SNOHOMISH – The gangly teenager fired off a text, slipped out of his classroom and wandered about 50 feet from the school’s front door into the parking lot.
There, in broad daylight, the 18-year-old traded a small baggie of heroin for cash before returning to class, according to Snohomish police.
His customer met him in the AIM High School parking lot March 24. Inside the car, the buyer’s girlfriend waited with a 3-month-old baby.
Snohomish police said Thursday they have arrested 11 people over the past month whom they suspect are involved in the local heroin trade. They also have seized nearly 200 grams of heroin, cash and three cars, including one with law enforcement memorial license plates. Detectives say it is all part of an alarming development: More and more young people are getting hooked on heroin and selling it to pay for their own habits.
Increased heroin use is a reality well beyond Snohomish, said Dr. John Patz, who treats addicts through the Behavioral Health Unit at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett.
Its growing prevalence today can be attributed to a rise of prescription drug abuse that began in the 1990s. That’s when many young people began using OxyContin, a powerful synthetic opiate, as a recreational drug.
Many users moved on to heroin, which was cheaper and more accessible.
Last summer, the manufacturers of OxyContin changed the formula to make it more difficult to be burned and smoked for a quick high.
That led to still more addicts turning to heroin as a substitute.
“It has been since that time we have seen a dramatic upsurge in the use of heroin,” Patz said.
In the 14-bed detox unit where he works, it used to be that only a small percentage of opiate users were addicted to heroin “Today, the vast majority of patients using opiates on that unit are using heroin,” he said.
Many people who start out smoking heroin quickly progress to injecting it.
National statistics aren’t promising for heroin addicts.
The best estimate is about 20 percent of people addicted to opiates can kick the habit. The life expectancy of those who can’t typically is shortened by a third.
“I think we are going to lose a significant portion of this generation,” Patz said. “Hopefully newer medications can improve abstinence rates when combined with traditional recovery work.”
Over the past two years, accidental drug overdose surpassed car accidents and gunshot wounds as the leading cause of accidental death in Snohomish County. Local fire departments also are reporting seeing more heroin overdoses.
Snohomish Police Chief John Turner hopes aggressive enforcement in his town of roughly 9,200 will keep young people from ever being tempted to try heroin.
He knows that the notoriety of making drug arrests in a small town could give it a reputation of being some kind of heroin haven. Something similar happened in Granite Falls a few years back when a magazine article portrayed it as a methamphetamine capital.
“I worry about that, but I also know the issue is serious enough where you don’t want to hide it under the rug,” Turner said.
It’s a problem hiding in plain sight. Last month, officers watched as a confidential informant bought a gram of heroin from a man, 21, who was within view of the Snohomish Police Station. A strip search of another suspected drug dealer turned up 18 grams of heroin hidden in his underwear.
Police believe that by attacking the heroin problem they also can reduce burglaries, thefts and car break-ins, property crimes often committed to pay for drugs.
So from their cramped office, detectives Dave Fontenot and Kendra Conley have been keeping track of suspected heroin dealers on a whiteboard that chronicles each buy made by confidential informants. Last month, there were 10 headshots of suspected dealers taped to the shiny board. Some of the photos were mugshots from previous bookings; a few were from driver’s licenses.
All were 18 to 25 years old. There were eight men and two women. Most were homegrown kids who once attended elementary schools in Snohomish.
One photo on the white board, snapped about a year before for a driver’s license, showed a vibrant-looking young woman with stylish hair and a broad smile of straight white teeth. It barely resembled the emaciated figure police arrested in March.
The transformation saddens Conley who said it will take a lot more than arresting dealers to tackle the heroin upsurge.
“It’s not just a police problem,” she said. “It’s not just a school problem. It’s an entire community problem.”
Police also have been working with local schools and volunteers to bolster efforts to prevent young people from using drugs.
Snohomish School District Superintendent Bill Mester said a 12-member panel is trying to bring the issue into the open by talking with parents. It also is working on a mentorship program where adults will meet with students deemed at risk of using alcohol or taking drugs.
A similar grass-roots effort is being made in Stanwood, another small town in Snohomish County where officials have recognized an increase in heroin use among young people. In October, about 150 people crowded into Stanwood Middle School to talk about the drug that many once thought only affected big cities.
“It scares me to death,” Mester said, adding that two of the people recently arrested in Snohomish are students enrolled in an after-school program to catch up on credits.
Fontenot knows that the recent string of arrests won’t necessarily stop the use of heroin in the community where he works.
He hopes it slows it down.
And he’ll count victories where he can find them.
One recent notch in the win column was an intercepted text from a suspected drug deal, he said.
The message was something to the effect: “I can’t deal in Snohomish.”
“That made us feel very good,” he said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.
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