TEEN HEROIN USE AND DISCLOSURE DOWN, STUDY SAYS

They endured their 14-year-old daughter's mood swings. They saw her eating
habits deteriorate. And they smelled the body odor that reminded them of
rubbing alcohol.

But the suburban Detroit parents never suspected that their youngest child,
a seventh-grader, was using heroin until a school counselor called to say
that two of her friends claimed their dark-haired daughter was doing just
that.

A trip to the doctor to draw blood for a drug test sparked the girl's
tearful confession.

"It floored both of us, because we don't do drugs and we don't tolerate
drugs in our house," said the girl's 52-year-old stepfather. "We thank God
we caught it that early." Her parents' names are being withheld to protect
the teen's identity.

As the 1998 arrest and conviction of a 16-year-old Oakland County girl --
who pulled stickups to feed a $200-a-day heroin habit -- showed, what
parents don't know about their children's illegal drug use can hurt their
families.

In the annual national survey of youth drug abuse by the University of
Michigan's Institute for Social Research, the percentage of eighth-graders
who say they used heroin at least once rose dramatically in 1996, but has
since fallen. The institute recently reported that the percentage of
eighth-graders who admit ever using heroin fell from 1.9 percent in 2000 to
1.7 percent in 2001.

Marijuana use by this group dropped from 22.6 percent in 1997 to 20.4
percent in 2001, the survey said.

Hard data from blood or urine drug screens is spotty. Not all kids placed at
Oakland County Children's Village -- which houses juvenile delinquents and
abused or neglected children -- are tested for illegal drugs, although 180
were tested during the last three months of last year, said facility
director Mike Worrell. Only one child tested positive for opiates, Worrell
said.

Dallas Coleman, chief of casework services for Oakland County Circuit Court,
said heroin is "not one of the drugs kids will readily admit use of."
Coleman said he estimates that of juvenile drug users, maybe 5-10 percent
use heroin, although he wouldn't call their use an addiction.

At the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Facility, all children admitted are
tested for illegal substances, said Department of Criminal Justice Director
Jeriel Heard.

In 2001, 90 Wayne County children tested positive for opiates; half of those
kids were from the suburbs, Heard said. The 90 represent 2.5 percent of the
3,300 children admitted to the facility last year.

"That doesn't mean that all of them have become hard-core users," Heard
said. "Some of them are in what we consider to be in the experimental stage.
We suspect, based on clinical assessments, that approximately 50 percent of
those testing positive" for heroin "need some kind of treatment."

Heard and others noted that adults are responsible for introducing hard
drugs to kids.

If they are talked into experimenting, they need an adult to show them how
to prepare the mixture and then inject it into a vein or under the skin in
an unexposed area -- a technique called "skin popping."

That's what allegedly happened to a 14-year-old Warren girl. She said she
repeatedly rejected suggestions from her best friend's mother that she join
in using heroin at the woman's Milton Avenue home. She finally gave in, the
girl said, and 45-year-old Lisa Havens injected her with heroin -- the first
of at least 10 times, the girl later testified.

Warren police arrested Havens on Dec. 27. Her trial is June 4.

Havens, who has been jailed under $400,000 bond since late December, faces
sentences of from one to 40 years in prison on each count of providing
narcotics to a minor. Her attorney, Mark Cardellio, did not return phone
calls for comment.

"I don't want her to be in jail for 40 years," said the teen's mother. "I
just want the woman to get some help and I want her daughter to stay away
from her until she's 18 and got a mind of her own and her mother can't talk
her into doing these things."

The Warren teen's parents said they were disturbed when their daughter said
she had shared needles with her best friend, Havens' 15-year-old daughter.
Those involved have tested negative for HIV, the couple said.

Their daughter later admitted using heroin up to 25 times with Havens' help.

"She was going through withdrawals, shaking, not eating, throwing up,
stomach cramps, headaches . . . a good withdrawal for about a week," the
girl's mother said.

After turning Havens in to police, the girl entered therapy and now
criticizes middle-school-age peers she sees using marijuana, her mother
said.

"Counseling really did help," the mother said. "She talks to me about
everything now."

Her mother said she asked her why she even decided to try heroin.

"I saw everyone else and just wanted to try it," she told her mother.

The mother said you can't always believe kids' denials.

"If it's there and they want to do it, they're going to do it," she said.