While Utah continues to grapple with a seemingly uncontrollable meth problem, drug enforcement agents are seeing speed use level off and a new drug rise on the black marketplace.
"Meth is still the biggest. But heroin is the fastest growing," DEA resident agent in charge Don Mendrala said.And as heroin becomes increasingly popular, an especially hot batch of "Mexican Black Tar" has hit the streets. Salt Lake police detective Dwayne Baird attributes an overdose last week to the potent batch, and the same bad junk is suspected in a Tuesday afternoon death of a man whose body was found in a stolen car in a store parking lot.
As use of Mexican Black Tar heroin grows in Utah, rumors of a more potent form called "China White" have surfaced near the Washington-Idaho border.
"Normally drugs don't work their way down from the north, but you could make the logical leap that if it's there it's here," Mendrala said.
Police Chief Vertie Brown of Clarkston, Wash., said his narcotics detectives have not seen much China White but have heard rumors that larger quantities are en route.
"The intelligence that we've been getting says it is coming. . . . We just don't know where it's coming from," Brown said.
China White, which is distributed from Asia, usually comes from the port cities of San Francisco or New York, but Lt. Kitt Crenshaw of the San Francisco narcotics unit says his department has seen little China White since they busted a Nigerian drug ring about a year and a half ago.
Brown said it's possible that China White is making its way from the East Coast, where it is more common.
China White causes concern because it is historically a more pure form and leads to more overdoses, said Crenshaw, whose city has the second highest heroin overdose rate in America.
But worries over China White may prove moot as Black Tar from Mexico and South America becomes increasingly pure.
DEA statistics show that during the '80s the purity of street heroin was between 1 percent and 10 percent. Now street heroin is more than 40 percent pure.
While Mendrala says street heroin in Utah probably doesn't reach the 40 percent average, he can attest to a purity increase. Mendrala blames a "direct pipeline" into Salt Lake City for the increase and coinciding price drops following a flooded market.
In the past, heroin shipments would make stops in San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other places along the freeway corridor leading to Salt Lake City. At each stop dealers would take their cut and add impurities, making the drug less and less potent along the trail. And that heroin wouldn't stop in Utah, Mendrala said, it would continue farther north to a bigger city like Chicago.
"Now all the stopping points have gone away, producing a general increase in the purity. . . . We are seeing heroin specifically destined for Salt Lake City, and that's a bad thing for us," Mendrala said.
As purity has risen the number of heroin overdoses has followed suit. Nationally, heroin-related emergency room visits more than doubled between 1990 and 1997.
Besides the apparent increase in purity, DEA agents are finding the drug has become less stigmatized as an "urban" problem. Snorting heroin has gained a trendy appeal, Mendrala said, and snorting allows users to avoid the social typecasts of injection and the fear of acquiring syringe-borne diseases like AIDS and hepatitis. Moreover, on a national scale teenagers have taken to the drug more readily as the average age for a first-time user has dipped from 27.4 in 1988 to 17.6 in 1997. That has led to younger addicts and a greater heroin culture.
"It becomes a staple of society," Mendrala said. "You've got to take it every day."
The necessity drives previously healthy people to crimes such as prostitution, burglary and forgery as physical addiction outstrips the user's monetary means, Mendrala said.
Heroin, known on the street as chieva or black, is a popular narcotic because it produces an intense euphoria, followed by a relaxed, mellow state that can last three to four hours. Prolonged use causes the body's endocrine system to shut down, causing serious bodily trauma if a doper goes off the drug.