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The number of teenagers and adults in their early 20s who are using and becoming addicted to heroin remains disturbingly high
The number of teenagers and adults in their early 20s who are using and becoming addicted to heroin remains disturbingly high, according to Wendy Kent, the director of program development for Project Cope.
“People are starting much, much younger,” Kent said during a recent interview. “There are a lot of kids in their late teens and early 20s who are already addicted to heroin and have a very serious addiction.”
Kent said many of these teenagers and young adults first started abusing opiates by stealing prescription medication from their parents.
From there, it’s often a short journey to shooting heroin, Kent said, because of how cheap the drug is, how easy it is to get and how powerful it is.
“It’s been kind of a shocking trend; the number of younger people who are using heroin,” Kent said.
Project Cope is a Lynn non-profit that offers a variety of services, including drug and alcohol treatment.
Mary Wheeler, executive director of Northeast Behavioral Health’s Healthy Streets Outreach Program in Lynn, which works with active injection-drug users, says the demand for services is rising.
“For us, in February we had 515 contacts come through this office, which is about 115 more than we average a month and our median age (of injection-drug users) has dropped to about 23-25 years of age,” she said during a recent interview at her Union Street office.
She confirmed the number of young people turning to heroin is also on the rise.
“The problem is growing faster than anyone can really address it … There’s whole pockets of folks who are getting introduced to heroin,” Wheeler said. “Sometimes people who have never even smoked pot will shoot heroin. That’s the state of mind.”
The people coming to the Healthy Streets Outreach Program for help n which does not provide needles to users, but does collect used needles n took different roads in their journey that ended with them shooting heroin.
“We see folks whose first injection was given to them by a parent, all the way up to they go to school, they take some Percs (Percocets) because that’s what’s available and they end up shooting heroin before they graduate high school, and every story in between,” Wheeler said.
The path to heroin
Police and drug treatment advocates say many high school students who end up hooked on heroin first started abusing prescription drugs n particularly the increasingly popular Perc 30s, which are a 30 milligram tablet of quick release Oxycodone, a pain-killing opiate.
Kevin Norton, president and CEO of Northeast Behavioral Health, said “an increasing amount of youths are using prescription drugs and then turning to heroin.
“Part of it is because … they raid their parents’ medicine cabinets and then they have access to an incredible array of narcotics, which is leading them to some of the street drugs,” Norton said during an interview this week.
Ultimately, when the teenagers can’t afford the $40 price tag for Oxycontin, which is getting harder to buy on the streets, or even Perc 30s n which can costs users $30 per pill n they turn to shooting heroin, he said.
“I don’t care how much disposable income you have as a teenager, when you have a choice of paying $30 to $40 for a pill and a bag of heroin goes for as low as $6, less than a pack of cigarettes, you’ll end up going for the heroin,” Norton said. “I know it’s a cliché, but it’s almost a perfect storm.”
And it doesn’t surprise him anymore how quickly some teenagers and young adults get past the fear of using a needle to shoot drugs.
“I think if you asked any one of them at the beginning, I think you can be sure that all of them would say, ‘I never dreamed that I’d pick up a needle,’” Norton said. “But the drive to recapture the first high, combined with the lack of understanding of long-term consequences and the drive of addiction itself, gets people past that.”
Teenagers are particularly susceptible to the allure of trying new drugs because as Norton noted, “We’re talking about kids who are prone to impulsivity.”
He believes it’s important for anyone who prescribes prescription drugs n particularly painkillers and opiates n to consider who they’re giving the prescription to and the size of the prescription.
“People will write out the script for 30 pills when someone might need only five,” Norton said. “Then you have some serious drugs sitting up in someone’s medicine cabinet.”
A gateway drug
Many people who spoke to The Daily Item said the decision to decriminalize marijuana has lead to more teenagers ultimately turning to more serious drugs after they try marijuana.
State Police Lt. Alan Zani, who heads up the Essex County District Attorney’s Drug Task Force, said there’s no doubt more teenagers are now trying marijuana and some end up addicted to hard drugs.
“I don’t think it, it’s a fact,” Zani said during a recent interview at the DA’s Office in Salem. “There are plenty of people who started by using marijuana who are now addicted to heroin.”
Sean Lebroda, assistant superintendent of programs at the Essex County Sheriff’s Department Correctional Alternative Center in Lawrence, agrees. He runs the re-entry program at what is called the County Farm in Lawrence, which is the last facility for inmates before they come out from “behind the wall,” and re-enter society.
“Most of the guys who are using heroin and cocaine started out using marijuana. So when I ask the participants (inmates at the County Farm) do they think marijuana is a gateway drug, 90 percent of participants believe it is,” Lebroda said. “It’s rare to hear a guy just pick up heroin and say this is the first drug I tried. Usually there’s a progression, which is usually marijuana and then cocaine, then they usually jump up from there.”
That was the case for a 16-year-old from Danvers who is receiving drug treatment through Project Cope in Lynn.
He told The Daily Item this week he tried marijuana for the first time when he was 14.
“I was sitting at my friend’s house and none of his parents were home the first time I tried it,” the teenager, who agreed to speak to The Daily Item if his identity wasn’t revealed, said.
He was a freshman in high school the first time he tried it, but the teenager says he now sees younger kids using marijuana.
“Now I look around and there are seventh- and eighth-graders doing it,” he said. “It just keeps getting younger and younger.”
Perc 30s
He eventually moved up from marijuana to prescription drugs, including Perc 30s, which he got from a friend who had a family member with a prescription.
He too believes the number of teens using Perc 30s on the North Shore is on the rise.
He snorted a Perc 30 the first time he used it, and said it was relatively easy to get once he started looking for one.
“It gives me sort of a tingly feeling,” he said of the drug’s effect. “You get really high and you get sober in 10 minutes, and then you get really high again and it lasts for hours and hours.”
Police later arrested the teen for stealing a purse to get money to buy drugs, and he went to court and pleaded guilty so he could enter a diversion program to get drug treatment, he said.
“I work with my counselor now talking about how to stay sober and to stay away from people who I used drugs with before,” he said. “That’s one of my main focuses. I mean it’s pretty tough. Most of my friends I’ve hung with them for so long and they’re all smoking weed.”
He said marijuana is the most popular drug for teenagers, followed by prescription drugs like Perc 30s.
He says parents need to keep an eye on their children for some of the telltale signs of someone who’s using.
“I would say it’s roller-coaster behavior,” he said when asked what parents should look out for. “You get really angry, really easily. That happens when you get high. Then you’re coming home with red eyes and dropping the things you used to be interested in.”
Wheeler said some of the typical signs of drug use are dilated pupils, moodiness, wearing long sleeve shirts in hot weather, a falloff in their schoolwork and a lack of interest in things they once liked to do.
The teenager has dropped out of school and is now looking for work.
Asked if his drug use led to him dropping out of school, the teen said, “I don’t think it was the drug use. There was just no drive. I can see how the drugs could cause that though.”
Norton said the decriminalization of marijuana has led to a “decrease in people’s concern about it and an increasing number of people using it.”
But he suggested the “gateway issue may be overstated.”
“I think it’s more likely that in their search for marijuana they may also encounter people who have other products for sale,” he said. “Drug dealers rarely sell just one drug, and ultimately it's all about the next high and the latest buzz.”
Teenage knowledge
Kent, the director of program development for Project Cope, finds it “amazing” so many teenagers and young adults have so much knowledge about illegal drug use.
“It’s so easy to get,” Kent said about heroin. “Everybody knows who’s dealing, who’s selling, who has the good stuff, who has the cheap stuff. It’s scary you have 16- and 17-year-olds who know this stuff even if they don’t act on it.”
Kent said the demand for methadone services has gone “through the roof,” which she attributes to prescription drug abuse and heroin addiction.
“It starts with prescription drugs and it quickly leads to heroin addiction,” Kent said. “It’s probably increasing because of that.”
Mark Kennard, executive director of Project Cope, said heroin is the drug of choice on the streets in Lynn.
“Heroin is cheap, it’s potent, it’s easy to get,” he said. “And Oxycontin is very difficult to get, because it’s very controlled now. It’s very expensive so that conversion from Oxycontin to heroin is much quicker.”
He noted it’s surprising how quickly addicts get used to the idea of shooting heroin.
“It’s funny the number of people who will say I will never use heroin. I will never stick a needle in me,” Kennard said. “Then they do.”
Drug treatment
Treating teenagers can also be more difficult than treating adults for drug addiction, according to Norton, who said, “They’re not just small adults. They think differently. We have to engage them differently.”
It’s especially important to change who they hang out with, Norton said.
“We have to get them out of the environment,” he said. “We have to work with them to change their circle of influence.”
Essex County Sheriff Frank Cousins said typically it’s “a four- to five-year struggle to get someone heading in the right direction,” once they become addicted to drugs.
“It takes money and it takes time,” he said. “They’re either going to progress or keep moving forward with their addiction, where they either end up dead or in some kind of institution with a serious breakdown.”
Wheeler says increasing the amount of drug treatment is an important part of addressing the drug issue, while also realizing most people go to treatment multiple times before they stay clean.
“Things like jail and probation and overdoses don’t generally deter someone from continuing to use, despite what the idea might be,” Wheeler said.
She also believes there must be a coordinated approach between everyone who deals with drug users, from law enforcement to behavioral health specialists.
“You have to get rid of the us-versus-you approach,” she said. “Everybody is going to have to come together and make an agreement to work together, stop accusing this or that program of making the problem worse.”
But she’s not hopeful the problem of illegal drug use will get better anytime soon.
“The problem is growing faster than the needs can be addressed. And the need for treatment is huge,” she said.
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