HEROIN ON OUR STREETS -- DEADLIER, CHEAPER

Last year, someone in Allegheny County died nearly every other day from a
drug overdose, the vast majority from heroin -- a drug that many had
forgotten in the wake of crack cocaine.

Yesterday, a half-dozen drug experts gathered to make sure heroin is
forgotten no longer.

It has become the drug of choice in Southwestern Pennsylvania, they said,
and it's everywhere. Doses now cost as little as $10 and pack a potency as
high as 90 percent pure heroin, killing addicts young and old. Overdose
deaths were up 45 percent last year from the year before.

"It knows no age bracket. It knows no race. Now it knows no neighborhood,"
Pittsburgh Police Sgt. John Fisher told the 90 people who attended a
meeting of the Coalition for Leadership, Education and Advocacy for Recovery.

Fisher, a narcotics officer who supervises the city's Weed and Seed
Operations to reduce drug trade and replace it with legal commerce,
explained how it happened. And Dr. Neil A. Capretto, medical director of
Gateway Rehabilitation Center, told about how difficult it is to treat a
heroin addict.

"People fall in love with it. They become possessed by it," said Capretto,
who started at Gateway in 1989. During his first 10 years, he said, Gateway
saw no more than 20 teen-age heroin addicts. In the past nine months, it
has admitted more than 100.

Fisher, who has worked in narcotics for half of his 15 years as a police
officer, said that historically, heroin came from Southeast Asia. Now it is
coming from Colombia, and it's purer and cheaper. A decade ago, it cost $20
to $25 for one dose and now it costs half of that.

Also, it traditionally was cut to about 14 percent pure. Now it's between
60 percent and 90 percent. "It's stronger, more potent, and people get
addicted faster," he said. And, he said, that's exactly what the suppliers
had in mind: More addicts mean more business, although the new purity is
killing off some old addicts who simply aren't accustomed to it.

The purity also means that it can be effectively snorted or smoked in
marijuana cigarettes, making it much more alluring to teen-agers than the
traditional heroin that had to be injected, Capretto said.

Teen-agers often begin by taking OxyContin, a prescription drug that also
is an opium-based narcotic, he said. Then, when their addiction becomes a
$200-a-day expense, they turn to heroin, which is much cheaper. And because
they can snort the powder, it's not so repulsive. But when they're strung
out, they're willing to "bang" it into their arms with a hypodermic needle
for a better high, according to Capretto.

Instead of the traditional balloons, heroin is packaged now in the blue
glassine bags traditionally used by collectors to protect stamps.

In addition to the danger of addiction and death, heroin carries a high
risk of hepatitis C. One study, Capretto said, found that 70 percent of
those who'd used intravenous drugs for six months had hepatitis C.

Heroin addicts are the most difficult to treat, Capretto said, because
they're far more likely to leave treatment -- and resume use. They're about
three times as likely as other drug users to walk out within the first five
days, he said.

And even those who do stay in treatment often relapse later. "The pull it
has on people is much stronger than other drugs," he said.

He held out hope, however, because of a new drug called Naltrexune, which
blocks heroin's euphoria. While on Naltrexune, the user may use heroin, but
nothing happens.

"It can act like a bullet-proof vest against heroin until the addict
changes his life," Capretto said.