The war on drugs faces new threat: heroin

He found the heroin pipe near the children’s swingset.

On his daily walk with his dog through downtown Bigfork, a local man recently found a what he thought might be a drug pipe. He turned it in to law enforcement, and tests confirmed the man’s suspicions: heroin.

While methamphetamine abuse has stabilized or dropped, heroin has become some addicts’ drug of choice — and it’s been found in Bigfork.

The effects of heroin use are rippling through local communities. Law enforcement, health-care and treatment programs are now having to deal with a drug that has found its way to Northwest Montana from the West Coast, Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said.

A law-enforcement official who works undercover and remained anonymous for this article said the Montana Meth Project has largely “knocked out” methamphetamine use, but in the last seven years prescription drug abuse has “shot through the roof.” Painkiller opiates such as Lortab, Oxycontin and Oxycodone are basically “prescription heroin” and when they’re not available, drug abusers turn to heroin, he said.

This law enforcement agent said local hospitals are constantly having to deal with heroin or prescription drug overdoses.

And when the heroin addicts can’t get their fix, they often head to a small clinic in Kalispell where they can get a prescribed shot of methadone. This prescription drug eases the overwhelming nausea and physical withdrawals caused by heroin addiction.

Right around 8 a.m. the addicts start showing up at the clinic.

Some addicts arrive in nice cars, something that maybe a suburban housewife would drive. Other cars are what you might imagine a drug addict driving; busted-up rigs with out-of-county plates.

“It’s a who’s who of the heroin world,” the agent said. “You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a heroin dealer.”

Just next door to the clinic is a high-end pediatric dentist. The comparison between the heroin addicts and the mothers bringing their children to the dentist is striking. It’s likely that the dentist’s clients have no idea what’s going on next door.

From a law-enforcement standpoint, heroin addicts are much easier to deal with than, say, a meth head. Heroin addicts, sometimes called “sleepies,” are generally not violent but will steal anything when they run out of money to buy drugs, the official said.

“They will literally fall asleep, no matter where they’re at — driving, holding a kid … they will literally fall over,” he said.

Methadone treatment is an addict’s only alternative to suffering through the vicious flu-like symptoms of heroin withdrawal. “The body ‘demands’ it whether you want to be strong in the mind or not,” the official said. “You’re fighting it on two fronts.”

Heroin doesn’t have to be injected. It can be smoked or snorted. Injected heroin brings with it the increased risk of HIV or hepatitis when needles are shared.

Financial incentives are one reason heroin use is growing. “Where there’s a demand there will always be a supply,” Sheriff Curry said. “There’s money to be made.”

The price of a heroin “point,” or one-tenth of a gram, is about $50, and users might consume one to three of those a day, one law enforcement official said.

Law enforcement did a good job of controlling the ingredients made to make methamphetamine, so that drug has declined in use, Curry said. With ingredients harder to obtain to manufacture meth, that drug — along with what Curry called the “white drugs” of cocaine and heroin— now come into the United States mainly from Mexico. But it doesn’t matter to an addicted person whether it’s meth, heroin or prescription drugs they abuse, Curry said. “They are just plain chemically dependent,” he said. “They’ll abuse any kind of drug. If they can’t get meth, they’ll use whatever they can.”

“Prescription drugs are our biggest problem,” Curry said. “And we probably do the poorest job investigating those.” That’s because it’s difficult to get a good idea of how many drug overdoses take place, since health-care officials don’t often release that information unless there are related law-enforcement issues when an overdosed patient comes into the hospital. Curry said withdrawal from an opiate like heroin, or prescription drugs Oxycodone or Oxycontin, can be fatal. People addicted to opiate prescription drugs will “doctor shop” their illnesses until they find a physician who will write a prescription. Curry doesn’t make a large distinction between heroin users and prescription drug abusers. “People will do prescription drugs because they think it’s OK, but it’s the same thing when you get right down to it,” Curry said.

Local law enforcement officials try to stifle the chain of supply, and that’s why small busts might not make the news. “You try to work your way up into where you’re affecting more of the supply,” Curry said. “We’re not in the treatment business. We’re in the supply-reduction business. Treatment is equally important, but it’s not what we do.”

As law enforcement starts to put the hurt on heroin use, that drug’s cost may eventually go back up. And so goes the continuing cycle of how a community battles drug abuse.

“If it’s available in the U.S., it’s available here,” Curry said. “None of the drugs ever completely go away.”

The effects of drug abuse trickle into many other areas of society. Property crimes rise in proportion to the rates of drug use, Curry said. And, he added, “If you’re an addict it’s very difficult to keep a job.”

Curry keeps heroin in perspective. “There are worse drugs than heroin,” Curry said, including a newer one called “bath salts.” Bath salts is a “designer drug” which has effects similar to amphetamine and cocaine. The name derives from instances in which the drugs were being sold under the guise of being bath salts.

Use of bath salts in the United States is thought to have increased significantlyin the early part of this decade as a result of widespread availability. The drug’s effects are worse than those of heroin or meth.

“It makes people much more paranoid and aggressive” than methamphetamine, Curry said.  

One reason you don’t hear much about drug cases involving heroin is that local law enforcement is basically on a “gag order” to discuss them while federal officials are investigating, Curry said. It’s important for local law enforcement to maintain this code of silence so that federal agents can compile a strong case against dealers and users. “Federal time is real time,” Curry said. “If you get federal time you may actually see the inside of a jail.”