When you become involved with this type of drug, it is like playing a game of Russian roulette. You will lose. Officer Jason Clarke, Ellsworth s school resource officer, attended a Maine Drug Enforcement Agency conference last week regarding the influx of heroin into the state. Marijuana has gone by the wayside. The drug has infiltrated the streets of Bangor and is making inroads in Ellsworth and Hancock County, Clarke said.
Users have two needles and they pass it around like a beer.
After displaying a variety of paraphernalia and even some drugs confiscated by police, Officer Clarke explained that it is difficult to apprehend dealers or users of heroin. Typically, he said, they don t carry the drugs with them or even use the drugs in their own homes. Furnishing charges can bring up to a 10-year sentence. In addition, if you bring heroin within 1,000 feet of a school or solicit someone under the age of 18, he added, the charge becomes more severe. But the consequences of heroin abuse are confined to jail time, as Mary Harney, an educator with Downeast Aids Network, explained to the students.