Officials: Cheaper version of heroin appeals to kids

Three years into a sharp spike in heroin use on Long Island, federal narcotics officials say they are watching for a new, cheaper version of the drug to hit the New York region.

The officials say "cheese," a sandy brown mix of heroin and over-the-counter pills such as Tylenol PM, may be on its way. The drug can sell for $2 a hit, making it particularly enticing for children and young teens, officials said.

"We are picking up intel from our informants and cooperators," and electronic surveillance, said John Gilbride, special agent in charge of the New York Field Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration based in Manhattan.

"Very low-level, street-level traffickers say that cheese . . . is for sale," Gilbride said.

Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, said two clients who are heavy heroin users reported using the mixture in recent weeks, though both called it "knockout."

"They said they are using it at night as a way of going to sleep after a full day of heroin use," Reynolds said, adding that the price point on Long Island seems to be between $5 and $7.

"These things take off pretty quickly," he said. "We're already having a hard enough time battling the heroin crisis and this only adds to the challenge in terms of the lower price point and the possibility of overdose. The potential is there for a whole new group of young people to get introduced to heroin via these means."

Gilbride said he has not yet made an arrest of anyone selling the drug and that it's not clear if it would catch on in New York. He said the region has been spared some of the scourges that have ravaged other parts of the country, including methamphetamine, popular in the rural Midwest. But Gilbride said he wants parents and law enforcement agents to be on alert.

"We learned a lot of lessons in Dallas," where the drug wreaked havoc five years ago, he said. "When these teens were abusing cheese, it was easy to conceal it by hiding it in pen caps, in the tips of their sneakers and in baseball caps. It's important to get that information out there as to what to look for."

Gilbride said he's concerned because 25 percent of heroin seized in the United States in any given year comes from the New York area.

The proportion of New York City public high school students in grades 9 through 12 who reported they had tried heroin increased from 1.3 percent in 2007 to 2.6 percent in 2009, according to the city Health Department, though it had no reports of "cheese."

Nassau and Suffolk county law enforcement officials say they have not yet encountered the drug. But heroin arrests generally continue to rise.

Nassau Det. Lt. Peter Donohue said there were 390 heroin arrests in the county in 2009, compared with 451 so far this year.

In Suffolk, heroin arrest charges totaled 270 in 2001 and 258 in 2003, but by 2009 had risen to 1,172 charges. The first seven months of this year has brought 836 charges on heroin, up 30 percent over the first seven months of last year. One person can be arrested on multiple charges.

Donohue said he was concerned about the prospect of "cheese," saying, "When hard drugs become cheap, it is easier to experiment with them."