Heroin in paradise; drug use in SLO County

When Christa Holt last used heroin in March, she was on a three-month binge. Still, she had to spin her arm in circles to pump hard-to-find veins with blood so that she could inject the drug.

The 27-year-old Arroyo Grande resident was at her nadir.

She had begun using methamphetamine at age 11. By her early 20s, she had become addicted to prescription pills. She turned to heroin this year after her younger brother, Andrew, died of a heroin overdose in 2011.

I was just curious what was so hard-core that killed my brother. Whats so awesome about this that my brother could not stop, she explained.

Holt and her 24-year-old brother tragically exemplify the growing presence of heroin in San Luis Obispo County.

Law enforcement officials and treatment specialists say the drug is relatively cheap, readily available and an easy replacement for widely abused opiate-based prescription drugs that are harder to find and less potent.

Black tar heroin, much of it from Mexico, is now nearly as ubiquitous as meth in the county, police officials say. (In recent years, Mexico has been second only to Afghanistan in heroin poppy cultivation, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the drug is being smuggled across the border.)

Its important that the public know that this is not an issue that only happens in Detroit or Los Angeles and can happen here, said Brian Beetham, a sergeant with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs Office who heads the countys 14-member narcotics unit.

For the first six months of this year, the Sheriffs Office reported 44 cases that involved the seizure of heroin. That compares to 36 in all of 2011 and 22 the year before.

Over a longer period, the number of people in the countys drug treatment program using heroin as their primary drug has more than quadrupled since 2006, growing from 2.1 percent to 8.9 percent in 2011-12. Furthermore, Beethams team is increasingly coming across heroin when deputies investigate other drug activity. And they are receiving a lot more complaints about heroin use.

The rest is here:
Heroin in paradise; drug use in SLO County