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- <text id=90TT0445>
- <title>
- Feb. 19, 1990: Heroin Comes Back
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Feb. 19, 1990 Starting Over
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 63
- Heroin Comes Back
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> About the only thing crack addicts seem to fear is the
- severe depression that follows a cocaine-induced high. After
- repeated use of the drug, the usual cure--more crack--stops
- working. Now, drug experts warn, an increasing number of
- cocaine abusers are using heroin to ease the horror of the
- postcrack low.
- </p>
- <p> Though there are no reliable statistics, some Government
- officials estimate that the number of heroin users may be as
- high as 750,000. A survey by the Government's Drug Abuse
- Warning Network found that in 27 cities, deaths linked to
- heroin-and-cocaine use had tripled to 627 between 1985 and
- 1989.
- </p>
- <p> That number could soon soar even higher. In the past, street
- heroin was 6% to 10% pure and an addict had to take it
- intravenously to get high. Many cocaine users are unwilling to
- break through the "needle barrier" and inject themselves, in
- part out of fear of being infected with AIDS from a shared
- needle. But for the past several years, less diluted heroin
- from Southeast Asia that can be smoked has been widely
- available on the streets of New York, Boston and other cities.
- At $10 a 0.05-gram bag, the so-called China White is cheap
- enough to be within reach of the young and the poor.
- </p>
- <p> The flood of China White is being spurred by political chaos
- and record opium crops in Burma, the main source of raw
- material for heroin refineries of Southeast Asia's Golden
- Triangle. "If crack didn't have the attention of the media,"
- says Robert Stutman, head of the Drug Enforcement
- Administration's New York field office, "heroin would have been
- on the front pages of every newspaper in America."
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-