By Dan Goldberg and James Queally/The Star-Ledger

"Where you been?" was all the text message said. But it meant much more. A dealer had a new stash. He was nearby and ready to deliver.

"Had some bad Chinese food" is another text message that seemed innocuous to a parent. But to her teenage son it meant someone has a bad batch of heroin and should be avoided.

On Facebook, the messages can be even more explicit, letting buyers know exactly what’s available and where.

"The beauty of the internet," sighed Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi. "At a push of a button, there could be distribution schemes that are occurring and people being able to get it."

With sprawling highways, one of the nation’s largest airports and three large ports, the state has the infrastructure to support a successful heroin racket. Now, thanks to a surge in painkiller addictions and some clever new marketing by dealers, the state’s heroin economy is booming.

The war against hard drug use moved from the state’s urban centers to quiet suburbs years ago, but officials say this is a new surge unlike anything they have seen before.

"What is significant about this cycle is the introduction of prescription opiates that have come upon the scene," said Hunterdon County Prosecutor Anthony Kearns III. "We’re seeing a greater number of addictions to heroin as a result of prescription painkillers."

 

The market is flooded, the price has dropped, and with a generation of young, tech-savvy opiate addicts running low on cash and pills, the demand has exploded.

"I would say it’s an epidemic," said Dover Detective Sgt. Richard Gonzalez. "It’s stronger, it’s cheaper and a lot of kids think it’s popular, so they try it once and then they are hooked."

Statewide, the number of New Jerseyans between the ages of 18 and 25 admitted to addiction treatment centers for heroin rose by more than 12 percent between 2010 and 2011, the last year for which data is available, according to Gov. Chris Christie’s Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

Drug dealers — like all good businessmen — are seeing opportunities to franchise, setting up in Morris, Cape May, Sussex, Monmouth, Ocean, Warren and Hunterdon. And they found an easy, new way to reach customers. Police refer to it as the "safety premium."

Suburban high school students, afraid or unable to travel to urban centers like Irvington or Paterson, can pay a little extra to have heroin delivered to their neighborhoods. A bag of heroin that costs $5 in Newark can cost $10 in Morristown and as much as $15 in Sussex, police say. Think of heroin as a commodity, accruing value as it makes its way to market. Suburban kids can afford both the drug and to compensate dealers for the risk of delivering it.

Kearns has been sounding the alarm for more than a year.

The impression most people have of heroin is outdated, he said. The face of heroin isn’t thugs on street corners, peddling to junkies. It’s teenagers in their bedrooms sending texts.

As evidence, consider this: The highest per capita rate of treatment admissions for patients under 25 isn’t in Essex or Camden counties, according to the state’s division of mental health and addiction services.

It’s in Cape May.

‘RIPPLE EFFECT’

There is now so much heroin in New Jersey that a first hit can cost as little as $1. But once hooked, the craving can be insatiable and spark hundred-dollar-a-day appetites. And because addicts need a ready source of cash, robberies, assaults and thefts are all on the rise in communities prized for their tranquility, police said.

"There is a tremendous ripple effect that no one appreciates," said Tom Reed, assistant prosecutor assigned to the Sussex County narcotics task force. "People say it is a victimless crime that only hurts the users.

"Nonsense! I got a jail full of people (who) have hurt others."

Because when addicts are finished robbing their families and friends, they often move on to neighbors’ homes and cars.

"A lot of the suspects we bring in on burglaries, they are all saying that the reason they are doing it is to support their heroin habit," said Dover Detective Sgt. Gonzalez.

This summer, Toms River had 10 overdoses in the span of a week. Nearly all the victims were in their 20s, and three of them died.

"Over 90 some percent of our crime is directly related to pills or heroin, for thefts and burglaries," Toms River Police Chief Michael Mastronardy said. "The heroin is very bad here."

While Toms River, and Ocean County, offer plenty of rehabilitative services, Mastronardy said addicts are rarely cured the first time. He says he’s tired of locking up strung-out young men and women, because he knows that won’t solve anything.

"What can we do? Do we lock them up?" he asked. "I don’t know."

Mastronardy’s frustration is nothing compared to that felt by parents of addicted teens.

Every night Colleen goes to bed in Morris County with the few valuables she has left so her 17-year old son won’t pawn them. Her cash, credit cards and car keys are tucked into her pajamas or under her pillow. She wears the one bracelet she still owns. Her son has stolen heirlooms, jewelry.

He has robbed family and neighbors.

Colleen, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition her last name not be used in order to protect her son, said she knows what’s wrong with her child. She sees the evidence on his arms and in his eyes. He’s been hooked for three years and began using drugs as early as middle school. Facebook and text messaging allowed him to monitor fresh supplies.

She has tried everything to help her son beat the drug. She has punished and yelled, cajoled and coerced, bribed and begged, but feels there is an undertow pulling him away.

"I wish my son would just die already," Colleen said, "so I could get this over with."

Colleen’s son, like so many of New Jersey’s newest heroin users, got his first taste of opiate addiction from the medicine cabinet.

Teens and 20-somethings have fallen into what the Drug Enforcement Administration calls a "cycle of addiction," graduating from painkillers to heroin, according to Brian Crowell, the DEA’s top agent in New Jersey.

"The problem is it escalated so fast, doctors were unintentionally overprescribing the pain pills like they were antibiotics" he said. "There were so many painkillers out there in people’s medicine cabinet that it just created a massive wave of heroin users."

When the pills became too scarce or too expensive, addicts still needed to get high and so they switched to heroin.

"That transition happens when the medicine cabinet runs dry and they can no longer afford, on the black market, to use the pill form and transition on to cheap bags of heroin," said John Hulick, head of Governor Chris Christie's Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

Rick Incremona, first assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County, likened it to switching from a name brand to the generic.

"They like the high they have gotten from prescription narcotics but are looking for a cheaper, more readily available alternative," he said.

INSIDIOUS THREAT

The painkiller boom has been well documented, and earlier this year state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa announced a program to track every prescription filled in New Jersey for controlled dangerous substances such as OxyContin, Adderall and Valium, including information on patients, doctors and pharmacies.

But law enforcement officials fear they may be fighting yesterday’s problem. Thousands of teenagers have moved on, they say. And now, according to Crowell, heroin and all the problems it can cause are the "number one threat" to public safety in the Northeast.

While the Attorney General’s Office has publicly campaigned against painkillers, Chiesa has said little about heroin addiction during press events in the past year. In a recent interview, however, the state’s top cop said the heroin boom stunned him as much as it did other leaders in Trenton.

"This is something that’s new to me as a parent," Chiesa said. "I didn’t know this was as big of an issue as it was."

Chiesa cited a series of heroin busts made by his office in recent months, and said he has focused on raising awareness about painkiller addiction, in part, to prevent teens hooked on oxycodone and other substances from turning to heroin.

"It is a significant problem, and it’s one that we’re well aware of and our efforts are going in both directions," he said.

The problem also caught Gov. Chris Christie’s attention earlier this year, and he commissioned a task force led by Hulick.Hulick said the task force, which includes officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Attorney General’s Office and former Gov. Jim McGreevey, was commissioned to combat "an epidemic of heroin and other opiate abuse," among the state’s younger population. Their full report is due out at the end of the year.

"The stories are very consistent," Hulick said. "They started on prescription painkillers and ended up using intravenous heroin."

BROKEN PROMISES

Heroin addiction has been described as a series of broken promises to yourself. You’ll snort but never use a needle. Okay, a needle, but never steal. Okay steal, but never prostitute. The lines get crossed as the addiction takes hold. Users soon become dealers, relying on that money from the safety premium to pay for their own habit. It’s good business. Buy enough heroin to supply your friends and neighbors and use the profits to help pay for your own habit.

But it’s a dangerous business as well.

Often, addicts will shoot up as soon as they land a new bag of heroin, and then take to the state’s highways.

"These people are getting on the roads and they are all drugged up," Crowell said. "Some nights we have more drugged drivers out there than we do drunk drivers."

Though many have multiple arrests on their record, the risk they take in transporting the drug is a mark of how effective the business has become, police say.

In July, Butler police stopped a car heading north on Route 23 and confiscated 95 bags of suspected heroin. After stopping the vehicle, police said they noticed the driver, Vincenzo Milazzo, 22, had "fresh injuries on (his) arms consistent with recent drug use."

Just one week earlier, Kinnelon cops say they discovered 56 bags of heroin in a car on the same road.

The money heads south to Newark or Paterson and heroin comes back, said Kinnelon Lt. John Schwartz. "It’s a very, very busy corridor," Schwartz said. "Heroin is so insidious that you take it, you don’t get high anymore, you just take it so you don’t get sick."

There’s chemistry behind that. The purer the heroin, the easier it is for the body to metabolize it. That stereotypical strung-out look is usually the result of additives that dilute the heroin.

New Jersey heroin is roughly 50 percent pure, some of the highest quality in the nation, said Special Agent Douglas Collier, spokesman for the state chapter of the DEA.

Our state’s buyers demand nothing less: Having already been hooked on the good stuff, dealers know they can’t provide lesser quality.

Crowell says Colombian drug smugglers move high-grade heroin directly into the area through Newark Liberty International Airport and ports in Newark, Elizabeth and Camden. The easy access shortens the journey from poppy fields in South America to drug addicts in New Jersey’s cities and suburbs, Crowell said. That ups the purity and lowers the price.

"There’s so many gateways into the region," Crowell said. "From the farm to the arm, it is really a short process here in this part of the country."

In Morris County, where two teenagers recently died from heroin overdoses, Prosecutor Bianchi said one of his biggest challenges is getting parents to take off their blinders and realize high property taxes do not insulate them or their children from opiate addiction.

"You do get a lot of people who call about these drug-induced deaths and there seems to be a lot of deflection," Bianchi said. "There seems to be a lot of ‘not my son, somebody must have gave it to him.’ I hear that over and over again. … And I’m like, ‘well yeah … somebody gave it to him, but yes, your son too, respectfully … there would be nothing for that guy to give if your son wasn’t taking the drug.’"

EDITOR'S NOTE: John Hulick was previously misidentified as a former director of public affairs and policy for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence - New Jersey. Hulick is actually the head of Governor Chris Christie's Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, and he is also the head of the task force Christie created earlier this year to combat heroin and opioid abuse in the state.

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