As ‘pill mills’ die, heroin is resurrected

MIAMI — Kevin Foley stood before a judge in Broward County’s drug court — fellow abusers sitting behind him in the benches — talking about the fitful life of a recovering addict, the random drug tests, the counseling and what he hoped was his next, clean chapter.

Foley, 21, has been hooked on heroin for nearly two years. Before that, he was popping oxycodone and other prescription pills snapped up as Florida became a bustling marketplace of illegal pill mills.

He turned to heroin after his drug of choice became too expensive. “I was chasing the next high,” says Foley, who landed in drug court after a heroin possession arrest in December. “I wanted to try it all.” Narcotic comeback

Heroin is inching back in Florida, the unintended consequence of the state’s epic war on prescription pills. Now, with Florida officials successfully slowing the supplies, shutting down the pill mills that masqueraded as pain centers and arresting thousands of addicts and even doctors, heroin has become a popular substitute.

In January, a group of researchers from across the country met in New Mexico at the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Community Epidemiology Work Group conference and swapped frighteningly similar stories about the increased use of heroin. The MiamiFort Lauderdale area was named one of the regions facing the heroin trend.

“The major drug headline of 2012 was the emergence of heroin both in urban centers and small cities and towns,” said epidemiologist and drug expert Jim Hall of Nova Southeastern University’s Center for Applied Research on Substance Abuse and Health Disparities, who attended the conference. “Young adults, 18 to 30, white, prescription opioid addicts are making the transition to heroin.”

While the raw numbers remain small across Florida and police have seen little street activity, experts already are mounting a campaign to slow the trend, from public education about the risks of heroin and needle injection to law enforcement presentations and spreading the word about a Good Samaritan law designed to stop drug overdoses.

“This is a public health issue. In some ways, the scale of the prescription pill problem took us all by surprise,” said Pat Castillo, vice president of the United Way of Broward County Commission on Substance Abuse. “We had been promoting the prescription drug moni- toring system for nine years; the (pill) problem happened in the blink of an eye. We are very concerned with this issue of heroin.”

From July 2010 to June 2011, there were 45 heroin-related deaths statewide, according to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission. That number jumped to 77 heroin-related deaths from July 2011 to June 2012.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement also reports a slight increase in heroin-related charges: In the first three months of 2013, heroinrelated charges totaled 948. In the same threemonth period last year, that number was 772.

And in what may be the strongest marker, addiction treatment numbers are up in Florida. In 2012, addiction treatment centers in Broward County — just a few years ago considered the center of the pill mill problem — saw an 87 percent spike in admissions among addicts using heroin as their drug of choice, jumping from 169 to 316, according to the Florida Department of Children & Families. In Miami-Dade, the admissions jumped from 227 to 308 in the first half of 2012.

“It’s not on a wide scale — yet,” said Hall, who tracks drug trends and statistics for community organizations in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. “For these opioid addicts, it’s about a euphoria but more importantly, the heroin keeps them from going into withdrawal, or as they would say, from getting sick. Any port will do in the storm of withdrawal.”

Foley, of Coral Springs, began his drug odyssey with marijuana. He was 14, and before his next birthday, he had graduated to taking Xanax and Ecstasy. By the time he was 17, a junior in high school, he was approached by a dealer offering “blues” — oxy- codone — at two for $20. Much of his habit was paid for with the money he earned at a part-time job. ‘It escalated’

“When I finally took a half of a 30 milligram pill, I threw up a couple minutes later. Then I started to feel warm all over, it was the best feeling I had ever had,” he said. “I needed to get that feeling again. It escalated from popping pills to smoking to snorting to injecting.”

Two years ago, Foley and a buddy met with a pill dealer who was touting a cheaper high: heroin.

“It cost less, I didn’t have the hassle of trying to find the pills and the high lasted longer. I started doing it every day.”

He was arrested in December, charged with possession of heroin and drug paraphernalia and the case was referred to drug court.

Almost weekly, Bro- ward assistant public defender Rudy Morel watches as his clients stand before Broward Circuit Judge Michele Towbin Singer.

“It used to be you rarely see heroin and now it’s on the docket every day or every other day,” says Morel who also holds a medical degree.

Although he says the caseload has remained about level in the past year, he has seen a shift to heroin use in that time, with “many of those on heroin who were first on prescription pills.”

Singer, who presides over the county drug court, says the defendants coming before her frequently offer similar stories about their paths to heroin. They started with an injury, began taking prescription pills, then abused prescription pills — sniffing, snorting, then eventually injecting.

“Once they are at the point of injecting, it doesn’t take much to cross over to heroin,” she said.