Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jan 2012
Source: Enterprise, The (MA)
Copyright: 2012 GateHouse Media Inc.
Contact:  http://www.enterprisenews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3231
Author: Maria Papadopoulos, Enterprise Staff Writer
Note: Part 2 of 2, part 1 at 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v12/n023/a07.html, original series 
available at http://mapinc.org/url/wXHZQJRf

WASTED YOUTH: PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FUELING HEROIN EPIDEMIC

BROCKTON -

Second in a two-part update of the Wasted Youth series on heroin 
addiction and the vise-like grip it has had on the region for more 
than a decade.

Part 1 in Sunday's Enterprise: Eastern Massachusetts outpaces much of 
the nation in heroin-fueled emergency room visits and admissions to 
state treatment programs for painkiller addictions.

The findings in two recent federal studies   that heroin addiction 
has a firm grip on Eastern Massachusetts   come as no surprise to 
police and drug treatment professionals working in the greater 
Brockton and Taunton region. They've been seeing and talking about it 
for years, ever since powerful prescription painkillers including 
OxyContin, became the preferred way among young people to get high.

It begins when someone chasing a high pops a stolen prescription 
painkiller, they say. Soon, he's hooked and has a habit he can no 
longer afford to feed. So, he turns to a much cheaper way to feed the 
addiction: heroin.

"These prescription drugs, Oxycodone, Vicodin, Percocet, they're like 
just using heroin. They're the same as heroin," said Carol Kowalski, 
director of Brockton High Point Treatment Center in Brockton, which 
also has sites in Plymouth and New Bedford.

Half of the center's patients are 29 or younger, and 75 percent say 
they've used heroin and other opiates, she said.

The Enterprise in its ongoing series "Wasted Youth," began reporting 
five years ago on the local heroin epidemic and how the increased 
availability and potency of prescription painkillers has been feeding it.

Two recent federal studies confirm what local drug treatment workers 
and police have been saying: Eastern Massachusetts outpaces much of 
the nation in heroin-fueled emergency room visits and admissions to 
state treatment programs for painkiller addictions.

The problem is both in the cities and small towns, the reports from 
the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 
say. And things haven't improved, despite the efforts of police to 
take illegal drugs off the streets and drug treatment centers to get 
addicts clean and keep them that way.

"I haven't seen any of this get better in the eight years I've been 
doing it. I've not seen it slow down," said Joanne Peterson, founder 
of Learn to Cope, a local support group for families of opiate addicts.

She blames easy access to prescription drugs and the companies that 
make and sell them for the ongoing heroin epidemic.

"Someone's got to draw the line somewhere on these pharmaceutical 
companies that are making more powerful opiates," Peterson said. 
"They know damn well what's going to happen to those drugs. They end 
up in the wrong hands of the wrong people."

One such drug is Percocet tablets, known on the street as "blues" or 
"threes." Percocet, and its generic equivalent, began appearing in 
the region in recent years as tougher laws and increased awareness 
made it harder to get the near-pure narcotic OxyContin.

Newer, more powerful Percocet pills are known as "Perc 30" and have 
six times the opiate of a regular Percocet, which contains five 
milligrams of oxycodone.

Perc 30s sell for about $30 each, and addicts turn to shooting heroin 
into their veins through a needle when they can no longer afford the 
pills, East Bridgewater Det. Sgt. Scott Allen said.

Allen, the head of the WEB Major Crimes and Drug Task Force which 
includes police from West Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Bridgewater, 
Whitman and Bridgewater State University, described a typical scenario.

A person starts taking Perc 30s and is soon addicted and taking five 
pills a day. That's a $1,050-a-week habit. That's when the switch to 
much cheaper heroin happens, Allen said.

"It's skyrocketed," he said of the Perc-30 problem. They have 
replaced OxyContin as the prescription painkiller of choice of people 
in their teens and 20s, he said.

And once they're hooked, their lives are no longer their own, Dr. 
Joseph Shrand said. He treats addicts between the ages of 13 and 17 
at the Clean And Sober Teens Living Empowered program at High Point 
Treatment Center in Brockton.

"They steal our stuff, they rob people," Shrand said of addicts. "But 
the stuff that's really been stolen is that person. Drugs have really 
stolen that person from us. It's up to us to be vigilant and to give 
a helping hand."
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D