Drug War: U.S. continues to inject billions into a losing fight

WINFIELD, Mo. — Mexican drug smugglers are increasingly peddling a form of ultra-potent heroin that sells for as little as $10 a bag and is so pure it can kill unsuspecting users
instantly, sometimes before they even remove the syringe from their veins.

An Associated Press review of drug overdose data shows that "black tar" heroin - named for its dark, gooey consistency - and other
forms of the drug are contributing to a spike in fatal overdoses across
the nation and attracting a new generation of users who are caught off
guard by its potency.

While no deaths have been reported, Glendale police say they have seen a surge in heroin use among youths - some only in their early
teens. Many of them got hooked by free samples distributed by a Los
Angeles-based street gang.

"Unfortunately, the primary user of the drug demographically is a person under the age of 24 years old," said Glendale police Sgt.
Tom Lorenz. "And that became frighteningly alarming since we started to
find kids as young as 12, 13, 14 years old that have been exposed to
heroin."

Glendale police say they've seen a tenfold increase in heroin cases - from eight to to 80 - over the past five years. And heroin is
involved in nearly 50 percent of their drug caseload.

"They tell them, `Just smoke it. It's just like smoking a cigarette.

It's just like smoking marijuana,"' Lorenz said. Once the kids are hooked, "they've got a customer forever."

The problem was serious enough for Glendale Police Chief Ron De Pompa to address the City Council in March, when he told members heroin
use in north Glendale was especially worrisome.

According to local press reports, De Pompa said all drug-related offenses in the Crescenta Valley in January were due to
heroin. He also noted that over the past two years, Crescenta Valley
High School alone had expelled 24 students and suspended 57 for alleged
drug and alcohol use.

Glendale school officials could not be reached Monday for comment.

Nationwide, authorities are concerned that the potency and price of the heroin from Mexico and Colombia could widen the drug's
appeal, just as crack did for cocaine decades ago.

The Latin American heroin comes in the form of black tar or brown powder, and it has proven especially popular in rural
and suburban areas.

"We found people who snorted it lying face-down with the straw lying next to them," said Patrick O'Neil, coroner in suburban Chicago's
Will County, where annual heroin deaths have nearly tripled - from 10
to 29 - since 2006. "It's so potent that we occasionally find the needle
in the arm at the death scene."

Originally associated with rock stars, hippies and inner-city junkies, heroin in the 1970s was usually smuggled from Asia and the
Middle East and was around 5percent pure. The rest was "filler" such as
sugar, starch, powdered milk, even brick dust. The low potency meant
that many users injected the drug to maximize the effect.

But in recent years, Mexican drug dealers have improved the way they process poppies, the brightly colored flowers supplied by drug
farmers that provide the raw ingredients for heroin, opium and
painkillers such as morphine. Purity levels have increased, and prices
have fallen.

Federal agents now commonly find heroin that is 50 percent pure and sometimes as much as 80 percent pure.

The greater potency allows more heroin users to snort the drug or smoke it and still achieve a sustained high - an
attractive alternative for teenagers and suburbanites who don't want the
HIV risk or the track marks on their arms that come with repeated
injections.

"That has opened up heroin to a whole different group of users," said Harry Sommers, the agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement
Agency office in St. Louis.

To hook new users, dealers are selling heroin cheap - often around $10 a bag. The new users included Billy Roberts, the 19-year-old
son of a retired Chicago police officer. Last September, he slumped over
dead of a heroin overdose at a friend's house.

John Roberts had moved his family to Will County when Billy was just entering high school.

"I thought I was moving away from problems like that," Roberts said. "These kids out here are being introduced to real serious drugs,
dirt cheap, and they don't know how pure and dangerous they are."

Roberts now speaks to high school and civic groups about the dangers of heroin.

In Glendale, which often ranks among the safest of cities its size, gang members were making the quick drive up Interstate 5 to
deliver heroin straight to high school kids.

But Lorenz said a police crackdown has curbed the incursion of heroin dealers into Glendale.

"Now it's pretty well-known among those groups that you cannot come into Glendale or they risk being arrested because we have
aggressive enforcement in this particular area," Lorenz said.

"So what we're finding out is that, unfortunately, those who are using the drug are now driving outside the city and other parts of
the greater Los Angeles area (to buy heroin)."

At the start of the decade, roughly 2,000 people a year died from heroin overdoses nationwide, according to records kept by the
Centers for Disease Control. By 2008, the drug was blamed for at least
3,000 deaths in the 36 states that responded to records requests from
the AP. Deaths from 2009 have not yet been compiled.

The AP contacted agencies in all 50 states, as well as officials in the District of Columbia and New York City, including
medical examiners, coroners and health departments. The survey showed
that heroin deaths rose 18.2 percent from 2007 to 2008, and 20.3 percent
from 2006 to 2008.

Law enforcement officials and drug-treatment experts believe those statistics woefully undercount the actual number of deaths. And
they fear the problem is getting worse: Seizures of heroin along the
U.S.-Mexico border quadrupled from 2008 to 2009, from about 44 pounds
(20 kilograms) to more than 190 pounds (86 kilograms).

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