Heroin Addiction Sweeps Small Towns

Aug. 22 -- Peter McIver doesn't remember much about the night he and his friends first bought heroin.

He thinks it was 1993 or 1994 but, he says he knows it was just another dull night in Westminster, Md.

Escaping Tranquility

The predominately white, middle-class town of nearly 17,000 people is in the heart of Carroll County, a rural but increasingly suburban area outside of Baltimore, with a population of around 140,000. Peter and his friends — like other restless Westminster teenagers at the time — were seeking the kinds of thrills their town couldn't offer. And their escape from boredom involved drugs.

They piled into a car and made the 30-minute drive to Baltimore, in search of the very things their parents had tried to protect them from by living in a small town. Cruising street by street, they shopped the open-air drug markets looking for dealers ready to do business.

On this particular night — a night that forever changed the lives of these kids, their families and their town — they bought what they thought was cocaine. After snorting the white powdery substance, they realized it wasn't. It was heroin — and it was a new, more powerful version of heroin that was hitting streets across America.

Drug Enforcement Agency officials say in the early '90s, smaller players in the drug world were trying to break the market domination of crack and powder cocaine with the introduction of a user-friendly version of heroin. It was powerful, it was cheap, and it could be snorted.

Heroin Use Spreads

In a few short years, heroin use spread far beyond Peter's circle of friends. Fueled by small-town boredom and curiosity, hundreds of teenagers throughout the county were introduced, and many became addicted. The county hospital ER staff, who had never before treated heroin overdoses were starting to see as many 15 a month. Local police were arresting an ever-increasing number of kids who were stealing, often from their own families, to support their habit.