HEROIN IS SURPASSING COCAINE AS USERS' CHOICE

The two drugs were once considered twin threats of equal dangerousness, and
Steven Richard knew them both.

First, the young car salesman from Sandwich fell for cocaine's expensive,
hyperactive high. Then, years later, he was introduced to heroin pure
enough to snort. Its euphoria came cheaper than beer.

In 1992, heroin and cocaine each drove about 11,000 addicts into
state-funded treatment centers in Massachusetts. But since then, the number
of cocaine admissions has steadily fallen while the number of heroin
admissions has steadily climbed. By 2001, 4,334 admitted patients in
Massachusetts named cocaine as their nemesis, while heroin haunted 37,399,
according to a report by the National Drug Intelligence Center. Those
numbers solidify the commonwealth's position as one of a handful of states
to see a dramatic rise in heroin admissions accompanied by a steep fall in
cocaine admissions.

''Heroin has emerged as the greatest drug threat to Massachusetts,'' reads
the report, which was released this month. The yearly report, which comes
as state lawmakers wrangle over whether to cut funding to methadone clinics
that treat heroin addicts, blames the growth of heroin addiction on fallen
prices and increased purity that allows the drug to be sniffed or smoked
instead of injected.

The House would like to stop paying for the clinics, but the Senate's
proposed budget continues their funding.

The rise in heroin use is ominous because the drug is far more likely to
create a lifelong addiction than cocaine, according to specialists and users.

''It takes a very long time to conduct heroin treatment, and a lot of
providers will tell you the success rate is very low,'' said Jim Dreier, an
analyst with the Drug Intelligence Center, an agency within the Department
of Justice, based in Johnstown, Pa. ''With cocaine, there are higher
success rates for treatment. It is not as lengthy a process. . . . The
physiological dependence is not as strong.''

Heroin users make up only a small percentage of all drug treatment
admissions in most Southern and Midwestern states. Clinics in California
have seen a decline in the number of heroin addicts who are being displaced
by amphetamine users, according to a Globe review of statistics compiled by
the US Department of Health and Human Services.

In New York, heroin admissions have surpassed cocaine admissions, but the
gap between the two numbers is not nearly as wide as it is in Massachusetts.

''It's an East Coast phenomenon,'' said Thomas Clark, Boston's former
representative to the Community Epidemiology Work Group, a federal program
run by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which tracks drug-use trends
across the country.

The decline in cocaine admissions has puzzled researchers, who say it could
reflect everything from supply patterns to regional drug fads to repeat
visits by heroin users, who, because of the difficulty of breaking their
addiction, may be trumping cocaine abusers at treatment centers.

''The treatment system has a limited number of slots, so as one goes up,
the other almost has to come down,'' Clark said. ''The heroin users are
coming in and displacing the cocaine users.''

Using data from treatment centers may mask some of the cocaine usage, Clark
said, because cocaine addicts, who have no medically treatable symptoms of
withdrawal, have a harder time getting insurance companies to pay for
treatment.

But, if the decline in cocaine admissions raises questions, the rise of
heroin is an all-too familiar tale. In the early 1990s, the same Colombian
drug cartels that sell cocaine on the East Coast decided to wrestle the
heroin market away from Asian producers. Their strategy: to push down the
price and make heroin so pure it could be smoked or snorted, Dreier said.

''It was a marketing decision,'' he said, adding that there was a false
belief that snorting the drug or smoking it -- a practice called ''chasing
the dragon'' -- would not be addictive.

The price of a thumbnail-size bag of heroin dropped from about $15 in the
1970s to about $5. The average purity of heroin sold to small-scale users
rose from 3 percent in 1981 to nearly 30 percent in 2000, according to
nationwide statistics compiled for the Office of National Drug Control
Policy. The purity of some heroin on Boston's streets has been found to be
as high as 70 percent.

Low prices and high potency have fueled a new generation of heroin users in
Massachusetts who are, by and large, younger, wealther, and more suburban
than the heroin addicts of the past.

''I see people from the upper middle class. I see 18- and 19-year-old
kids,'' said Dana Moulton, 52, who once abused heroin and is now a project
assistant with the Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery, a
nonprofit education group. ''I could see the transition. . . . In the
1980s, you didn't see young people using heroin the way we do now. You had
to be in the loop'' to get it.

Unlike in California, where much of the heroin comes from Mexico in forms
too impure to inhale, the purer heroin in Massachusetts began to attract a
following from people who had never used the drug.

One recovering addict at Phoenix House Springfield Center, a state-funded
residential treatment facility in Springfield, recalls the disgust he felt
for heroin when he was in high school.

''It was taboo. [I had] the mental image of a guy with hair down his back
who never shaves and weighs 100 pounds soaking wet,'' said the man, a
37-year-old drywall finisher. ''I swore I would never put a needle in my arm.''

But, nine years ago, his cousin told him he didn't have to use a needle, so
he began sniffing it. He got hooked, and could not believe how many of his
co-workers and acquaintances were sniffing heroin, too. He said he started
off buying it from teenagers on Blue Hill Avenue, he said, but soon began
to buy it from men in suits with offices on Boylston Street.

''You get a business card, beep them, they come see you, and go have a
social drink over lunch,'' he said.

At $5 a bag, he said, ''I thought I had discovered gold.''

Steven Richard, now 31 and recovering at Phoenix House from his addictions,
said snorting the drug also lured him into becoming a user. ''I was always
against needles,'' he said. ''I never, ever thought that I would inject
drugs.''

Richard's journey toward hard-core addiction began when he was a teenager
who had moved from Cape Cod to Florida to be with a girlfriend.

One day, he was driving down the highway in Florida, and a friend passed
him a pipe full of crack. He puffed and nearly veered off the road. The hit
was instant. The next three years were sleepless and wired as he broke into
homes so he could afford to ''chase'' the high. Going to jail at age 20 was
enough to motivate him to stay clean, and he moved back to his family's
home on Cape Cod, got a job selling cars, bought a house, and began living
with with his girlfriend.

But seven years later, in 1997, a childhood friend asked for a ride to
Boston and, somewhere near the Forest Hills T station, handed him a bag of
heroin to snort. He didn't resist, and the drug became a full-time
addiction he could afford on earnings from a paper route. ''There were
nights where I spent almost $1,500 in one night on cocaine,'' said Richard.
''With heroin, $400 could last me close to a week.''

After a few years of sniffing, he graduated to injecting the drug, asking a
friend to do it the first time because he was scared of the needle.

Now, five years, $60,000 in credit card debt, and countless court
arraignments later, what public health officials call ''an epidemic'' has
cost Richard not only his home, but also the seven-year-long relationship
that he lost when heroin became his only passion.

''She's got a baby now,'' he said wistfully of the girlfriend who married
someone else. ''It's been four years now, and I still think about it.''