HEROIN PREYING ON MAINE CITY

PORTLAND, Maine - This quiet harborside city, known for its good
restaurants and quaint, cobblestone streets, is getting a reputation for
something else: the sharply increasing number of people dying of drug
overdoses.

In just over a week, three people died of suspected overdoses. A
29-year-old man was found, surrounded by needles, on his apartment floor, a
woman was discovered by her mother, and another by a boyfriend.

The latest deaths bring the suspected number of fatal drug overdoses to 14
this year. The total puts the city of 64,000 well on its way to doubling
last year's record of 13 deaths, which was already significantly higher
than the year before. The state medical examiner's office is now reviewing
all overdose deaths in the past five years in search of trends.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, drug use and overdose
deaths are up sharply across the country. But why so many people are dying
from drug use here, in a city so small that health workers usually know
victims personally, is somewhat of a mystery.

What is clear, said Police Chief Michael Chitwood, is that "the drug
problem has exploded here."

Although the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency has declined to release a
complete list of people who are suspected of having died of drug overdoses
- - because toxicology tests are still pending - the apparent victims range
in age from 23 to 45. Almost all have been known drug abusers, said agency
Sergeant Scott Pelletier.

One reason for the deaths, he said, is an increase in the toxicity of drugs
being sold here. While heroin a decade ago was on average 30 percent pure,
much of the heroin now available is 80 percent to 90 percent pure, and far
more potent. And it costs less. A gram of heroin that sold for $30-$35 last
year costs roughly $20 now.

In the past six months, the number of opiate users seeking treatment at
methadone clinics near Portland has doubled to 900. And residential
burglaries, which police say directly correlate with drug use, are up 91
percent.

For Nancy Jordan, who lives across the bay from Portland on nearby Long
Island, heroin statistics are more than mere numbers. Her son, 27-year-old
Seth Jordan, was among them.

"I honestly think if we could have had a crystal ball and showed him, 'On
April 14th, you will be dead,' he would have changed, but he never believed
it would be him," Jordan said.

While she awaits tests to determine exactly which drugs killed her son, she
hangs onto memories of the boy who overcame a disability to finally learn
to read in fourth grade. From there, Seth went on to graduate as
valedictorian of his Portland High School class.

Jordan said she believes her son was introduced to drugs during his junior
year at Duke University. After graduating in 1997, he returned to Portland
and got a job as a financial adviser. But as drugs consumed more of his
life, Jordan said, her son, who also battled bipolar disorder, began
missing work. Then he lost his job.

Soon after losing a second job, Seth Jordan lost his car, then his
apartment, and all his belongings. "He sold it all to buy drugs," Nancy
Jordan said.

After returning to live with his parents on the island, Seth Jordan
continued to take the ferry to Portland to find drugs, said his mother.
Last month, police found his body in the back hallway of a two-room crash
pad in Portland.

The city's two methadone clinics have been targeted as a big part of the
abuse problem. The Portland police chief and public health officer have
both asked the state to shut down Discovery House, a South Portland clinic
that provides opiate-addicted clients with methadone, a synthetic drug that
supplants other narcotics.

More and more frequently, police say, methadone is being sold on city
streets. It has also shown up in six of the suspected drug deaths this
year, said Chitwood. He blames clinic patients who, by law, are allowed to
take home as much as a month's supply of the drug at a time.

"People in the program are getting take-home methadone, and it is either
being sold or given to other people," Chitwood said. "We had one guy who
had like 15 vials of methadone, and he had given it to his girlfriend, who
nearly died."

Operating from an obscure gray office building just outside Portland,
Discovery House has opened its doors to addicts for eight years. Many of
its 420 clients stop by each day to swallow a small paper-cup dose of the
drug that helps quell their heroin cravings.

"All I can say is that there are federal and state guidelines around that,
and we are within those guidelines," clinic director Dan Mahoney said.

As a result of concern by Portland police, the state Office of Substance
Abuse plans a review this week of methods at Discovery House, as well as at
CAP Quality Care, a methadone clinic in nearby Westbrook. But Kim Johnson,
director of the Office of Substance Abuse, is moving with caution.

"You can't just go shut a clinic down," she said. "That is like putting 450
addicts out on the street looking for drugs. Unless I find gross
negligence, which I really don't expect to find, I have no intention of
shutting them down."

Still, she said, for Portland, 14 overdose deaths in five months is a lot.
There have been other drug overdose deaths scattered around Maine this
year, she said. She suspects the number of deaths rose with the increase in
demand as OxyContin, a prescription opiate, became harder to get.

"The methadone issue is a red herring," Johnson said. "The real issue is,
what is going on with these overdose deaths? It is not just Portland, but
Portland is a big piece of the puzzle."