Get Active

Subscribe

Support Us URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n1315.a05.html

Newshawk: Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol

Votes: 0

Pubdate: Sat, 04 Dec 1999

Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)

Copyright: 1999 The Register-Guard

Contact:

Address: PO Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440-2188

Website: http://www.registerguard.com/

Author: Eric Mortenso

Note: This is a two part series, posted in two parts, published on Sat. and

Sun. and includes three sidebar articles, below, titled: ADDICTS 'LIVE' ON

EDGE OF DEATH'S DOOR, POLICE WAGE UPHILL BATTLE IN DRUG WAR, and HEROIN FACTS IN HEROIN'S GRIP



A FLOOD UPON THE LAND



Heroin's Escalating Toll On The Community Measured In Death, Crime And Younger Users



Sitting in the driver's seat of his white Dodge van, nosed in next to a chain-link fence and with a view of a weed-choked lot out the windshield, Jack Edward Harrison is getting well.



The fix is a dark, sticky chunk that smells like vinegar and looks as if it was cut off a Tootsie Roll. It's about as big as the tip of his little finger and it cost him $25.



He puts the chunk into his cooker, the sawed-off bottom of a beer can. With practiced hands, he draws water into a syringe and squirts it on the chunk, then flicks a lighter and waves the flame under the cooker.



A delivery truck idles nearby, its diesel rattling. Across the way, the noon traffic on Highway 99 glides by, people heading to wherever their lives take them. Harrison was one of them once. With a job. With a family. With a house.



With a life.



The chunk melts and bubbles, forming a glistening, dark brown puddle. Harrison draws the liquid into the syringe through a wad of cotton, hoping to strain out the worst of whatever it's been cut with. Sometimes the dealers increase the volume of what they have to sell by mixing it with starch or cocoa. Sometimes they use shoe polish or lye.



Harrison holds the syringe with the needle pointing up. He gently presses the plunger and taps the tube, like a nurse does - wouldn't want to inject an air bubble. He pushes up the right sleeve of his worn leather jacket. His tattooed forearm is swollen, scabbed and discolored.



A fly lands on the middle knuckle of his left hand as Harrison slips the thin needle into the top of his forearm, guiding it by sense of feel.



"I don't ever push it in real quick because it burns," he says. "My veins are so ate up from slammin'."



In a minute, he's done. Twenty-five dollars' worth of black tar heroin is on its way, making him well. He daubs the spot with DMSO solution to speed it into his bloodstream.



Heroin is a flood upon the land, a rising tide of black water that is sweeping away the Jack Harrisons of the world.



But the flood knows no bounds. Heroin isn't used just by hard junkies shooting up in dirty vans, but increasingly by clean-cut Eugene teen-agers who smoke it in their upper-middle class bedrooms while their mothers, as the parent of one overdose victim put it, are baking cookies in the kitchen.



It's a powerful, addictive force that lures users with its intensely pleasurable rush and then snares their bodies and souls, leaving jails, morgues, hospital emergency rooms and methadone clinics awash with human wreckage.



The toll in Lane County is immense, measured by crime, disease and a staggering jump in the number of overdose deaths.



Heroin's toll also is measured by the ruination it has visited upon Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood, where knots of dealers operate openly. Scobert Gardens has become a dirty place where addicts shoot up, toss their needles in the bushes and nod off.



The flood has stained an entire people. Because the drug comes from Mexico and the most visible dealers are often immigrants, law-abiding members of the Eugene-Springfield Latino community find themselves viewed with suspicion or even hit up for drugs.



That is the degradation that rides shotgun in Jack Harrison's van as he cusses the size and price of the fix he just injected and the Mexican dealer who sold it to him.



"It's not going to be that good because it's too small of a chunk for me," he says. "This here will just knock the edge off."



Harrison says he's been on a waiting list for a methadone program since January. In three days, he finally has an appointment at one of the two methadone clinics in Eugene that treat heroin addicts. But he has to stay well until then.



He has to.



Because you don't know what it's like to be dope sick and to go through heroin withdrawal. You don't know what it's like when the craving wakes and crawls up your spine. You don't know the cramps, heaves, runs and aches. Like the worst flu you've ever had, times 10.



He has to stay well.



Jack Harrison isn't anybody's poster boy for pity. He says he's used drugs since he was 14, and at 41 he has the quick, edgy manner of a guy working all the angles.



He has a record as long as his discolored arm. Four past drug charges and two convictions in Lane County alone, plus a theft charge and several traffic cases. Warrants waiting for him out of Coos County on five more drug charges. And that doesn't count charges in his native California, where he's wanted for violating parole.



But he says he wants to kick. This time for sure. He says he's sick of this life, scrambling every day for money to hold off the craving.



He starts the van. In the back is a sleeping bag, a loaf of bread, a bag of cookies, a pile of clothes, a folding chair and a television set. That's all he has now, that and the craving wrapped around his spine, sleeping now.



Heroin took everything else.



It took his self-respect long ago. Now it just takes his money.



Someday it may take his life.



Harrison guns the engine and merges with the traffic slipping north on 99. He guesses he'll have to fix again about 4 p.m.



Four hours to find some more.



Record Overdoses



Heroin killed more people in Lane County last year than bullets did. Thirty-three people died of overdoses, which was not simply a record but was eight times more than the county saw a decade ago.



The county is on pace to break the record again this year. Fifteen people overdosed and died in the first three months of 1999, and 29 by the end of September. Since the first of July, addicts have been dying at a rate of about one a week.



For those who want to kick the habit, there isn't much help.



Jack Harrison, for instance, had just begun his methadone treatment program this summer when he was arrested on the Coos County warrants. He pleaded guilty to four of the drug charges and is serving a sentence that will end Jan. 12. After that, he'll still face the California parole violation charge.



In the meantime, he hasn't received methadone in jail, Coos County officials said.



The two methadone clinics in Eugene treat nearly 300 addicts between them and have waiting lists three months long. One doctor estimates there are 1,000 more local addicts who could use the treatment. An undercover narcotics officer says that estimate is low.



One Eugene woman gave her 45-year-old son money to buy heroin while he was waiting this summer to get into a methadone program. "I didn't know what else to do," she says. "Are you going to let your kid go out there and hold somebody up to get the darn stuff?"



Bob Richards, who directs the Buckley House detoxification center in Eugene, says he could fill each of his 14 beds with a heroin addict going through withdrawals, but saves some beds for alcoholics. In the past four years, he's seen a 300 percent increase in the number of heroin addicts asking to check in.



The stereotypical image of burned-out heroin junkies still prevails in Lane County, but it's changing. In a bewildering development, drug counselors say increasing numbers of Eugene-Springfield teen-agers are smoking black tar heroin in the mistaken belief that they won't become addicted.



"I figured, you know, at least I'm not shooting up," says B.L., an 18-year-old boy who is trying to quit.



His 18-year-old girlfriend, Rebeca, says she began to feel dope sick - the onset of withdrawal - within 10 minutes of waking up each morning. Before checking herself into a detox center this fall, she was smoking a half-gram per day, ordering it every morning by calling her dealer and punching in the code he assigned her. He delivered by car.



Like many of the heroin users and former addicts interviewed for this story, Rebeca asked that she be identified only by her first name. Others are identified by their initials.



Rebeca says heroin's reputation as a killer is part of its attraction to young people. In addition, the emaciated "heroin chic" look of models caught her eye, and movies such as "Trainspotting" made heroin use look like a good time, she says.



"Because you're told it's the worst you can do," she says. "It sparks your interest."



"Madison Avenue hasn't done us any favors," Richards says.



Crime And Disease



Nor have the Mexican criminal organizations that now control the supply of heroin west of the Mississippi.



Their hold in Oregon is such that heroin in Eugene-Springfield costs half as much as it does in Houston, a much bigger city and much closer to the Mexican border. The local price is $50 a gram, while it sells for $100 to $120 per gram in the South and Midwest, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.



Wander down to Whiteaker, and you can get high on a half-gram for $25; less if you have the right connections.



Steve Lowry, the DEA's supervisory agent in Eugene, estimates that there's more heroin per capita here than in Portland.



"Even though it's a small community, we think it's a major market," Lowry says. "The prices are so low here compared to elsewhere that it has to be a major distribution area."



Nationally, heroin prices in 19 major U.S. cities dropped by an average of 50 percent between 1988 and 1995, according to a study published last spring by the American Journal of Public Health.



Eugene police say nearly every one of the prostitutes trolling west Sixth and Seventh avenues is a heroin addict. Sgt. Dennis Baker, supervisor of the department's property crime detectives, says 85 percent of the city's burglary and theft cases involve drugs, and heroin is the drug of choice in half of those.



Springfield police Detective John Umenhofer speculates that heroin addicts pull off 60 percent to 70 percent of bank robberies. FBI agent Phil Donegan tells of a Eugene drug addict and dealer who robbed banks and encouraged some of his customers to do the same so they'd have money to buy dope from him.



Between them, the group probably accounted for 20 to 30 bank robberies, Donegan says.



Eugene and Springfield aren't alone in this, of course. Statewide, heroin deaths jumped to a record 179 in 1998 and are headed for another record this year. In June 1998, a young couple frantic about their addiction hanged themselves from Portland's Steel Bridge in a gruesome public display of heroin's power.



The human cost is staggering. In addition to the deaths, heroin mows down users with a variety of health problems. Because many addicts shoot up, they are susceptible to skin lesions and abscesses from dirty needles or contaminated drugs.



Admissions and emergency room visits at Sacred Heart Medical Center illustrate the problem. In 1998, opiate overdose or abuse was listed as the principal diagnosis in 133 cases and as the secondary diagnosis in 303 more, according to hospital records. The type of opiate involved isn't detailed in the records, but hospital spokesman Dan Steinberg says 80 percent to 95 percent of the cases involve heroin.



Through July 1999, opiate overdose or abuse was listed as the principal diagnosis in 77 cases and the secondary diagnosis in 198 more, easily outpacing any other drug.



Drug counselors estimate that 80 percent to 90 percent of longtime needle users have hepatitis C, which can lead to liver cancer. Users who share needles are risking infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.



Latino Community Harmed



The social infection, especially to Eugene-Springfield's Latino community, is equally damaging. Because the heroin supply is controlled by Mexican groups and the most visible street dealers are Latino, the entire community suffers, observers say.



Joe Shaffer, chief of investigations for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Portland, says narcotics were involved in two-thirds of 2,100 arrests of "criminal aliens" that the agency made in Oregon in 1998-99. Those arrested included people from Cuba, Bosnia, Vietnam and Armenia, but 85 percent were from Mexico, Shaffer says.



"I know a lot of people like to make a racial issue out of this, but it's not," he says. "I don't care if you come from the moon: If you deal drugs in the United States, you should be removed.



"We know the backbone of agri-business in the state of Oregon is people from Mexico. But the fact remains that - like any other immigrant group that's come to the United States - there's a criminal element there that thought this was an easy way to make money."



But pointing out the facts of who controls the flow of drugs brings instant criticism from some community activists.



"There is an element in the city of Eugene that doesn't want the truth, plainly spoken," says Dennis Adams, whose back yard abuts the notorious Scobert Gardens, where junkies and dealers often gather.



But many in the community do acknowledge the problem. Centro LatinoAmericano, the social service and advocacy agency in the heart of Whiteaker, hosts the monthly meetings of a Lane County heroin task force that is planning a drug education campaign.



Individuals are doing their part, as well. From his modest, wood-paneled office in an old house across Adams Street from the Red Apple market, Pastor Luis Vergara of Centro de Fe ministries has seen more than his share of heroin deals.



Sometimes the dealers lean against the picket fence in front of his office. He asks them to move on. He asks them, especially the young Latino men, to stop selling drugs.



"Hey, guys, please, it doesn't look good in the community," he tells them. "You're giving us a bad rap. We can work for a living, we're known for that."



Not once has he had a problem with them. He says they go away peacefully because they're embarrassed. He's a minister, and they're ashamed of what they do.



But a lot of them don't have a green card, the documentation that allows them to work legally in the United States. For them, selling "chiva," as heroin is known on the street, is fast, easy money - up to $150 to $250 a day - and they need it.



Still, it hurts the Latino community, Vergara says. It paints everyone with the same brush.



"I get hit up a lot of times, `Do you got chiva? Are you a dealer?' " he says. "I tell them I'm a minister, I preach the gospel, I'm not into that.



"At first it was insulting; now I'm used to it. My parishioners also get hit up. We're used to it."



He acknowledges that the stereotype has roots in the truth. Most of the people selling drugs in the Whiteaker neighborhood are Latino, he says.



But the other side of the coin is this: 90 percent of the people buying drugs are Anglo. Observation and anecdotal evidence from police back him up on both counts. If there weren't a market, there wouldn't be drug sellers on the streets, he says.



"One of the things we see here is, people think it's a Mexican problem with drugs, but it's everybody's problem," Vergara says.



[First Sidebar]



ADDICTS 'LIVE' ON EDGE OF DEATH'S DOOR



By Eric Mortenson



Neither the fear of dying, nor a family's love, are able to stem the tragic fate of a rising number of users



A MAN who was looking for arrowheads found Marty Ray Knox instead. It was New Year's Day, and Knox was lying face down with his legs curled under him, as if he'd slumped over from a sitting or kneeling position.



He'd been lying in the brush off a Weyerhaeuser logging road in Springfield for at least a month, and his features were severely contorted from decomposition.



When police turned him over, they saw that his right shirt sleeve was rolled up to his elbow. In his right hand, he still clutched a belt that he'd cinched around his arm to make a vein stand out.



Marty Ray Knox was 35. He'd lost his hold on everything else, but he and the heroin he pumped into his arm held each other in a death grip.



Later, his relatives told police that Knox had said he would use heroin if he ever decided to kill himself. He told people he would just go to sleep and never wake up.



At the end, that's what happened. He went to sleep and became a statistic: They counted him as Lane County's first heroin overdose death of 1999.



Heroin users have been falling at a record pace ever since. Most of them used heroin in combination with other drugs or with large amounts of alcohol. They are counted as heroin overdoses because the other substances wouldn't have killed them, Chief Deputy Medical Examiner Frank Ratti said. Heroin put them over the threshold of death, Ratti said.



Medics See Dozens Of ODs



When injected, heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier in about 10 seconds and brings addicts the warm sense of well-being and pain relief that they crave.



"The first time I got high, I felt like I'd been kissed by God," a former addict says.



But it's deadly if they use too much of it, or if they use heroin more pure than what they're accustomed to. They nod off as the sedative effect takes hold and breathing slows. Large doses of the drug can paralyze the respiratory drive.



If no one is around who is willing or able to perform CPR or even call for an ambulance, death is likely.



In fact, Lane County's record number of heroin deaths could have been much higher. Eugene Fire Department medics alone administered Narcan, a drug that instantly revives overdose victims, more than 200 times in 1997 and 1998.



"When we save a heroin OD's life, they get upset with us because we ruined their high," fire Capt. Greg White said.



Firefighters say their work is hampered by street myths. Some people believe they can revive overdose victims by putting ice on them, much as people splash cold water on their faces to refresh themselves. In one case, Eugene medics found an OD victim covered with frozen steaks.



"If they OD, you need to get 911 on the line and get us moving," said White, who for many years worked at the department's old Station 2 in Eugene's Whiteaker area.



Leaving In A Panic



Heroin addiction is a dirty affair, and the degradation associated with overdose deaths cannot be overstated.



If a bad car wreck happens in front of witnesses, people tend to stick around and try to help out. Not so with heroin. In several cases this year, companions of overdose victims have cut and run.



Kenneth Lee Claasen, 53, did just that on Aug. 4, when he woke in a van parked next to Tiny Tavern in Whiteaker and realized that the man he'd injected heroin with the night before was dead in the back of the van.



"I didn't want to deal with the law - it was panic, you know," Claasen said in an interview at the Lane County Jail. "It was crazy."



It got crazier. Claasen started the van, drove to Delta Ponds near Goodpasture Island Road and left his friend lying on the bank.



"I put the mattress down that he died on and covered him with a blanket," Claasen said.



Afterward, Claasen arranged for a friend to anonymously call police and tell them where the body was. The plan backfired, however, and Claasen was charged with second-degree abuse of a corpse, along with a probation violation.



The man who overdosed, James Robert Chandler, 40, was from Springfield. Claasen hadn't known him long, just a few days. According to Claasen, they'd split a half-gram of heroin the night before and shot up in the van.



"I got up in the morning, and he was dead," Claasen said. "I couldn't believe it; there was no indication he was going to die, or I would have done something.



"Evidently, I wasn't thinking right or I would have called 911."



Claasen said he's seen a number of overdoses before and has seen people revived by splashing cold water on them or putting ice down their pants. He said he once woke up in a hospital bed after having been revived from an overdose.



He believes Chandler was using prescription medicine, and the combination with heroin killed him. Toxicology results showed Chandler had a large amount of heroin in his system and an unspecified amount of a medication. Ratti, the deputy medical examiner, said the prescription medicine probably wasn't a factor in the overdose.



For his part, Claasen went through two weeks of painful withdrawals while in jail and said in an interview this summer that he's ready to quit heroin for good.



Claasen doesn't pretend to be innocent. He has a long record of drug charges and other crimes and said he used methamphetamine for many years. He said he switched to heroin because he wanted to see what it was like to be strung out. He found out he liked heroin.



"It lets you do it day after day until you get strung out, and then your body tells you that you've got to have it," he said.



The going up isn't worth the coming down, Claasen said.



"It's not a funny thing," he said. "This is nothing but a death, a slow death."



The Deaths Rise



And when death visits, junkies scatter. This past February, police and medics responding to an anonymous 911 call found 29-year-old Mathew Scott Gripp dead in his apartment at 15th and Alder in Eugene. Gripp's phone was off the hook and his hair and pants were wet, as if someone had tried to revive him by splashing water on him.



In Gripp's wallet was a business card indicating that he'd once been enrolled in a drug treatment program. Police also found receipts from a pawn shop, indicating that he'd consigned a Black & Decker drill, a portable CD player and nine CDs within the previous two months.



When Karen G. Crandall died at a residence in the Veneta area in February, a friend packed her body into the passenger seat of his Chevy Blazer and drove her to his house before calling medics. Crandall was 46. Toxicology tests showed she had heroin, methamphetamine and Valium in her system, plus a blood-alcohol level of .21 percent.



Gerald Arnold Hanlon's fate was just as bleak. After he died of an overdose in a room at the Parkway Inn on Seventh Avenue last January, the man and woman he'd been partying with dragged him outside and left him lying in an alley in the rain.



Luckily, someone saw them and called Eugene police. A police dog tracked the dragged scent back to Room 109 and officers found the pair inside. They said Hanlon had announced that he'd scored some heroin, gone into the bathroom and shot up, according to a police report.



When he came out, he sat in a chair and fell asleep, they said. An hour later, they noticed he was unresponsive. Four to five hours after that, about 5 a.m., they decided to drag him outside.



The pair explained that they didn't call for an ambulance or police because they had "freaked out." Also, the man had a warrant out for his arrest on a drug possession charge.



Families' Sorrow



Hanlon was 33 and had been in and out of jail since he was 18. But he was working at an RV manufacturing plant and his family thought he'd quit using heroin, said his sister, Karla Hanlon of Westfir.



"What gets me is, if I dump my dog in the street, they can fine me for doing that," she said. "But there's no crime committed here; them dumping his body in the street is not a crime."



It's unclear from police reports why charges weren't pursued in Crandall's and Hanlon's deaths.



"I think it's just tragic this stuff happens and nobody cares," Karla Hanlon said. "This is somebody's son, brother and uncle - this is somebody. This was somebody's baby at some point."



Joyce Buchanan of Akron, Ohio, could testify to that. Her 40-year-old son, Xentri J. Coltan, died in Eugene on Jan. 11.



Born Jack Smarr - he'd legally changed his name for some reason - he'd roamed the West for several years, camping and taking advantage of homeless services in various towns. He'd served in the Air Force, been married, gotten divorced and at one time had a job with a company that installed medical scanning machines.



But he'd given it up, telling his mother that he enjoyed living on the edge and not knowing what was going to happen from one day to the next.



She worried about him because he drank heavily, and he wasn't a friendly drunk. "I honestly thought he would die in a barroom fight or something like that," Buchanan said.



He called her a couple of times a year, around Christmas for sure and each January on her birthday. She sent him money, telling him she would help him as long as he wasn't abusing drugs or drinking.



In his last phone call home he said, "I'll call you on your birthday, Mom."



On Jan. 11, Coltan hooked up with some friends, announced he wanted to buy some heroin to party with and cashed a $1,000 check from his mother. They rented a room at the Budget Lodge on Highway 99.



Coltan went into the bathroom, came out five minutes later and fell flat on his face, bloodying his nose. His companions rolled him onto his side, then noticed a few minutes later that Coltan had quit breathing. They splashed cold water on him and tried CPR before calling 911, according to a police report.



The medics couldn't revive him. Officers found $511 in his pants pocket; the last of the money his mom had sent him.



"It's a waste of a very good life," his mother said. "It's hard to understand the choices he made."



She sent a memorial plaque to the St. Vincent de Paul's Eugene Service Station on Highway 99, where her son had hung out, picked up odd jobs and found a place to wash his clothes and snag a meal. The plaque, with a picture of the two of them, hangs on the agency's wall.



"He always said he never found his niche in life," Buchanan said. "The ironic thing is, we had him cremated and sent back here to a mausoleum, and where he was placed is called a niche.



"I guess he found a niche."



[Second Sidebar]



POLICE WAGE UPHILL BATTLE IN DRUG WAR



By Eric Mortenson



Supply And Demand In Lane County Keep Street Dealers In Business



THE GRASPING TENTACLES of international drug traffickers reach far, all the way from Mexico to Fifth Avenue in Eugene, where a man in a baggy sweatshirt swings his bicycle into a U-turn and makes his way back to a younger man lounging at a bus stop.



Eye contact, a barely perceptible nod. Now the man on the bicycle slows and coasts, the bike's hub clicking rhythmically. It's a sleepy midsummer afternoon in the Whiteaker neighborhood.



From the back of a nondescript van parked nearby, hidden by deeply tinted windows, undercover police officer Doug Mozan watches the encounter unfold. He speaks softly into a hand-held radio.



"I've got the eye," he says, telling the other team members in the area that he can see the undercover officer on the bike. Two patrol cars and three other plainclothes officers lurk nearby.



The bicyclist eases to a stop. The long dark hair streaming from beneath his cap is a wig. The baggy sweatshirt hides a 9 mm pistol stuffed down the back of his pants. The headset he's wearing looks like it's plugged into a Walkman, but instead is connected to a police radio.



As in most buys, the conversation is limited. "Chiva?" The rough Spanish translation is "nanny goat," but everyone on the street knows it means black tar heroin.



Then the price. A half-gram goes for as little as $25 in Eugene. The street dealers carry heroin in their mouths, tied into small balloons or in sandwich bags that have been cut at the corner and heat-sealed with a match.



The buyer indicates by size or dollar figure how much he wants, and the dealers fish out the appropriate-size bindle from between cheek and gum. They often have more stuffed into their underwear, or tucked deep between their buttocks.



If the cops jump them, they swallow the balloons and retrieve them later by hacking them up or waiting for a bowel movement. That is, if the balloons don't leak. Without medical treatment, chunks of heroin dissolving in the stomach would mean certain death.



The deal is done, and the undercover officer pedals away. When he's safely out of sight, the rest of the team springs into action.



A patrol car careens around a corner and screeches to a halt. A uniformed officer pops out and sprints to the dealer, grabbing his throat to keep him from swallowing the balloons.



He's quickly cuffed, searched and hustled off to jail.



Mozan spins the van around a couple of blocks and establishes the eye on another pair of dealers.



"Usually, it's pretty easy pickings," he says.



The trap is reset.



Another undercover officer, a woman this time, saunters down the sidewalk toward another pair of dealers. She wears a floppy hat, baggy clothing and shades. She approaches the men with a broad smile and a practiced line.



"My girlfriend says you've got chiva," she says.



"A dull roar" approach



But the men arrested today on felony charges of possession and delivery of a controlled substance are out of jail the next day, released to make room for more violent offenders. Mozan, in the van, points out a man strolling across the Red Apple market's parking lot. He was arrested the previous day for selling heroin.



"It's sort of maintenance down here," Mozan says. "We keep things at a dull roar."



That they do. In 1998, Eugene police made 475 arrests for heroin sales or possession, far more than for any other drug. Through July 1999, they'd made 254 heroin arrests, according to department records.



Many dealers were taken down by the department's Rapid Deployment Unit, which is assigned to chase after street crimes such as prostitution and drug sales.



"We try to manage it," says Sgt. Larry Blackwell, the unit's supervisor. "I don't think we'll ever end it."



And that's frankly because Oregon's criminal justice system is geared to dealing first with what are considered more serious crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and child abuse. In Lane County, minor drug cases are typically settled by negotiation, rolled up in plea agreements that allow a defendant to plead guilty to one charge while three others are dismissed, for example.



The practice simply reflects the reality of limited jail and prison beds and the need to devote resources to violent crime, says Steven Skelton, chief deputy in the Lane County district attorney's office.



"Right now, the criminal justice system has pretty much thrown up the white flag when it comes to drug cases," Skelton says.



There is little motivation to prosecute simple drug possession or dealing cases, he says. The standard sentence for possession of less than 5 grams of heroin, for example, is 30 days in the county jail. But the jail is so pressed for bed space that inmates serving drug sentences often are released after a couple of days.



"It's not a deterrent," Skelton says. "They don't believe they'll get caught. And if they do get caught, 30 days in jail with food and a warm bed is not too bad."



Police and prosecutors pursue cases against large-scale drug traffickers, Skelton says, but street-level dealers and users are low on the priority list. And in a liberal city such as Eugene, with its history of tolerating casual drug use, there is a sizable segment of the population that has no problem with that, he says.



Eugene police also acknowledge that the street dealers are the lowliest foot soldiers of the drug traffickers who keep Lane County supplied with heroin and who suck millions of dollars out of the area.



Mexican Connection



At the top are at least three Mexican organizations with links to international narcotics cartels, according to police and court records.



The Mexican groups have taken advantage of a shift in American drug tastes. Between 1985 and 1996, the number of cocaine users in the United States dropped by 70 percent, according to a report this year by the U.S. State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.



The demand for heroin hasn't yet risen proportionally, but it's increasing rapidly and "is a warning sign we ignore at our peril," according to the report.



Mexican crime groups that previously distributed cocaine for Colombian cartels have already noticed, says Steve Lowry, supervisor of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration office in Eugene.



Those organizations have split off from the Colombians and now produce, smuggle and distribute methamphetamine and heroin on their own, Lowry says.



Mexico is the Western Hemisphere's second largest cultivator, behind Colombia, of the opium poppies used to make heroin. Mexico supplies most of the heroin flowing to states west of the Mississippi, according to the State Department report.



The largest local seizure that police recall was a pound and a half, although in September an arrested dealer seeking to strike a bargain with police said he could arrange a 4-kilo buy - nearly 9 pounds.



A pound of heroin is the equivalent of 448 grams; sold at a minimum local price of $50 a gram, it would be worth at least $22,400.



In Oregon, drug agents say heroin arrives in 25-gram "pieces," about the size of a golf ball. Heroin is hidden in wheel wells, door panels or elsewhere in the car bodies of a nearly constant stream of traffic headed up Interstate 5 and Highway 97, the prime north-south routes connecting Oregon to California and Mexico.



Brought into Oregon amid the stream of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants and migrant workers, heroin is typically divided up and sold by groups of relatives and friends, police say.



Much of the heroin trade in Eugene and Springfield, for example, is controlled by members of what police call the Davila crime family, an extended network of brothers, uncles, cousins and in-laws from the same village in Mexico.



Family members also operate in Salem and in Long Beach, Wash., according to a search warrant affidavit filed in August by Eugene police Detective Kevin McCormick of the Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team, or INET.



Going After Big Dealers



It is to INET and the federal DEA agents in Eugene that the deeper digging falls. INET in particular is turning its resources to heroin cases after being tied up for years in a largely successful battle to knock out methamphetamine labs.



The secretive police squads have had some successes against heroin dealers, but they're up against clever, sophisticated crooks.



The language barrier hampers investigations from the start because few officers are fluent in Spanish and most are white. Dealers also protect themselves by obtaining multiple driver's licenses and identification cards in different names. They use numerous cars, switching registrations to throw cops off the track.



Midlevel dealers, a step up from the street sellers who plague Whiteaker, make deliveries by car, traveling from customer to customer. They use pagers and cellular phones; addicts who call the dealer's pager punch in an assigned code number to identify themselves. The dealer calls them back and names a meeting place, sometimes using code for that, too.



An 18-year-old Eugene girl who smoked a half-gram per day before quitting this fall says she and her dealer used a simple code in which "Meet me at the P," meant "park" and "S" meant "Safeway."



To protect their identities, dealers often have one of their addict customers purchase pager and cell phone services in exchange for money or heroin.



Dealers rent houses or apartments and then move out, allowing a friend or relative to use the residence. The arrangement makes it difficult for police to track who lives where and gives the group a variety of residences where they can hide drugs and conduct business.



Cash from drug sales is laundered by shipping it to Mexico by wire transfer, available for a no-questions-asked fee at businesses such as check cashing outlets. A "MoneyGram" form, in Spanish, offers al instante transfer of funds and immediata availability at the receiving end.



McCormick, the INET detective, speculates that heroin dealers earn "multiple millions" in Lane County alone.



Dealers wire money using different names or have other people do it for them. McCormick tells of a dealer who wired $9,000 to three different places in Mexico in one day, using a different name each time.



The practice allowed him to stay below the radar of currency reporting laws; people conducting transactions of $10,000 must fill out a government form.



Police Tricks Of The Trade



The machinations accomplish two things: They make it harder for police to trace the dealers, and they help dealers protect their assets from drug forfeiture laws. If a dealer is caught with drugs in a car registered to someone else, the registered owner can claim he didn't know about the drugs and maintain possession of the car for its real owner - the dealer.



But police have a few tricks of their own. In addition to wearing wigs and wires, they're not above putting dummy video cameras on utility poles to make street dealers and addicts think an area is under surveillance.



Meanwhile, officers hiding in ordinary-looking vehicles videotape and photograph dealers for real. Several years ago, police and a building owner cooperated to videotape dozens of heroin sales in the Whiteaker area by placing a camera in a window overlooking an alley.



Undercover officers making buys on the street have to dress the part of addicts, of course, but sometimes suspicious dealers want to see "tracks," the characteristic bruising of veins collapsed by needle use.



To accommodate them, officers rub a pencil eraser on their arms. Within a couple of days, they have realistic looking tracks from the bruising.



Police also make extensive use of informants, sometimes using the threat of prosecution to gain cooperation.



But heroin investigations aren't without danger. Earlier this summer, members of one of the Mexican organizations met in Salem and allegedly placed a $50,000 price on McCormick's head because he had arrested members in the past and disrupted their operations.



Police acknowledge that the threat could have been wild talk; McCormick declined to discuss it. But the department took it seriously enough to post a guard at McCormick's home and to issue a public description of a car the drug dealers were thought to be using.



So far, the Mexican organizations have avoided the turf wars that mark the drug trade in other cities. Police say they apparently tolerate each other in Eugene and Springfield because there is plenty of business to go around.



In September, even a recently arrived group of Honduran dealers was allowed to operate freely in an alley outside Hollywood Video on West Seventh Avenue.



"It's just a matter of time before people are killed around here, I think," says Blackwell of the Rapid Deployment Unit. "We're just a step behind the other communities."



[Third Sidebar]



HEROIN FACTS



The opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the only poppy species that produces opium. It is the source of all opiate drugs, including heroin, codeine and morphine. The name is a combination of Greek and Latin, and translates to "the poppy that induces sleep." Farmers collect opium by making a series of shallow cuts on the poppy seed pod, then scraping off the milky opium gum that seeps from the cuts. The gum turns from white to brown as it dries.



People have smoked opium for centuries. Morphine was isolated from opium in 1803, and heroin was synthesized from morphine in 1874. The Bayer Chemical Co. of Germany marketed heroin in 1898 as a cough suppressant and pain reliever. The name came from the German word "heroisch," meaning large, powerful or heroic.



Heroin was widely used in medicines by the late 19th century. An 1888 survey in Boston showed that of 10,000 pharmacy prescriptions, 78 percent contained opiates. Addiction had become such a problem in the United States by 1920 that the American Medical Association recommended prohibiting heroin's manufacture and sale. Heroin production was outlawed in 1924.



In Oregon, black tar heroin is referred to by its Spanish name, "chiva." Elsewhere, heroin is called such things as "smack," "horse," "H," "junk" or "skag." Heroin produced in southeast or central Asia is sometimes called "China white."



Heroin can be smoked, snorted or injected. Smoking it, popular among younger users, is sometimes referred to as "chasing the dragon." Locally, users snort tar heroin by liquefying it and squirting it up their noses with a broken-tipped syringe. They call it "nose drops." Users who inject either "mainline" by shooting directly into a vein, "skin pop" by injecting just under the skin surface, or "muscle it" by shooting directly into a muscle. Injecting is generically referred to as "slamming."



Some of our everyday expressions come from heroin addicts going through withdrawal. "Kick the habit" refers to the muscle spasms addicts sometimes suffer; they literally "kick" as their leg muscles convulse. "Cold turkey" comes from the chills and goose bumps they endure.



The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that there are 500,000 to 700,000 heroin addicts in the United States and that they spend an average of $60 a day on the drug. The total annual cost is estimated at $11 billion to $15 billion.



About 60 percent of that money comes from prostitution, drug sales, welfare payments and work. The rest comes from crimes such as burglary and shoplifting. Because stolen merchandise is sold on the street for about 25 percent of its value, addicts must steal about $16 billion to $24 billion per year to make up the difference.



Mexico supplies most of the heroin flowing to states west of the Mississippi, and Colombia controls the heroin tap to the Eastern states. Yet neither is among the world's top opium producers. That dubious honor falls to Myanmar and Afghanistan, which between them cultivate 79 percent of the opium poppies and produce 90 percent of the opium gum, according to a U.S. State Department report.

MAP posted-by: Richard Lake



