HEROIN IN SOUTH BOSTON

LOCIAL SERVICE workers in South Boston are frantic to rid the neighborhood
of cheap, strong heroin before it saps the vitality of another young
person. But they know their best chance rests with decreasing the demand
for the drug, which costs as little as $5-$10 per bag on neighborhood
street corners.

Denial of the problem in the insular community of about 29,000 may have
smoothed the way for transmission of the drug in the late 1990s. But today,
parents' groups and public health officials meet routinely to strategize
about prevention. Outreach workers reinforce antidrug messages at youth
sports gatherings. And ex-addicts describe the tortuous comeback trail to
tempted teens in housing projects and other venues. Yet an estimated 600
addicts are still sleepwalking in South Boston, according to drug
prevention workers at the nonprofit South Boston Neighborhood House, who
detailed the problem in a January report. And detoxification beds are
harder to find due to recent cuts in health coverage for the state's
poorest residents.

Michael Conroy of the Boston Public Health Commission says a sense of
hopelessness is common among young people in South Boston, a condition he
attributes to spikes in housing prices and increased competition for jobs
in local utilities and other traditional workplaces. Unlike many urban
neighborhoods, where moving out is equated with moving up, young people in
South Boston are desperate to stay.

"They don't see anything outside of South Boston," says Conroy.

The Legislature and governor wisely maintain funding levels for methadone
treatment in the current budget. But other important treatment options are
declining precisely when heroin is becoming cheaper and more accessible.
The nonprofit Mental Health and Substance Abuse Corporations of
Massachusetts notes that funding for public supported substance abuse
treatment has fallen by 25 percent over the past four years. The additional
anticipated loss of $26 million in Medicaid for the fiscal year just begun
already has led to the closure of some treatment programs while causing
others to turn away uninsured addicts. Last year at this time, 997
state-funded detox beds were available. Now that figure has fallen to about
400.

Jack Leary, assistant chief of probation in the South Boston District
Court, says that statistical analyses suffer from significant lag time in
the public health field. But he believes 12 South Boston residents have
died from overdoses so far this year. And finding therapeutic placements
gets harder every day.

"People are losing their lives because of the lack of availability of
treatment," Leary says.

The coming months will almost surely find more addicts in shelters,
emergency rooms, and jails at a greater cost to taxpayers. Only a
supplemental budget to support better and longer drug treatment could
counter the trend.

Concern and awareness about the links between drugs and despair is stronger
in South Boston than elsewhere in the city due, in part, to a cluster of
teen suicides in 1997 that claimed six lives in a seven-month period. And
the latest data from the Boston Public Health Commission suggest the
problem remains. In 2001, 45 young people in South Boston attempted
suicide, the highest rate - adjusted for population - of any neighborhood
in the city. In the same year, 271 South Boston residents of all ages were
discharged from area hospitals for substance abuse problems, also the
highest rate in Boston. South Boston ranks second only to Charlestown in
the percentage of patients in publicly funded treatment centers who
reported heroin as their primary drug of abuse.

Open air drug dealing and other signs of social decay are not easily
visible in South Boston, where children play at dusk under the care of
watchful parents and neighbors. But after 10 p.m., knots of obviously
impaired young people begin appearing on corners known for drug activity.
On a recent evening along East Second and O streets, several young men in
their late teens and early 20s described lives spent bouncing between the
corner and local lockups. One 21-year-old male said he began intraveneous
heroin use at age 14 and never looked back. The addicts spoke
contemptuously of local youths who vandalize the cars of yuppie newcomers,
thereby attracting unwanted police attention to the area. But mostly they
just wait to connect with dealers who deliver to the area provided
customers buy a minimum of a half-gram of heroin, worth about $50 in the
current street market.

Two dozen nonprofit organizations in South Boston have joined forces to
fight the heroin problem. But they lack funds even to establish a central
intake location to provide substance abuse referrals. A remedy for that
problem, at least, could be found if the groups succeed in their bid for a
modest grant from the Boston Foundation.

South Boston and other urban areas are awash in heroin. Yet soporific
politicians and budget writers sit by while treatment opportunities
continue to dry up.