Since reporting 80 opioid-related teen and young adult deaths in South County and beach cities in recent years, parents ask me who’s at risk.

As Sheriff’s Deputy Lance Christensen says, “These kids don’t look like addicts. They look like they could be my own kids.”

Christensen once was used to emaciated addicts. Now, he describes one heroin victim as “a beautiful young girl with her own baby-sitting service.”

In reviewing coroner reports and videos, and talking to experts and dozens of parents, the picture that emerges of the new face for heroin is, well, anyone.

Blonde, blue-eyed girls; brown-eyed, brown-haired boys, 14-year-olds in or almost in high school; 22-year-old college graduates…

So what’s a parent to do?

Learn… and hope.

•••

Bindles of heroin look like gum balls. They come in bright colors; robin’s egg blue, fire engine red, Christmas green, canary yellow.

Coincidence? Unlikely.

The Mexican cartels and their dealers in the United States package and price their product so it will move quickly.

To the unsuspecting eye the heroin is hidden in plain sight, like candy. To the aficionado, the packaging looks like little balls of fun.

And while there’s a less-than 10 percent chance that a kid uses, there’s an excellent chance that a teenager in South County or the beach cities can get heroin easily.

“What’s different today,” says Mike Darnold, youth advocate at Dana Hills High, “is that kids have access to so much scary stuff.

“If the child has a cellphone with Internet, they have access to stuff we never dreamed of.”

What’s more, in recent years, police and drug makers have cracked down on the illegal use of prescription drugs, particularly the morphine-based pain meds such as oxycodone.

The upshot?

With grim irony, Darnold, a retired Fullerton police officer with 18 years working with teens, explains that it’s now harder to get the pills that kids and others used to crush up and snort for a quick rush.

And that, he adds, is where the pills stop and the heroin begins.

•••

Most middle and high school students, Darnold tells me, are appalled at what’s going on with heroin. He estimates those students comprise about 75 percent of the population.

“They’re sickened by that kind of behavior.”

Darnold describes others as on the fence or in the “at risk” group – about 17 percent. A fraction, 3 percent or more, are users.

Some experts agree that parenting isn’t necessarily a marker. Some kids just pop out that way.

In the past few weeks, I’ve talked to and exchanged emails with dozens of loving, middle and upper middle class parents whose children struggle with heroin addiction.

I’ve also talked to many who have buried children.

Perhaps one of the most significant reasons why heroin has found a home in upper middle class areas is the way teens and young adults ingest it – or used to.

Although it lacks the punch of injecting, teens in O.C. in recent years learned to heat heroin on tin foil and inhale the fumes.

Inhaling is more socially acceptable than shooting up. It also is similar to the way that many teens are introduced into the world of opiates – by snorting pills crushed into powder.

National trends reflect what is happening in South County and beach cities. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the number of heroin users who inject the drug dropped during the middle of the last decade, while the number of those who inhale the drug rose.

But now with O.C. teens, Christensen says, injecting is on the rise.

•••

Why do some kids channel their rambunctious side into music, dance and sports while others turn to heroin?

That may be impossible to determine.

Deputy Christensen says, “These kids come from good families, good homes, play sports. These are not neglected kids.”

Some experts believe that pop culture plays a role in the rise of heroin among the affluent.

Many of us watched on national television the spirals of actress Lindsay Lohan and of the son of former Real Housewife Lauri Waring Peterson. Among other things, Josh Waring was charged with possession of heroin with intent to sell.

Yet some treated Josh Waring as a celebrity.

Darnold holds the entertainment media partly responsible.

“Because of Hollywood, because of ‘Jersey Shore,’ because of cable TV and the Internet,” Darnold says, “heroin is like a designer drug, like a Gucci drug.”

He says that when he sees a kid with a heroin problem, he’s still blown away. But the child is nonplussed, countering, “It’s no big deal.”

Michael Wood, a South County addiction specialist, suggests that the general rise in prescription drugs – particularly opioids – is partly responsible for the current heroin bloom.

Kids open medicine cabinets, get hold of their parents’ prescriptions…

•••

Darnold advises: “Know your kids. Know your kids’ friends. Know your kids friends’ parents.”

He adds it’s important for kids to have faith in something and explains that faith “gives kids a sense of security knowing there is some order to the universe.”

“Drugs aren’t the problem. Drugs have never been the problem,” he says.

Instead, he urges parents to dig deep and “find out why a child is taking drugs.”

But they needn’t do it alone. In March, students in Dana Point got together and created S.O.S., Save Our Students, sosdp.org.

Its mission: “To provide guidance, education, and assistance to teens and families with regards to substance abuse issues.”

And that’s real hope.

David Whiting’s column appears four days a week; dwhiting@ocregistger.com.