It used to be crack cocaine. Before that it was
marijuana, and before that it was alcohol." The Public Health
Department is trying to appeal in a new advertising campaign to
parents of young children to send a message that talking with
children and the behavior they model are crucial.

"There is some evidence that baby boomer parents seem to be somewhat
reluctant to talk with their own kids about their own behavior,"
Botticelli said. He recommends that parents tell children, "If I had
to do it over again, I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't want you to do it."