Imperial Valley : Heroin Use: Farm Area’s Sad Harvest

A cool, early morning mist is hovering over the lush fields in the sprawling Imperial Valley as thousands of stoop laborers who harvest the valley’s crops begin their workday. And in this dusty town--bordered by vegetable fields on three sides and Mexico on the other--a heroin addict is preparing her first fix of the day.

The unkempt woman in her early 30s is sitting inside a boxcar normally used to transport the valley’s produce to other parts of the state. While a male companion stands guard at the door, the woman puffs up her face until a vein on the left side of the neck bulges. Then, with the aid of a mirror, she injects a liquefied tar ball of heroin--50% to 70% pure--into her neck.

In this rural and isolated valley where pesticides, technology and imported water have turned the desert into a cornucopia, heroin addiction is as common as the produce and cotton fields that are planted patchwork-style throughout the county. “People come from all over the world to see the farming miracles here,” said one Brawley addict. “They call it a valley of agriculture, but it’s really a valley of hypes.”

5% May Be Addicts

According to local and state officials, Imperial County--population about 100,000--may have 5,000 heroin addicts, 5% of the county’s population. Robert L. Jackson, deputy director of the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, said the total number of addicts could be even higher.

Police estimate that about 1,000 addicts live in Brawley, population 15,000 and situated at about the center of the county.

Some law enforcement officials believe that Imperial County has the highest per-capita heroin use in the state. However, these same officials admit that it is difficult to determine the exact number of addicts in the state. Instead, they use a variety of criminal and health statistics to attempt to estimate their numbers.

Highest Burglary Rate

The heavy use of the drug is reflected in the county’s burglary rate. In 1984 Imperial County had the highest burglary rate in the state, higher than urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco. (According to the latest figures available to the state Bureau of Criminal Statistics, Imperial County had 2,441 burglaries per 100,000 population. By comparison, Los Angeles County’s rate was 1,884, San Francisco 1,868, and San Diego County 1,430.)

In the Imperial Valley, economics, geography and culture contribute to the popularity of heroin. The county’s proximity to Mexico makes the drug readily available. The unemployment rate exceeds 40% during the summer months. Addicts interviewed by The Times said the 100-plus-degree temperatures in the summer force people indoors, where boredom leads to heroin use.

All of these factors have made heroin addiction so prevalent in Imperial County that not even the families of law enforcement officials can escape the problem.

In November, Daniel Wallace, the son of a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was recently transferred out of the Imperial Valley, was sentenced to 11 years in state prison for killing a woman in a dispute over heroin. A brother of slain DEA agent Enrique (Kiki) Camarena, who was reared in Calexico, was a patient at a local methadone clinic that treats heroin addicts, according to Imperial County Sheriff Oren Fox.

“His brother’s addiction was a major reason why Kiki joined the Narcotics Task Force and DEA,” Fox said. “Kiki hated drugs. He saw what they had done to his family and friends.”

Because the county’s population is 56% Latino and 38% white, heroin addiction used to be widely viewed as affecting mainly Latino families in the valley. Today the problem apparently cuts across all ethnic and economic lines.

“You’d be surprised how many Johnnys and Judys from well-to-do families are hooked on heroin,” said Steve, a heroin addict who comes from a wealthy agricultural family. “But most of them, like one of my cousins, are sent to clinics outside of the county to clean up.”

‘Devil’s Food’

Steve, who agreed to be interviewed on condition that only his first name be used, gently shook his head and talked recently about the “devil’s food” that has consumed his life for 16 years.

The brawny farmer’s son was 17 when he began injecting twice a week. But after five months of “chipping,” or occasional use, he witnessed a shocking metamorphosis. “The junk was feeding on me. I couldn’t live without it, and it was eating me up,” he said. A twice-a-week habit grew into a $250-a-day need that eventually cost him his firefighter’s job.

After losing his job, Steve said that he took his $30,000 share from the sale of a family feedlot and “fed my habit for a couple of months.”

“I couldn’t believe that I had become a heroin addict, using a needle. My mother and father are well-to-do and well-known throughout the valley. I’ve put them through hell, dragging our name through the papers, publicizing my addiction to the world,” he said.

Steve was interviewed recently at the Methadone Clinic of Imperial Valley in Calexico, where he goes every morning for a dose of methadone. The methadone is supposed to quench an addict’s craving for heroin, and Steve told a visitor that the drug seems to be helping him.

“But the addiction is an illness that will not go away,” he said.

Hands Shook

Early the next morning, Steve came in for his daily methadone dose, hands shaking and looking disheveled. After drinking the drug in a glass of Tang, he hurried out to his parked car, where he keeps his “unit”--a syringe and “cooker.”

Hurriedly, he “cooked” a tiny ball of heroin--the size of a BB pellet--in a recipe teaspoon over a cigarette lighter, sucked it into the syringe and calmly shot it into his arm. The injection, which can be as much as 70% pure heroin, took care of the shakes as he leaned back in the seat, a puzzled and contented look on his face.

Twenty-five miles away in Brawley, a 34-year-old addict who lost her access to the drug when her common-law husband and dealer was jailed, explained how the need to inject heroin as often as six times a day forced her into prostitution. The woman, a farm worker’s daughter, said she has been an addict for 18 years.

At 8:30 a.m. she was already walking up and down the seedy 900 block of East Main, waving at the truckers who barrel through town. Because of her addiction, the woman’s seven children have been placed in foster homes by the state. She said she feeds her habit by turning tricks at $20 or more among the endless stream of truckers who drive through on Highway 78.

Wide-Ranging Problem

“Many government and law enforcement officials here are still picturing this as a brown problem, but the addiction is now found in all families--white, brown, rich and poor,” said Sy Mejia, 71, who has been director of the valley’s only methadone clinic for 11 years. A former heroin addict, Mejia has been “clean” for 26 years.

During its 11 years of operation the clinic has treated 750 addicts, said Dr. Amalia Katsigeanis, founder of the clinic. A satellite clinic in Brawley closed last year when state and federal funds dried up. Using a combination of limited data obtained from local law enforcement and health officials and interviews with addicts in the methadone program, Mejia, Katsigeanis and Rudy Lopez, newly hired head of the Imperial County Mental Health Department, estimate that about 5,000 of the county’s residents are heroin addicts.

“We don’t think that we’ve even scratched the surface,” Mejia said. “Addicts don’t like to fix alone. You figure that for every one who seeks treatment there are at least two who stay away. And I’m being kind by saying there are two who stay away. My experience here tells me there’s a lot more staying away. . . . We’re treating the second generation of addicts who come from the same family.”

Dispute Over Statistics

While there is widespread agreement that there is a serious heroin problem in the Imperial Valley, there is considerable disagreement about the statistics.

Sheriff Fox believes that the number of addicts in Imperial County is only about 400 to 500 and said that reports of 5,000 addicts are “greatly exaggerated.”

“My best estimate is about 400 to 500 solid hard-core addicts. . . . When we’re talking about hard-core addicts, we’re not talking about anything near (5,000). As far as ‘toppers,’ people who use occasionally and who aren’t addicted to heroin, you’ll have many more of those,” Fox said.

Using a variety of data obtained from throughout the state, including heroin arrest records, overdose deaths, emergency room admissions and reported cases of hepatitis B, state officials estimate that there are 125,000 heroin addicts in California. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that there are 500,000 heroin addicts in the United States.

In a 1982 state study covering the years 1978 to 1981, Imperial County ranked 19th among 33 counties reporting problems with heroin abuse. Imperial was the highest-ranked county with less than 100,000 population.

Poor Record-Keeping

John O. Green, a Seal Beach consultant to the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Abuse who authored the 1982 study, said, “They could have been much higher. Their history of record-keeping is so poor that there’s probably a ton of data that’s under-reported. I want to stress that there really is a lot of under-reporting down there.”

As an example, Green said that from 1978 to 1980 Imperial County reported no narcotics-related deaths to the state Bureau of Criminal Statistics.

Lopez, who became head of the county Mental Health Department in January, said, “We’re going to have to start again in this county at ground zero. I don’t have a data base readily available. . . . And we need these figures to fight for our share of the drug money in Sacramento.”

Everyone familiar with the heroin problem in Imperial County cites the easy availability of the drug in neighboring Mexico as a main reason why the county has struggled with heroin addiction for five decades. According to law enforcement officials, brown Mexican heroin of the type found in the valley was probably introduced here before it appeared in U.S. urban areas. They say that in the 1920s and 1930s opium was commonly used by the Chinese railroad workers, who introduced the drug locally.

Sharp Increase Noted

Sheriff Fox said that county law enforcement officials began to notice a sharp increase in heroin use 18 months ago when the heroin traffic from across the border took an upturn.

Steve and other addicts and dealers interviewed said that traffickers often use dirt bikes to bring the drug across the rarely patroled border. A customs agent said that U.S. officials know about the dirt bikes and “all of the traffickers’ neat tricks,” but customs and DEA do not have the manpower “to even begin stemming the flow.”

“Remember, no matter if the stuff goes north to L.A., Fresno or whatever, most of the stuff passes through the valley first,” said a 32-year-old dealer and addict in Brawley. The tall, bearded man said, “The stuff that passes through here is not cut like the junk you buy in L.A. I guess you could say that we get our pick of the best stuff as it passes through here. . . .”

Some also blame the county’s isolation. For the most part, towns like El Centro and Brawley are nothing more than quick stops for truckers and tourists who pass through on Interstate 8 and vacationers who travel on Highway 78 on weekend excursions to the Colorado River. Both highways are main east-west arteries.

“There isn’t much to do around here and there’s a lot of poverty,” said Imperial County Supervisor Luis Legaspi. “If you’re young and don’t have a job, well, young people tend to gravitate to other young people, and pretty soon they find someone who has the stuff.”

Addicts interviewed for this story also cited boredom as a reason for turning to heroin. The addicts said these feelings are particularly acute during the summer, when the searing desert heat forces many local residents to remain indoors.

“Try spending a month out here, when the temperature is 110 degrees every day . . . with nothing to do,” said one addict, “and see how long you can go before chipping. You start by chipping, then you’re hooked.”

In Brawley, police are hard-pressed by the heroin problem. Bob Flores, the city’s sole narcotics cop, knows many of the addicts and all of them know Flores or know about him. Recently he took a reporter on a drive through town, pointing out “shooting galleries” (places where addicts go to fix), addicts and dealers like a guided tour of the stars’ homes in Beverly Hills.

‘Like a Shopping Center’

“If you go to that house at a certain time in the evening, the place looks like a shopping center. The guy is from Mexicali and came here with 200 grams of heroin. I’ve been told by the hypes that it’s pretty good stuff and the guy probably has the best dope in the valley,” Flores said.

Some dealers and addicts talked openly with a newspaper reporter while Flores listened.

Flores said a quarter-gram of the heroin, which is sold in balloons or foil, goes for about $25. While tar can be 50% to 70% pure, the powdered heroin usually runs about 40% pure, he said. The powdered heroin sold on the streets of Los Angeles, by contrast, is usually 10% pure, according to law enforcement officials who testified last month in San Diego before the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.

Tar heroin comes in BB-sized pellets, which are dark and gummy and are shaped from the residue left over when morphine is extracted from poppy seeds by boiling the seeds in water and solvents. The heroin powder is obtained when the gummy residue is dried.

No individual or group controls heroin trafficking in the valley, Flores said, and there are few incidents of drug violence. A few years ago the Mexican Mafia, a prison gang, tried to muscle its way into the heroin traffic here, but the man they sent down from Stockton was found shot to death in a canal, he said.

Gloomy Prediction

Supervisor Legaspi said that the addiction rate is so high that some officials have all but given up hope that heroin usage can ever be controlled.

“You reach the point where you wonder if you’re ever going to see a solution. . . . The county has spent quite a bit of state and federal funds on the methadone program, and we don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. . . . There are some people who say that we do have a problem. But what can you do about it? Nothing. . . . A lot of them are frustrated and couldn’t figure out what to do about it. So they downplay it,” Legaspi said.

The methadone clinic is seen by some critics as an example of the county’s limited and futile efforts to deal with heroin addiction. The clinic is owned by Katsigeanis and contracts with the county for methadone services. It relies heavily on state money channeled through the county.

A Department of Alcohol and Drug Abuse official in Sacramento, who did not want to be identified, criticized the county for filling only 74 of the 150 slots in the methadone program. The official blamed the county’s “woeful lack of sophistication” in administering drug-abuse programs.

“My God, you’ve got at least 5,000 hard-core addicts down there and only 150 slots. How in the world do they expect to control the problem?” he said.

Sharp Cutbacks Blamed

Mejia and Katsigeanis blame the low turnout on sharp cutbacks in public financing and the $135 monthly fee they are forced to charge addicts. Most addicts do not have jobs, they said, and all of the slots were filled when public financing allowed them to charge only 50 cents a day to the addicts in the program.

Legaspi agreed that the county’s drug abuse programs have been ineffective, but said that the Board of Supervisors is relying heavily on Lopez’s experience and ability as an administrator to turn the program around. Lopez formerly worked as an administrator with San Diego County’s drug abuse program.

“I have to agree that our programs have not been very sophisticated. . . . They were sorely lacking in details and specifics,” Legaspi said. “But until now we’ve never had a mental health director who has gone after the money that’s available in Sacramento. We have to prove first that we know what to do with the money and then ask for more.”