New drug craze hits Major School District

[TexasStooge]

New drug craze hits Dallas ISD

Tylenol PM-heroin combo may have caused Dallas teen's death

By KENT FISCHER and JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas - Drug dealers are mixing small amounts of heroin with crushed Tylenol PM tablets and selling it cheap at Dallas schools, the newest low-cost high available to kids.

Police have found the mixture, dubbed "cheese," at 11 Dallas schools, including several middle schools, this school year. Officials are investigating whether the mixture played a role in the death of an 18-year-old Monday.

Dallas police narcotics Deputy Chief Julian Bernal said the drug is not just a school district problem. He said police have met with Dallas County prosecutors, as well as police in Plano and Richardson.

"We're seeing it in the general public," he said. "We're finding it all over the city."

The Dallas Independent School District police have recorded 357 drug-related cases districtwide between Aug. 15 and March 1. Of those, 78 involved cheese, district spokesman Donald Claxton said. He said he did not know which drugs the other cases involved.

Most of the cheese cases have occurred at northern Dallas campuses. The drug seems to be popular among Hispanic students, authorities said. The youngest user identified by DISD police was 13. The most potent form of the mixture found in Dallas contained 8 percent heroin, according to a Dallas school police bulletin sent to area law enforcement agencies.

Dallas police said they don't know the origin of the drug mixture, which is usually snorted.

DISD police circulated a bulletin about the drug to other law enforcement agencies last month but didn't send that information to central office administrators, parents or schools.

"We don't regard it as the No. 1 drug issue in the district, but we are obviously concerned about it," Mr. Claxton said. "We don't want to create a crisis or an alarm, but we want to make other law enforcement agencies aware of it, and alert kids who are experimenting with it of the dangers."

Teen found dead

Authorities believe the new drug may have contributed to the death of Karla Becerra, who was found dead Monday morning at her West Dallas home in the 3700 block of Canada Drive.

About 7:30 a.m. her father tried to wake Karla for school, according to a police report. When she didn't answer her locked bedroom door, he climbed in through a window and found her dead on her bed.

Witnesses told police that Karla, who was to graduate from Pinkston High School this year, had been doing cheese and drinking, according to a police report.

It will be about a month before the medical examiner determines what killed her.

"This is the first case we know of that this combination of drugs may have been taken and resulted in death," said Jeffrey Barnard, Dallas County's chief pathologist. "There was an indication that cheese is suspected, but potential alcohol consumption is suspected, too."

Isolating a cause of death may be difficult, Dr. Barnard said. "If you have both alcohol and heroin present, we might not be able to separate the effects because they are both respiratory depressants. We'll also have to look at the amounts."

Lois Jordan runs a drug counseling center in Dallas that offers rehabilitation programs for teens, and she aided several families that were caught up in the Plano heroin use in the late 1990s.

She said cheese sounds a lot like "a poor man's speedball," a mixture of cocaine and heroin. The cheap, easily obtained Tylenol PM can contain stimulants and could provide the "rush" associated with cocaine in a speedball, she said.

"It's a unique combination that could give a rush of an amphetamine combined with a floaty high of an opiate." She said the cheap cost of cheese – it's sold in small packages for between $2 and $10 – could entice young users.

"The marketing that these drug dealers put together is just phenomenal," she said. "They really know how to tantalize kids and [exploit] their risk factors."

Drugs that are cheap and accessible, she said, "will increase user experimentation," adding that kids who start using drugs at a young age are at greater risk of addiction.

While the mixture of heroin and Tylenol PM appears to be new, the moniker "cheese" is not. Drug dealers and users have long used the term for heroin and other drugs. For example, "macaroni and cheese" is slang for a $10 bag of cocaine and a $5 bag of marijuana.

Threat isn't fading

Chief Bernal said the Dallas Police Department has known about the new drug since around August.

"We didn't want to glamorize this," he said. "We initially wanted to keep this quiet, thinking it would go away. That didn't happen."

Authorities haven't said how potent the heroin is in the cheese they've found. The purity of different forms of heroin varies. Black tar heroin is about 30 to 34 percent pure. A more pure form of heroin that is commonly called "white China" is 80 percent pure or higher.

Police said cheese, even though it only has between 2 and 8 percent heroin, is still highly dangerous.

"Heroin is dangerous in any form and in any amount," Chief Bernal said. "Cheese has addictive properties just like regular heroin."

Staff writer Jennifer Emily contributed to this story.

[azsnowman]

There's a new "drug" (if you want to CALL it that) up here and it's spreading like wildfire..........

"RAID" bugspray They take Raid bugspray and spray it on aluminum foil, hook the foil to a car battery with jumper cables and within SECONDS it crystalizes, like METH and then they SMOKE IT

[James]

Geez, the potential for terrible health damage that carries just makes the mind boggle.

[Aquawind]

OMG..

[JonathanBelles]

yall are little slow at that idea... thats been going around st. pete for a year or two now

[O Town]

There's a new "drug" (if you want to CALL it that) up here and it's spreading like wildfire..........

"RAID" bugspray They take Raid bugspray and spray it on aluminum foil, hook the foil to a car battery with jumper cables and within SECONDS it crystalizes, like METH and then they SMOKE IT

That is just insane!!!!!!!!!! I used to some crazy things when I was younger, but I know I would have never smoked/snorted any bug spray. And the whole Tylenol PM thing has been going around here for a while. They are both scary, but that bug spray thing............I cringe to think my girls are going to be 8 next month, and are getting closer and closer to being exposed to all the craziness of drugs, I would kill them if I ever caught or thought they were doing either one of those things.

[azsnowman]

yall are little slow at that idea... thats been going around st. pete for a year or two now

What has?

[TexasStooge]

What has?

This drug craze that's happening in the Dallas schools. Of course, before this, I think they've used other methods.

[george_r_1961]

Geez when I was in school back in the 70's marijuana was the choice drug for teens. Not anymore. They are moving up to bigger stuff at an early age

[azsnowman]

Geez when I was in school back in the 70's marijuana was the choice drug for teens. Not anymore. They are moving up to bigger stuff at an early age

Amen Brother....and NOW, pot is the LEAST of our worries in law enforcement, pot's NO BIG deal anymore, most of the time it's a slap on the wrist, take their stash and a minor civil citation is written

[azsnowman]

Geez, the potential for terrible health damage that carries just makes the mind boggle.

I picked up a kid not too long ago walking down the street in a stage of TOTAL disarray, he had NO IDEA who he was, WHERE he was and WHAT he was doing..........first thought, "METH!" After he spent the night in lockup, talked to him and he admitted to smoking "RAID!" truly a sad world we live in now isn't it?

[Scorpion]

Geez...the ideas people come up with these days. How can someone be so stupid to smoke chemicals?

[Cookiely]

There's a new "drug" (if you want to CALL it that) up here and it's spreading like wildfire..........

"RAID" bugspray They take Raid bugspray and spray it on aluminum foil, hook the foil to a car battery with jumper cables and within SECONDS it crystalizes, like METH and then they SMOKE IT

Can anyone say Cirrhosis of the Liver, because aside from brain damage, this could be the consequence.

[george_r_1961]

There's a new "drug" (if you want to CALL it that) up here and it's spreading like wildfire..........

"RAID" bugspray They take Raid bugspray and spray it on aluminum foil, hook the foil to a car battery with jumper cables and within SECONDS it crystalizes, like METH and then they SMOKE IT

Can anyone say Cirrhosis of the Liver, because aside from brain damage, this could be the consequence.

With any inhalant theres also the risk of cardiac arrythmia. That is frequently fatal.

[Camille_2_Katrina]

do you call the people that use this drug "Cheese Heads"?

[SouthFloridawx]

do you call the people that use this drug "Cheese Heads"?

No as reserved by Green Bay Packer fans as it would be a serious insult to them... oh wait i'm not a packer fan. Go ahead call them cheese head I don't really care...





J/K

[TexasStooge]

do you call the people that use this drug "Cheese Heads"?

No as reserved by Green Bay Packer fans as it would be a serious insult to them... oh wait i'm not a packer fan. Go ahead call them cheese head I don't really care...





J/K

[GalvestonDuck]

do you call the people that use this drug "Cheese Heads"?

No as reserved by Green Bay Packer fans as it would be a serious insult to them... oh wait i'm not a packer fan. Go ahead call them cheese head I don't really care...





J/K

Considering what some Wisconsinites call us, yeah...let "cheesehead" ride.

[Trugunzn]

This artical sound like what is happening in my school. People everywhere are selling drugs.

[brunota2003]

Uh...RAID? are people crazy or just plain old stupid??? RAID is intended to kill...hey...it gets rid of the stupid/shallow genes though...that is crazy...with pot being the least worried about now...and the numbers that use RAID...whatever happened to good ol' common sense? has it been mostly killed off or what?