Street roots., September 18, 2009, Page 13, Image 13

1»
& D EC A D E
13
¡ street roots
Education * Dialogue * Independence
DRAGON, from page 11
concentrated.”
“The quality seems to be a ldt better in ~
Portland than San Francisco,” Jake says,
In general, police and social-service *
who adds that the heroin in Portland began
providers say heroin use has increased in
getting purer in the past three years.
part because it has become popular to
“Seattle, it’s terrible, terrible quality.”
smoke the drug, rather than inject i t “Most
Sources say that Portland’s purer heroin
people injected it in the past,” Reese says.
may be one reason why there has been an
“It’s potent enough now that they can just
increase in overdoses in Portland and in
smoke it a tiny bit and then they don’t fed
Oregon.|
like they’re a drug addict, because they’re
According to the annual report by the ,
not using a needle,” says Jake, a user.
Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s ;
Jones says the decreased availability of
office on the number of drug-related deaths
methamphetamine, caused by Oregon’s .
jn Oregon, heroin-related deaths have slowly
crackdown on. the drug and its ingredients
increased since 200.5 when there were 86
in recent years, has made people turn to
related deaths, just over half of those in
heroin.
•
j
, >
Multnomah County. In 2008 there were 119
“We’ve seen a corresponding increase in
deaths , in Oregon, 71 of them in Multnomah
heroin and cocaine,” says Mark McDonald,
County. Dr. Karen Gunson, Oregon’s
who prosecutes drug cases for Multnomah
medical examiner, says this year’s total will
County’s District Attorney’s office.
probably be in the “140 range.” .
Lejeune thinks younger heroin users are
Tracking the number of non-fatal
self-medicating mental illness and anxiety. “I overdoses is more difficult, because many
think there’s a lot more stressors on
heroin users who overdose may not go to
people’s plate when they’re younger,” he
the emergency room for treatment. Liana
says.' ;
-
< •. /
_ •
Haywood, a spokeswoman for Oregon
“People are hurting really bad,”
Health and Science University, says that
Lundberg says, noting that the recession
“anecdotally, it appears th a t... more heroin
may be driving people toward addiction.
addicts are cominginwith overdoses than
“For young people whose ability to project
normal, but this is not something we track
into the future is not fully developed yet, it’s
in detail.”
. ;
•
really bleak.”
Jake, 30, says that has been addicted to
joe Says he has been on heroin since he
heroin for 15 years. In that time, he says he
was 17. While in high school,: he says he
hasoverdosed at least three times, known
rollerbladed “semi-pro.” The father of one
50 to 60 people who have overdosed but not
his friends was pretty competitive,
died, and known six to eight people who
“There was no exctise for not competing,” died from overdoses. ’'
Roby Day Williams, 47, was outside the
Joe remembers.
The father was also a doctor. If Joe was in public library in downtown Portland rolling a
pain and a game was coming up, he would
cigarette when he overhead this reporter
asking people if they knew, or were, heroin
be given “candy pills, pain pills.”
“Makes you a little woozy, then Adderall,” addicts. In recovery from heroin addiction
for nine months, he says he used every day
Joe says. “I was an addict before I knew J
for 15 years, sometimes three or four times
was an^addict.”
a day. “I got incredibly strung out for a _
Joe started using OxyContin, an addictive
synthetic opiate often prescribed as a
painkiller. “It got too expensive” on the
street, he said, costing him $150 a day. Joe
started snorting and smoking heroin, and
eventually started injecting it. All of a
Sudden, his drug addiction dropped to $5 a
day. “It was economic pressure that got me
on heroin,” Joe says.
<
Lejeune says that Joe’s experience of
moving onto heroin from prescription drugs
is not uncommon. “Almost every young
person I’ve talked to, that’s where they
started off. That was the gateway,” he says.
Coming from Mexico or South America,
the heroin on Portland’s streets is known as
black tar heroin, a black, gooey substance
that is mixed with water, melted, and
injected. “[It’s] everything we see here,”
Jones says.
Addicts and law enforcement sources say
that the heroin found in Portland may be
the purest of any major city in the country.
While he was pulling the heroin into a
syringe, Joe described the. potency of the
drug he was using as “extremely
number of years,” he says-
Thinking about that time, and almost
beginning to cry, Williams guesses he
overdosed on heroin nine times. During his
addiction, Williams thinks he knew 6 or 7
people who died from heroin overdoses, and
at least “30 in this town” who overdosed,
but did notdie.
Jones says that the people dealing heroin
in Portland are using “somewhat
sophisticated organizations.” The dealers
normally operate outside of Portland,
sending people into the city for drug sales.
Jones says that many of the Portland area’s
professional drug dealers are coming
directly from Mexico.
g j
“I think there are probably several - five,
10, 20 - different organizations bringing in
largd quantities, pounds.and pounds, Jones
says.
• ' • -
According to Jones, half a gram of heroin
_ equivalent to one hit — is selling on the
streets for approximately $40 to $50,
making it slightiy less expensive than meth.
Joe says he goes to Outside In s clinic
PDC is proud to help preserve the
historic Hung Far Low sign
a symbol of the rich cultural heritage
in Old Town/Chinatown.
PDC assisted the project w ith a Signage and
Lighting improvement Program (SLIP) grant.
The program provides property owners and
tenants w ith funds to upgrade signage and
awnings, and improve window andTacade
lighting. This in turn helps create a positive
retail and pedestrian environment in our city.
PDC urges citizens to help restore Portland's
iconic sign by purchasing a commemorative
Hung Far Low t-shirt available at Ping restaurant
In Old Town/Chinatown.
Investing in Portland's Future
PDC
t>O8TtANP D6VEtOPM£NT COMMISSION
www.pdc.us/busmess
Duke thinks that to effectively respond to
the increase of heroin use in Portland, there
will have to be increased accessibility to
Suboxone in treatment programs, more low-
barrier treatment programs to more easily
target people with addictions, and have
treatment programs focus on harm
reduction strategies as much as drug
treatment
After moving to Portland from San
Francisco in 2007, Peter Geissert founded
Portland’s chapter of the Portland Overdose
Prevention Project in 2008. Th^ Project is a
grassroots non-profit assisting agencies and
individuals in developing response plans and
skill sets to decrease the risk of overdose.
In July, Geissert taught a training course
at Janus Youth for the agency’s staff and
people using the services that presented
the risk factors for overdose, how to
recognize someone who is overdosing, and
how to get individuals out of the overdose,
whether that meant breathing for them or
reviving them with Narcan.
Lundberg says that he and his staff are
now more “planful” and aware of some of
the drug-related problems Janus’s clients
might have.
Calling Oregon’s drug laws “the rriost lax
of any state on the West Coast, if not the
nation,” McDonald thinks that people who
Tripping like it’s 1999?
use and deal heroin are not properly
punished. The maximum sentence a person
When speaking about heroin in 2009, •|
in possession of heroin can receive is 30
sources kept mentioning 1999, sometimes
. days in jail, if there are beds available* More
in tones suggesting that year is now a part
typically, McDonald says, people caught
of Oregon drug lore. That year, 250’people
possessing heroin are given 10 days in jail,
died from a heroin-related deaths.
then placed on probation.
“We had a huge year in 1999,” Gunson
Rather than entering a drug treatment
says. “It was the number one cause of death
program, McDonald says “it’s much easier”
among illegal drugs.”
for an addict “to. just plead guilty” because ?
Although the number ofheroin-related
of the lack of punishment for drug
deaths in Oregon isn’t anywhere near that
possession.
number, Gunson also says, “We’re pretty
“I think there needs to be some increase
much steadily growing.”
“~inpen3Tties. I’m noFChHiiig foreverybody *
every day to pick up and exchange 10
needles. Taking three to five shots a day, he
says his habit probably now costs $20 a day.
To pay for it, he panhandles.
Lundberg and Reese both say they are
seeing more people panhandling for drug
money. It is one way addicts maintain their
habit Often, they áre pushed to commit
petty crimes. Lundberg fears there may be a
rise in youth prostitution. Reese says that
property crimes, theft, robberies, and
assault have been on a rise as an effect of
drug use as well. .
To blame the rise of heroin use in
Portland solely on youths, or oh the
homeless population, would be a mistake.
Lejeune says that many of the Outside In
clinic’sclients are housed.
“They’re still a lot of.guys out there in
their 40s and 50s that are shooting heroin,”
Reese says. “It crosses all ages.”
According to Harriman, 66 percent of the
clients using the county’s needle exchange
services are between 30 to 54, which is the
same age range of the majority of people
Gunson says are dying from heroin
overdoses. “It’S not young people,” she says.'
“It’s people who have plenty of needle
tracks in their arms.”
“I would stop short of calling it an
epidemic,” Lundberg says.
“It’s not like what meth was in 2004,”
going to jail, but there needs to be some
says McDonald with the Multnomah County
District Attorney’s office. “I would cajl that
an epidemic. This is a very serious problem,
much more of a problem than people
realize.”
An epidemic of the proportions seen in
the late 90s may not happen in Portland
because of the presence of needle exchange
clinics and other harm-reduction strategies.
In 2008, Outside In received funding from
the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration to start the Rise
Program, which provides case management
and permanent supportive housing to
homeless youth who are 18 to 24 years old
who have a mental illness and substance
abuse addiction^ The program administers
Suboxone to people in the program, a
mixture of Buprenorphine, an opiate
blocker, and Narcan, a drug that can
instantly revive someone from an opiate
overdose.
deterrent, and some incentive for people to
go into, treatment,” McDonald says.
Ultimately, McDonald says, Portland and
Multnomah County can do little to control
the drug trafficking acrdss the Mexican
border/and thinks that heroin use in
Portland won’t truly drop until thefederal
government tackles drug importation.
Joe thinks he probably will never get off
heroin, and he isn’t interested in treatment.
“I have to learn how to live with it,” Joe
Says, calling himself a “responsible jurikie”
and thinking of heroin as a medicine
keeping him from being sick.
Joe says there was a period of two years
when he was clean. But he said he wanted
to die the whole time” because the physical t
’pain from withdrawal was.too much. “You
don’t sleep. You twitch. It s as close to hell
on earth as you can get.
“Heroin changes you,” he says. “You
never feel the same. Life is never good
again.”
Repairs, Renovations & Sacred Spaces
Invest in the
infrastructure
of your home!
♦ Older homes ♦ Weatherization ♦ Energy
conversion ♦ Pre-seZZ/p«rctee upgrades
+ Raised garden beds & cloches ♦ Sacred spaces
♦ D /T cons« toon/bryo»rpro/ectt
♦ Kitchen, Living & Bath
♦ In-house Office ♦ Deck
♦ Custom Work ♦ Garden
«7 am a licensed 6- bonded genera/ contractor
offering a fid l range of services from»
simple repairs to artful renovations"
- Michael D*Angelo, GC