AGENCIES SAY HEROIN EPIDEMIC GRIPPING SUBURBS

The cheap and deadly street drug heroin has moved into suburban high
schools across Massachusetts in a big way, but North Shore authorities say
it's still hard to get a true handle on how large the opiate "epidemic"
has become.

"We don't know how big the problem is," said George Festa, who oversees
the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federally funded coalition of
law enforcement agencies. "If we don't know, how can we respond to it?"

Emergency room workers are required by law to report stabbings and
shootings to police, but not overdoses or suspected overdoses, several
said yesterday during a conference on the drug problem held at Merrimack
College.

"You are having multiple overdoses happening across the commonwealth that
people don't know about," said state Rep. Robert Fennell (D-Lynn), who
filed legislation to mandate overdose reporting.

He said hospitals are only required to report fatal overdoses.

Heroin is as cheap as $4 a bag these days and some said is as easy to get
as booze.

"The crossover to heroin is so quick that before these kids know it, they
are addicted," said Tim Lawrence, a Lynn firefighter whose 21-year-old
daughter died of a heroin overdose in 2003.

Some counties track overdoses better than others.

In the past two years in Essex County, 93 people have died of drug overdoses.

Another 77 died from a suspected overdose, according to Essex District
Attorney Jonathan Blodgett's office.