Huge increases in heroin use among whites, suburbanites and teenagers are a major factor in why the Chicago area suffers what might be the nation’s worst heroin problem, according to a new study released today.

“It’s cheaper than a six-pack of beer and it’s easier to get. Drug dealers don’t ask for I.D.,” says Kathleen Kane-Willis, one of the authors of the Roosevelt University report on heroin use in Illinois from 1998 to 2008.

In recent years there has been an “acknowledgment” that heroin exists in the suburbs, but the information in this study “is still a wake-up call,” adds fellow Roosevelt researcher Stephanie Schmitz, who lives in Schaumburg. “It just seems so far removed from what we think our kids might be doing. But in fact, they are.”

Hospital emergency rooms in the city, suburbs and collar counties treated 23,931 people with heroin issues between 2004 and 2008, 50 percent more than were treated for heroin abuse in New York City, according to the report. In a sampling of people detained at Cook County Jail in 2008, 29 percent tested positive for heroin, more than double the rate of Washington, D.C., which had the second-highest rate. Those who tested positive also reported using heroin 26 days a month.

The study found that people in Illinois seek treatment for heroin problems more than any other illegal substance, and second only to alcohol.

“That was pretty surprising to me,” admits Kane-Willis, who already was well-versed in the growth of heroin problems.

While urban areas might be more familiar with the downsides of heroin, “people growing up in the suburbs don’t know how dangerous it is,” says Chrystal Beinlich, who installed a heroin-awareness billboard in Wheeling after the overdose death of her 18-year-old son, Nick, in 2007. “As a parent, I wasn’t aware that it was in my community.”

The Lincolnshire mom says she still sees parents who naively suggest heroin couldn’t be a problem for their good kids, or that they’d know, and put a stop to it, if their children were exposed to a drug that could kill them.

“Don’t you think I have that same mentality?” Beinlich says, noting that kids sometimes assume that something as cheap, plentiful and popular as heroin must not be that bad. “Good kids make bad decisions all the time.”

Adults who grew up with images of heroin as a dangerous drug done only by “junkies in alleys” might not realize how prevalent it is in the suburbs, says Michelle Hines, a Lake Zurich mom who is active in heroin-related programs such as Hearts of Hope in Geneva and a 12-step recovery program hosted by Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington.

“In areas where you just have not historically had a lot of heroin abuse or seen a lot of addicts, you don’t get a sense of how damaging it can be,” Schmitz says, adding that older addicts might help others avoid overdoses or at least serve as living reminders of how heroin can ruin lives. “You don’t have the guy on the corner nodding out. In the suburbs, it’s much more hidden.”

A generation ago, someone had to be connected to the drug world to know where to buy heroin and even how to inject it. Now, heroin is easier to find and use, and the Internet provides how-to directions that often fail to report the dangers, the researcher says.

“In the suburbs you have no idea what this drug does,” Kane-Willis says. Kids think they are smart enough to avoid addiction, overdoses and the woes of heroin.

“These clusters of kids are doing it on their own and that’s really scary,” Schmitz says. “It’s uncharted territory.”

Raising awareness is the first step.

“One of the things I struggle with is that I feel my head was in the sand,” says Jody Daitchman, of Buffalo Grove, who never even considered that her son, Alex Laliberte, 20, might be using heroin until she discovered him dead in their home.

Having been initiated into the sad fraternity of suburban parents who have lost children to heroin, Daitchman says the Roosevelt study “doesn’t surprise me at all.” Her website live4lali.org tries to raise awareness and funds for prevention and treatment.

“I think too many people are oblivious to it,” Daitchman says. “But I was one of those people.”

While heroin use is skyrocketing, Schmitz and Kane-Willis say Illinois could do several things to improve the situation, starting with more thorough drug education. Kane-Willis says that when an adult or teacher says, “Don’t do this. It’s bad,” kids think, “‘Well, bad like how? Bad like pot is bad?’”

“I don’t think there’s a differentiation between substances,” Kane-Willis says.

The Roosevelt University study concludes that medically assisted treatment programs, which substitute other drugs for heroin, remain underfunded in Illinois. The study also calls for an increased use of naloxone, a drug credited with saving nearly 2,000 people who overdosed; syringe-exchange programs that help users avoid HIV and other blood-borne diseases; and legal protection for people who call 911 to report an overdose.

Acknowledging that their research showing a rise in heroin use in Illinois is “scary,” Schmitz and Kane-Willis point out that their research was limited to arrest records, coroner reports, government health programs and other public data.

“The picture could actually be much worse,” Schmitz says, explaining that heroin victims treated in private facilities or in other states don’t get counted in Illinois.

“To me,” Kane-Willis says, “especially among white, middle class or upper middle class, I think the numbers of heroin users is much larger.”Suburbs a big part of the problem
A new study by Roosevelt University concludes that skyrocketing heroin use in the suburbs has contributed to Chicago’s rank among the worst nationally for heroin-related problems. The study found:

• Spikes in overdoses in collar counties. Heroin-related deaths are up 130 percent in Lake during the last decade, up 150 percent in three years in McHenry and double in just two years in Will County.

• Heroin is the most common illegal drug named in treatment programs and trails only alcohol as the reason Illinois residents seek treatment for substance abuse. Between 1998 and 2008 the number of people treated for heroin abuse in Illinois jumped from 4,150 to 17,411 to surpass cocaine and marijuana.

• White users of heroin generally are younger than African-American users in Illinois. In publicly funded treatment in 2008, nearly 70 percent of heroin users younger than 18 were white. Of those aged 20 to 24 entering public treatment facilities in 2008, 83 percent were white. In 2008, 86 percent of people aged 45 to 54 entering such facilities were African-American.

• Cook County Jail had the nation’s highest rate of heroin use as a 2008 sample of detainees showed 29 percent tested positive for heroin. That sample also reported using heroin 26 days a month.

• Between 2004 and 2008, Chicago, suburbs and collar counties reported 23,931 hospital emergency department cases involving heroin, nearly 50 percent higher than heroin case in the New York City metropolitan area.

• The majority of teens discharged from hospitals after treatment for heroin issues live in the suburbs. In 2007, just 12 percent of those teens lived in Chicago, with 25 percent from suburban Cook County and 38 percent from collar counties.

• The study concludes that Illinois needs more comprehensive drug education, especially for young people; more funds for treatment programs; syringe-exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV and other blood-borne diseases; increased use of overdose prevention and drugs; and support of a law that provides partial or full immunity to people who call 911 to report an overdose.

And the bad news didn’t end there.

The study also concluded that Illinois underfunds treatment programs, including those that replace heroin with substitute drugs like naloxone. Which means even as the crisis worsens and the need for treatment increases, agencies cannot respond due to decreased funds.

Eric Foster knows first hand the impact of funding cuts.

“Agencies are having difficulty keeping their doors open. They’re extending lines of credit to the max and programs start to close,” said Foster, chief operating officer of the Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association, an advocacy group for agencies that treat people with addictions.

According to the IADDA, Gov. Pat Quinn’s 2010 budget cut addiction health care services by $24.1 million, adding more than 8,900 people statewide to the waiting list for treatment.

The Roosevelt University report is crucial because it demonstrates “that there is an issue that needs to be addressed that cannot be resolved by cutting funding,” Foster said.

Decreased funding means fewer beds and fewer counselors. As a result, people needing treatment will likely seek it at emergency rooms, where the cost is higher than at a treatment provider, Foster said.

While providers can accommodate clients whose insurance covers treatment costs, they have trouble accommodating clients who have no such safety net.

“We’ve had to reduce the number of beds available for people who have no funding and who rely on state funding,” said Donna Santoro, chief operating officer of Start Here Addiction Recovery Education.

Affiliated with the Leyden Family Service and Mental Health Center headquartered in Franklin Park, SHARE is a 72-bed inpatient, adult treatment facility that has operated in Hoffman Estates home for about 13 years.

SHARE, which receives funding from the state and Schaumburg, Hanover and Proviso townships as well as private agencies like the United Way, reserves more than half its beds for state-supported clients.

Those state-funded beds are always at capacity, Santoro said, and there is always someone waiting in line to occupy one.

Like other agencies, SHARE has felt the sting of budget cuts. Even when funding remains flat, expenses increase, said Santoro, which leaves treatment providers scrambling.

“It’s not new to us – every year we struggle,” Santoro said. “The need increases and the funding gets cut.” The organization tries to seek other financial sources, she said.

“We don’t want to turn people away who are requesting services,” she said, “but you need dollars to do that and dollars only go so far.”
Where to find help
For information on treatment centers see:

• The Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association list of resources at iadda.org/code/links.html

• The Illinois Department of Human Services at state.il.us

• SHARE, Start Here Addiction Recovery Education at leydenfamilyservice.org/share

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at samhsa. gov.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=391203

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=396310

It’s 7 a.m. and we’re on an undercover surveillance operation with the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Suburbs across the country are flooded with the powerful drug.
At a bus stop 35 miles outside of New York City, drug dealers from the city are dropping off heroin that will be sold in the suburbs later that day.

These are not the kinds of communities you’d imagine having drug issues. But the rolling hills and picturesque houses betray a rising problem. In suburbs like this across the country, heroin use is skyrocketing and teenagers are dying.

“The interesting part too is when you start going to the schools and school events. You go back towards the bleachers, areas, you used to find little empty bags of marijuana, now you are actually finding the glassine stamps on the ground,” said DEA Agent Bradley Cheek. “Which means these kids have escalated from marijuana to heroin.”

The Ones You’d Least Expect
Honor students and athletes, some not even old enough to drive, are overdosing on heroin.

Jeffrey Veatch’s son Justin overdosed and died from his heroin addiction.

“The first reaction parents have — ‘I would never let my kids do this, this would never happen in my house,’” he says. “But we’ve learned a lot since then about substances and what’s available.”

“The signs weren’t overt. They weren’t always there and as parents you always look to the bright side and want to be optimistic that everything’s going to be fine.”

In affluent suburbia, the drug culture is changing. Something
sinister is trying to set up camp here. That evil presence is
Heroin and it is preying on our most precious, our children.
Heroin has more commonly been thought of as an issue of the
lower income, inner city area. But this is not the case anymore.
Manufacturers of Heroin have refined production methods,
increasing the drugs purity and making the Heroin more powerful (some Heroin found to be 15 times more powerful than
that in the ‘70’s). This higher purity, which is even more deadly, allows Heroin to be snorted or smoked instead of just injected, making it easier to use for the casual drug user. In our community
alone, we have lost 5 people (four of them young adults), to heroin overdose in the last 14 months.
The increase of heroin distribution in the U.S. is driving the cost
down, causing the current price of one dose to range from just $5
to $10. According to the national drug intelligence Center, Chicago constitutes the largest Heroin market in the United States. Traffickers are selling to all demographics. However they are increasingly promoting the drug to teenagers in the affluent suburban areas who are less knowledgeable and therefore less fearful.
Once a person is addicted to heroin they increasingly need more of the drug to get the same affect. Due to the need for the addicted to get their daily fix, crime rates increase, and in turn, more law enforcement is required. Additionally, our school districts become involved with support, which in turn costs the communities again. It’s not uncommon for desperate families to drain their life savings while trying to help their child with multiple rehab treatments. Along with this come court costs, jail fines, and years of helping to support a young adult with a criminal record.
Very often, the gateway to Heroin use is alcohol and casual drugs
use. Prescription drug use is on the rise with 1 in 5 teens
reporting using stimulants and tranquilizers and 1 in 10 reporting
their first use was out of their home medicine chest. Alcohol and
drug use are prevalent within our schools and neighborhoods. If
you don’t believe it, just ask a teenager. Our denial, ignorance, or
dismissal of recreational drug use as a rite of passage is a recipe for disaster. To complicate matters, the frontal lobe of a teenager’s brain has not completely developed yet. This is the area that controls reasoning and decision-making. This area is also very susceptible to addiction. Why do you think it is so
difficult to reason with a teen? As adults, it is our responsibility to guide, protect and monitor the our children. We need to help them make healthy and safe choices and avoid deadly ones.
Research shows that drug abuse among youth declines as the perception of risk and social disapproval increases. Kids who learn about the risk of drugs from their parents are up to 50% less likely to use! Even though it appears like our kids are not listening to us, we really can influence them.
As a member of Hearts of Hope (a non-profit organization
dedicated to drug prevention and assistance to affected communities and individuals), I encourage anyone who has a kid or loves a kid to learn more about this increasing problem that can affect the young people you know. Be willing to attend forums or presentations that teach and inform about substance abuse. Be willing to talk to teenagers and young adults about your concerns. Do what it takes to be informed. Don’t ever succumb to the phrase, “not my kid!” You might be the one who makes the difference.

For more information on Heroin use,
signs, symptoms and how to talk to
your kids go to: DrugFree.org
(Search- Heroin) or TimeToTalk.org

Michelle Hines has been a resident of Lake
Zurich since 1987. She has two sons, a 21 yr.
old and a 15 yr. old currently a Sophomore at
Lake Zurich High School. Michelle helps to
facilitate the 12- step (indirectly affected) group at Willow Creek Church
and is a member of Hearts of Hope out of Geneva, IL. ■

Or the 5,000 Ecstasy pills that undercover drug officers purchased in Deerfield. Or the 15-year-old Lake County girl who police found with four empty vodka bottles, cocaine and explosives in her bedroom.

These were among the eye-opening and disturbing stories police shared with a standing-room-only crowd during a drug forum at Lake Zurich High School Thursday night.

The forum was organized after three Lake Zurich High School alumni died of heroin overdoses in the past 14 months, and Lake County recorded nearly 30 heroin overdose deaths in 2009.

“It’s not just Lake Zurich, it’s everywhere. It’s in every community in Lake County, Cook County, DuPage County … everywhere,” said Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group agent Pat Gara, one of the speakers.

The forum educated people on the drugs that are growing in popularity in the suburbs: heroin, Ecstasy and prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin.

But it also offered practical advice for parents, such as how to dispose of unused prescription medicine (the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County can assist); the importance of talking to your children early and often about drugs; and the benefit of regularly drug-testing kids with kits purchased at drugstores.

“Then, if they’re at a party and they’re offered something, they can say, ‘Oh, I’d love to, but my parents drug test me,” said Hearts of Hope founder Lea Minalga, whose son is a former heroin addict. “Silence is permission … it’s time to talk. And it’s time to act.”