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By VICKI URBANIK
Three years ago, the coroner declared 15 drug-related or drug-induced deaths in Porter County.
That puts Porter County’s opiate mortality rate at 9.83 per 100,000 population, which far surpasses the city of Chicago’s rate of 5.88 percent.
In fact, in a comparison with 21 large U.S. cities, Porter County’s opiate death rate for ages 18 to 25 ranks 10th—higher than even New York City or Seattle.
What’s more, Porter County has four times the national average of emergency room “mentions” of heroin in the 18 to 25 age group, again far surpassing the rates in cities such as Chicago or San Francisco.
In short, it’s cheap and easy for young people in Porter County to make the short trip to Chicago’s South side to buy heroin—and often, it’s cheaper and easier than buying cigarettes or alcohol.
A new study shows that not only has heroin use in Porter County rapidly increased in the past few years, but also that the users are younger than elsewhere in the Chicago metropolitan region, they’re suffering more severe health consequences, and they’re dying at a faster rate.
That report, “A Multiple Indicator Analysis of Heroin Use in Northwest Indiana,” was officially released Tuesday morning at a standing-room-only conference held at a most appropriate site, the Porter County Jail.
The report, done by Roosevelt University’s Institute for Metropolitan Affairs, was commissioned by the not-for-profit Community Action Drug Coalition and Porter Starke Services.
Rocco Schiralli, vice president of programming at Porter-Starke and CADC president, said the two groups turned to Roosevelt for the study because it did a similar report on heroin use in the Chicago region a few years ago, a report that shed national attention on Chicago’s heroin problem.
“We felt that the problem was severe locally,” he said.
The report proves them right.
Looking at a variety of indicators, the report found that Porter County’s heroin use has been rapidly worsening in the past few years. Unlike elsewhere in the Chicago region, the problem is significantly more prevalent in the 18-to-25 year old age group.
One of the most shocking statistics was the heroin “mentions” at hospital emergency rooms. In 2004, the county hospital Porter saw 125 people brought to the emergency room due to drugs; of these, 69 were due to opiates and 55, heroin. Among the 18-25 age group, the ER heroin rate was 321 percent above the national average.
Comparing that rate to other big cities that report to the national Drug Abuse Warning Network, Porter County ranked third in the country for emergency room heroin mentions, following only Baltimore and Philadelphia.
“I was so shocked by this I think I must have redone the calculations 10 times,” said Kathleen Kane-Willis, vice-president of the institute who authored the report along with Stephanie Schmitz-Bechteler.
As further evidence of the prevalence of heroin among young people, the conference featured as panelists two people, aged 21 and 25, both hailing from Chesterton, who relayed their experience with heroin addiction. The conference also featured a gut-wrenching presentation by Dr. Mann Spitler, who lost his 20-year-old daughter Manda to heroin in 2002.
Further, an ironically sad commentary came when Porter County Sheriff Chief Deputy Dave Lain read a police report, released to the media just moments before, confirming that the death of 24-year-old Chesterton resident Valerie McConnell in August was due to a drug overdose.
Youth Most At Risk
Kane-Willis said the image many people have of heroin users is of inner-city African American males. That stereotype was probably never accurate, but it is “totally inaccurate today.”
Increasingly, heroin users are young, white and living in suburban areas far from the inner cities. In Indiana, white heroin addicts receiving methadone treatment increased 147 percent between 1998 and 2002, while the African American increase was 3 percent and Latino, 8 percent.
“When we’re talking about heroin in Indiana, we’re talking about a white problem,” Kane-Willis said.
Porter County is primarily a “using” community. While there are some user-to-user sales, Porter County has no significant open market, quite unlike Chicago. Probably because it’s a major transportation hub, Chicago is the only city in the country with all four types of heroin—Southwest Asian, Southeast Asian, South American and Mexican, Kane-Willis said.
The researchers found that the vast majority of heroin users in Porter County travel to Chicago housing projects—particularly those on the South side, such as the Stateway Gardens Homes, the Robert Taylor Homes and the Wentworth Garden Homes—to buy.
With heroin purity increasing by about 35 percent since 1995, Kane-Willis said the $10 per bag price has become effectively cheaper in recent years, since more people can get high off a single bag.
One big problem with a using community, Kane-Willis added, is that there is no way for a police officer to know if an 18 year old driving down the highway is going to or from Chicago to buy heroin.
A slew of statistics contained in the study point to growing heroin use in the 18-to-25 age range.
For example, in Porter-Starke’s chemical dependency program offered at the County Jail, all age groups show at least a 100 percent increase in self-reported heroin use. In the 18 to 29 year old age division, the number who reported using heroin was 16 in 1998, climbing to 59 in 2003, or a 269 percent increase.
The 40-to-65 age group also saw a huge increase in self-reported heroin use of 300 percent, but Kane-Willis noted that the baseline number in 1998 was relatively low, at 5, which increased to 20 in ‘03.
The Porter County Sheriff’s Department has seen a 740 percent increase, from 10 in 2002 to 84 in 2004, in the number of arrestee “mentions” of heroin use. Again, the most significant number was in the 18 to 25 year old age group.
In 2002, six 18-to-25 year old arrestees reported heroin use, but that number climbed to 42 in ‘04, or a 600 percent increase. The next age group with the greatest increase was the 26 to 30-year-olds, which soared from two heroin mentions among arrestees to 21 in 2004.
The report notes that the numbers may be an under-representation since individuals may feel apprehensive about disclosing their heroin use to police.
The number of Porter County residents arrested in Cook County, Ill. for heroin sales or possession increased from 1 known report in 2002 to 12 in 2004, for a total of 24 arrests over the time period. Of these, 54 percent were under the age of 26, with the youngest arrestee an 18-year-old female.
Getting Hooked
Kane-Willis said the report shows trends and indications, but that it cannot possibly determine just how many Porter County residents are heroin users or how they first got started.
But the stories relayed by three speakers Tuesday showed that it didn’t take much at all for the three teens to try heroin.
“It was made available to me by a friend. It was that simple,” said Andrew Joseph, 21, of Chesterton, who relayed how he was dealing Ecstasy and found it was becoming harder and harder to get away with smoking pot. He began using heroin at age 16, and started depending on it more and more.
Amy Tucker, 25, also from Chesterton who now lives in Valparaiso, said she was turned on to heroin by a friend at age 15. Within a week or two after snorting, she started shooting up and within a month, she was hooked.
Tucker also said four of her best friends are now dead because of heroin. She said after the first few times, doing heroin is not about having fun.
“It’s about survival. It’s about not puking your guts out,” she said.
Dr. Mann Spitler relayed the story of his daughter Manda, whom he caught smoking cigarettes with a friend at age 13. It didn’t take long for Manda to establish a “secret life,” which Spitler said is unlike simply having secrets but living by a whole different set of values.
“Nobody, at least for a while, is a better liar than a drug addict,” Spitler said.
Spitler recounted how Manda, an animal lover, prolific writer and good student, spiraled downward because of the “beast” called heroin. She went through a series of boyfriends, each one worse than the previous one. She often lied, one time explaining she crashed the car in order to avoid hitting an oppossum in the road, another time saying she spent $2,000 in savings one month on clothes. She skipped going away to college to be with her heroin-dependent boyfriend, whom she met when he was homeless and out of money and was easily manipulated by his down-on-luck story.
His daughter finally admitted to him, just 21 days before she died, that she was a heroin addict but couldn’t bring herself to say “heroin.” She died after shooting up in the bathtub, after 5 1/2 hours of frantic efforts by her father and other medical professionals to revive her.
Spitler said in retrospect, he would have trusted his daughter less to make good judgments for herself. As he now speaks to kids about the dangers of heroin and other drugs, Spitler said he wants to protect each and every kid. “But I can’t. They have to do it for themselves.”
CADC founding member Karen Conover said the heroin addicts now incarcerated, like her own son, are the “lucky ones” because they’ve been given another chance at survival.
Conover ended Tuesday’s conference with an appeal to parents to do all they can to teach their kids about drugs. It’s unfair, she said, to expect schools to shoulder the responsibility.
Kids will find themselves in many situations with many offers to do drugs, she said. “It’s a huge mistake to think your child is not susceptible to drugs.”
Heroin cases at hospital ER, Adults aged 18-25
Rate per 100,000 % above national average
Baltimore 275 428% Philadelphia 248 378% Porter County, IN 219 321% Boston 185 256% Newark 153 194% Chicago 152 192% New Orleans 143 176% St. Louis 140 168% Atlanta 125 140% San Fransisco 119 128%
U.S. average 52
Porter Hospital ER Mentions by Community, 2004
Valparaiso 44; 17 heroin, 27 opiates
Portage 20; 5 heroin, 14 opiates, 1 methadone
Chesterton 8; 2 heroin, 6 opiates
Porter 8; 2 heroin, 6 opiates
Hebron 5; 3 heroin, 2 opiates
Opiate Deaths Rates in 2002, Ages 18 to 25
(per 100,000 population)
New Orleans 22.82
Baltimore 19.19
Las Vegas 17.42
Buffalo 16.16
Detroit 13.78
Newark 13.13
Philadelphia 12.37
San Francisco 11.02
Phoenix 9.23
Porter Co. 9.17
New York City 8.25
Seattle 7.45
Brimingham 6.62
Boston 6.55
Portland 6.43
Milwaukee 5.95
Chicago 5.88
Drug-related or induced death rates, 2002
Deaths Rate per 100,000
Cook County, Ill. 711 13.2
Porter County 15 9.83
DuPage Co., Ill. 66 7.14
McHenry Co., Ill. 16 5.76
Porter Starke Admissions for heroin and opiates
Œ98 ‚99 2000 ‚01 ‚02 ‚03 % Change
Heroin 44 56 71 58 75 132 200%
Other opiates 17 23 27 28 68 88 418%
Porter County Adult Probation Population Testing Positive for Drugs
1996 2003 % Change
Heroin 33 218 561%
Cocaine 83 233 181%
Marijuana 205 377 84%
Alcohol 12 17 42%
Porter County Jail Detox for Opiates
1998: 11
1999: 17
2000: 27
2001: 30
2002: 26
2003: 38
% Change: 245%
Porter-Starke County Jail Chemical Dependency Program:
Inmates Reporting Heroin Use, Aged 18-25
1998: 16
1999: 21
2000: 32
2001: 14
2002: 28
2003: 59
% Change: 269%
Northern Indiana Methadone Maintenance Patients
1998 2002 2003 % increase from '98
Lake 380 711 652 72%
Porter 41 116 168 310%
LaPorte 7 62 105 1,400%
St. Jospeh 82 90 79 -4%
Elkhart 23 16 15 -35%
Posted 1/26/2005
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