Heroin Comes Back

About the only thing crack addicts seem to fear is the severe depression that follows a cocaine-induced high. After repeated use of the drug, the usual cure -- more crack -- stops working. Now, drug experts warn, an increasing number of cocaine abusers are using heroin to ease the horror of the postcrack low.

Though there are no reliable statistics, some Government officials estimate that the number of heroin users may be as high as 750,000. A survey by the Government's Drug Abuse Warning Network found that in 27 cities, deaths linked to heroin-and-cocaine use had tripled to 627 between 1985 and 1989.

That number could soon soar even higher. In the past, street heroin was 6% to 10% pure and an addict had to take it intravenously to get high. Many cocaine users are unwilling to break through the "needle barrier" and inject themselves, in part out of fear of being infected with AIDS from a shared needle. But for the past several years, less diluted heroin from Southeast Asia that can be smoked has been widely available on the streets of New York, Boston and other cities. At $10 a 0.05-gram bag, the so-called China White is cheap enough to be within reach of the young and the poor.

The flood of China White is being spurred by political chaos and record opium crops in Burma, the main source of raw material for heroin refineries of Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle. "If crack didn't have the attention of the media," says Robert Stutman, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York field office, "heroin would have been on the front pages of every newspaper in America."