Pubdate: Sun, 25 Mar 2007
Source: Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Copyright: 2007 Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Contact:  http://www.telegram.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/509
Note: Rarely prints LTEs from outside circulation area - requires 
'Letter to the Editor' in subject
Author: Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?132 (Heroin Overdose)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

OXYCOTIN IS THE GATEWAY DRUG TO HEROIN ADDICTION SOUTH OF BOSTON

BROCKTON, Mass.-- A growing number of young adults experimenting with 
the powerful painkiller OxyContin are getting hooked on heroin, 
triggering a spike in drug overdoses, broken lives and pressure on 
emergency services south of Boston.

"It is alarming," Abington Police Chief David Majenski told The 
Enterprise newspaper. "We have made a tremendous amount of heroin 
arrests and it is not slowing down at all."

The link between OxyContin abuse by teens and addiction to heroin is 
tenacious. Several recovering addicts said they got "high" on 
OxyContin while in high school, got hooked, then turned to heroin 
when buying the painkiller on the street got too expensive, the 
newspaper reported Sunday.

At least 2,682 people were treated in emergency rooms for 
opioid-related abuse, dependency or poisoning between 2003 and 2005 
in the region, according to the Massachusetts Division of Health Care 
Finance and Policy.

An examination of death certificates filed in 28 communities shows 
that 74 people have died of opiate-related overdoses, including 
heroin, between Jan. 1, 2004 and Aug. 31, 2006, the newspaper said, 
citing its examination of death certificates filed in 28 local communities.

Those numbers translate to devastating tragedies to relatives of the victims.

"These people are not dirt bags," said Hanover's Theresa Cairo, whose 
daughter, Jill, died of an overdose at age 24. "They are intelligent, 
beautiful people. It is someone who looks like your daughter. It is 
someone who could be your daughter."

The problem adds a burden to taxpayers and saps resources from 
emergency services.

In Whitman, fire department emergency medical technicians responded 
to 20 overdoses from September to November. One person died.

The narcotic-antidote Narcan was administered in nearly half of the 
overdose calls attended to by fire department's emergency medical 
staff last year in Easton, fire chief Thomas F. Stone said.

As heroin - once considered as a problem of the urban streets - moves 
up and out, desperate families are turning to the courts, pleading 
with judges to order the arrest and committal of their children to 
treatment programs for up to 30 days.

The problem "has no psychological profile, it has no socio-economic 
profile," said Dr. Michael L. Dern, a Brockton physician who has 
treated young heroin addicts.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman