The Flathead Valley has seen an increase in heroin use in the past two years, according to officials in various law enforcement and community health services throughout the valley.
Heightened usage of the drug, which is an opiate synthesized from morphine, affects more than just the drug users who smoke, snort or inject it, officials said; it can also lead to new crime and disease trends.
“It’s directly attributed to the tightening grip on prescription medication,” according to a member of the Northwest Drug Task Force, who asked to remain anonymous due to the dangerous nature of the task force’s work.
A crackdown on prescription opiates, such as Oxycontin, leads some addicts to seek out a different way to get their fix. And since heroin and these medications share the same roots in opium, the addicts may choose to purchase heroin because it is cheaper and more available right now.
“You’ll find people that are addicted to one, trading that one in for another one,” the task force member said.
Most of the heroin in the valley is Mexican and comes from West Coast cities like Tacoma, Wash. and Portland, Ore., he said.
The drug is usually black-tar heroin, a less-pure form than the China-white version. But the task force member said the group is also running into a new type of heroin, an amber-type resin.
A rise in use eventually ripples out into the community, the task force member said, typically in small property crimes.
“It’s not a good thing, because with heroin, it’s a cheaper drug but it’s also a more demanding drug. And when you have the demands of the addiction then you’re willing to do things you might not normally do,” the task force member said.
Heroin affects the pleasure and pain receptors in the brain. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, heroin is converted to morphine when it enters the brain and binds to opioid receptors in the brain stem, which are important for life’s automatic processes, such as breathing.
Along with the risk of overdose, the NIDA lists other health problems associated with heroin, including spontaneous abortion, “collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, and liver or kidney disease.”
Intravenous users also face the threat of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. That’s a major concern for Linda Bodick, a disease intervention specialist at the Flathead City-County Health Department.
Bodick has been in this line of work for 28 years, and has watched drug trends change and evolve. Right now, there is a lot of heroin in the valley, according to her clients, which means risk of spreading disease.
The clinic recently began using rapid Hepatitis C testing, and recent numbers show it is on the increase, Bodick said.
Out of the 15 or 20 tests she’s performed recently, 10 to 12 of them have come back positive, Bodick said. Since Bodick’s division is part of the city-county health department, this means these clients can be sent to a doctor within the same facility and begin treatment on a sliding-fee scale, which is extremely helpful, she said.
“I want people to know their status and know that this is a safe place to come,” she said.
Other treatment facilities report increase in heroin usage as well. Michael Cummins, executive director at the Flathead Valley Chemical Dependency Clinic in Kalispell, said only two clients reported heroin as their primary addiction during the last fiscal year, which ran from July 2011 to June 2012.
However, in the past two months, the clinic has had five patients come in with heroin as the primary addiction, he said.
It may be a blip in the numbers, Cummins said, but it could also indicate a higher trend in overall usage.
The staff at Community Medical Services, Kalispell’s sole methadone clinic, has also seen an increase in clients abusing heroin. Methadone is a prescription pain reliever that is often used to treat withdrawal symptoms in people addicted to opiates.
Dr. Robert Sherrick, the medical director at CMS, said he treated virtually no heroin users when the clinic opened two years ago, and if clients were using, they were getting the drug outside of the valley.
“Now the majority of my patients are using heroin,” Sherrick said. “They tell me it’s easy to get.”
Most of Sherrick’s patients are using 200 to 500 milligrams of heroin a day, he said, and it costs $25 to $50 per 100 milligrams.
Sherrick has been treating opiate addiction in the valley for years, starting at Pathways Treatment Center in 1994. The surge in heroin came after Oxycontin was reformulated two or three years ago, he said, which made it more difficult to abuse.
“That’s when heroin started coming into the valley,” Sherrick said.
To contact the Flathead City-County Health Department, call 751-8100 or visit www.flathead.mt.gov/health.
To contact the Flathead Valley Chemical Dependency Clinic, call 756-6453 or visit www.fvcdc.net. To contact Community Medical Services, call 260-4181.