Heroin surge: Old nemesis finds new users

“These guys from Poughkeepsie may have other issues, but they’re not heroin addicts,” said Robertson. “They’re strictly businessmen who are in it to make money off of heroin.”

Train tracks, needle tracks

As for the prevalence of dealers from Poughkeepsie operating in Kingston, cops say they can only surmise the reasons behind the connection. Robertson said the dealers picked up in undercover operations in Kingston did not appear to be part of a single organization. Faluotico said he believes heroin is moving into Ulster County the same way crack did in the 1990s, with the Metro-North station in Poughkeepsie providing a convenient route to a regional distribution center.

Frank Faluotico.

“It’s the last stop on the Metro-North,” said Faluotico. “They set up camp in hotels or apartments in Poughkeepsie and come over here to sell.”

Both treatment providers and cops say that the surge in heroin’s popularity is tied in with a wave of prescription drug abuse that began about a decade ago. Heroin and popular prescription painkillers like oxycodone (Oxycontin) and hydrocodone (Vicodin) come from the same family of narcotics and, to an addict, are more or less interchangeable. Robertson said that he sees about a 50-50 split between addicts who started out with heroin but will use pills during dry spells and pill addicts who turn to heroin once they can no longer easily obtain prescriptions. In fact, heroin’s newfound popularity may be linked to efforts to tighten access to prescription painkillers.

In response to spiraling rates of painkiller addiction the medical community and law enforcement have worked to educate care providers and the public about prescription drug abuse. Doctors today are less likely to write prescriptions for narcotic painkillers and are more alert for faked ailments than they were a few years ago. Pharmacies have ramped up their ability to detect prescription fraud and the DEA, meanwhile, has set up mobile task forces around the state to go after pill “diversion” schemes.

Last year, a DEA investigation led to the arrest of a Woodstock doctor, Wayne Longmore, whose walk-in clinic was well known to local law enforcement as a major source for black-market painkillers. In August, the state’s new ISTOP program will come online. Care providers will be required to enter prescription data into the online database which is intended to prevent “doctor shopping,” the practice of addicts obtaining narcotic prescriptions from multiple sources. The focus on curbing prescription drug abuse may, experts say, have the unintended consequence of driving the heroin market as addicts are cut off from pills that were once obtained safely — and for the insured, cheaply — in a doctor’s office and turn to the street market.

“If you’ve had easy access, if you’ve been doctor-hopping and suddenly you can’t do that, those doors are closed you go looking for it out on the street,” said Nace. “And heroin is always out there.”