Cheese?

[Nukedsodapop 5,000+ posts]

By Catharine Skipp and Arian Campo-FloresNewsweek

May 21, 2007 issue - Nick Cannata finally seemed to be pulling his life together. A bright kid and talented artist, he had plunged into a spiral of drug use in his early teens after his parents' divorce—marijuana, cocaine, then methamphetamine. But after attending a drug-rehab program in the fall of 2004, he seemed cheerful and motivated. By early 2005, he was doing his homework, going out with a new girl and testing drug-free. "Everything was falling into place," says his father, Dave Cannata, who lives in Coppell, Texas, outside Dallas. Unbeknownst to Dave, however, Nick was likely taking a new, sometimes hard-to-detect drug concoction called "cheese"—a mixture of heroin and cold medication. One Saturday night in June that year, Nick, 16, came home from a party in an apparently altered state. Dave was worried, but decided to let his son sleep it off. The next day, when Nick failed to emerge from his room, Dave went in. "It was not pretty," he recalls. "He was already gone."

Nick is now one of the first fatalities believed to be linked to cheese. Cheap, addictive and often deadly, the new drug has spread virulently in the Dallas area. Since 2005, the year of the first confirmed cheese death, an estimated 21 people have died from the drug. Most of them were young, white or Hispanic males. Cheese arrests among students in the Dallas Independent School District jumped from 90 in the 2005-2006 school year to 145 so far in 2006-2007. The drug's surge in Dallas bucks the national trend in heroin consumption, which declined from 94,000 users age 12 to 17 in 2002 to 60,000 in 2005, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Now the Drug Enforcement Administration is worried that cheese will spread to other parts of the country. The agency is investigating a few possible cases, including one in California.

Cheese is made by grinding up cold medication and mixing it with black-tar heroin, which is typically smuggled in by Mexican drug cartels. A $30 purchase of heroin can yield 40 to 50 cheese hits, each costing about $2—more affordable for users and more profitable for mixers. The drug, which is snorted, derives its name from a supposedly Parmesan-like appearance, though in reality, it looks more like coarse sand. Because the amount of heroin in cheese is sometimes small—as little as 3 percent—the drug rarely shows up in field tests. But the heroin quantity can be inconsistent. "Kids will be scoring 3 percent and all of a sudden, they get 9 or 10 percent, and you are dead," says James Capra, Special Agent in charge of the DEA's Dallas field division.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the cheese phenomenon is the users' age. Dallas police have arrested kids as young as 12—and in one case, the Dallas school district nabbed an 11-year-old. In fact, dealers use the drug's inoffensive moniker to market it to youth, says Capra. "Put yourself in that kid's mind," he says. " 'It's got a funny name, and it's only a couple of bucks'." The users' youth also complicates treatment. "Cognitively, they don't understand consequences," says Michelle Hemm, director of the Phoenix Academy of Dallas, a residential treatment facility for teens that's seeing a growing number of cheese cases. "This age group is developmentally hard to deal with."

Authorities are responding aggressively. The DEA and Dallas police have arrested low-level dealers and say they're working on several investigations targeting suppliers higher up the trafficking chain. The cheese craze recalls a trend that nearby Plano witnessed in the 1990s, when users mixed heroin with sleep aids. But "in less than two years, Dallas has exceeded the number of deaths that took Plano five years to get to," says Jeremy Liebbe, a narcotics officer with the Dallas school district. Law enforcement eventually stamped out the Plano problem with a series of high-level busts. Residents in Dallas—and communities beyond—can only hope authorities are as successful this time around.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

Anyone heard of it?

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[tapout 5,000+ posts]

no, but thats not my scene.

 

[jmanpc 5,000+ posts]

I prefer cocoa puffs

 

[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

i prefer my cheese to either co-jack or jalapeno pepper jack

 

[Megalomaniac 5,000+ posts]

i've heard of it. A "friend" i know of OD'd from it the Wednesday before 4-20. She was pronounced dead for 30 min then the paramedics revived her back to life and hooked her up to Life support. then they pulled the plug due to her being a "vegetable"

 

[BassAce 10+ year member]

I prefer Provolone or pepper jack at subway

 

[Steven206Seattl 10+ year member]

I like velveeta cheese. I like Kool-aid. I dont like drugs.

 

[bigwheel15 10+ year member]

Yes, ive heard of it.

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

i prefer my cheese to either co-jack or jalapeno pepper jack

Same here.

nG

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

swiss ftmfw

 

[btnhfan 5,000+ posts]

Provolone ftw!

or smoked cheddar

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

mmmh

french dip with smoked cheddar and bacon.

 

[Steven206Seattl 10+ year member]

mmmh
french dip with smoked cheddar and bacon.

oh yeah thats good. i got some in my fridge right now.

 

[grassroots 10+ year member]

hm, wonder what kind of cold medication... and it seems to take a while to kill people if he got home from the party and then died in his sleep. not typical for heroin overdose... that cold medicine must have some wierd effect with opiates...

 

[cpierce 5,000+ posts]

Its some pretty bad stuff:fyi: I think it orginated around the DFW area. A lot of kids dying from it:crap: