Say Cheese

by Laura Irons

There is a new drug being targeted at youth called “Cheese”. It is affecting kids as young as elementary and middle school. It’s a brown powder and is considered to lead to other street drugs, like heroine and cocaine. It has made a name with high school kids across the country. It is made by combining Tylenol PM with heroine. Considered cheap and affordable for most kids, some use it at school for one sniff to get a high, while others are found sniffing it from empty ballpoint pen casings. According to Wikipedia, “Cheese may contain a 2% to 8% heroin purity level; an 8% purity level is, in some cases, enough to start an addiction in a user of Cheese. The powder is snorted instead of being injected.

One tenth of a gram, which is one "hit", costs only $2 on the black market. One quarter gram costs $5,” so it is easy to see how they are targeting kids and getting them hooked due to the low cost of the drug.

It is so highly addictive that the withdrawal symptoms start to appear as early as six hours after use. Because it is so cheap, parents now have to seek drug rehab for their kids.

One Dallas treatment center said its normal age range for drug rehab clients was 15- 17 years old. Now that Cheese is on the street, they say they are getting kids admitting themselves into treatment, along with parental requests for treatment in children as young as 11-13 years old. It has already claimed the life of a 15-year-old middle school student, and 18 others as well.

Dallas Independent School District (DISD) has already had over 75 cases of Cheese on school campus that have been caught. This does not include the ones they don’t catch, or the ones that kids do when they are at home or at parties. Many kids have died on their first try, without being addicted or ever having used Cheese. This new street drug is a killer and they are targeting the children and the youth.

The problem is becoming wide spread across the country. It surfaced on the streets in 2005. It initially started in Dallas but has now moved on to the rest of the country. Authorities say that the heroine is being smuggled over the border and falling into the hands of teenagers. They buy the tar-heroine off the street, lace it with Tylenol PM, and then sell it at school.

It’s not a far leap from being addicted to Cheese to being addicted to heroine, since Cheese is up to 8% heroine. It has been labeled “Starter Heroine” by police. The symptoms of Cheese usage are euphoria, disorientation, lethargy, sleepiness and hunger. With something this cheap and easy to get, it’s no wonder kids as young as 11 are getting hooked on it.

It is a growing problem. Arrests for possession of the drug have jumped up 80% this year alone, and the drug has caused a 600% jump in heroine addiction. So far, the dealers' handiwork – a powder known to be snorted in school bathrooms or in the backs of classrooms – has resulted in about 200 criminal cases against students from Marsh and Cary middle schools and W.T. White, North Dallas and Thomas Jefferson high schools in Texas.

“There's nothing new about marketing drugs to kids,” experts say. Years ago, a similar product was called "Chiva," a mixture of heroin and brown sugar. “Like cheese, Chiva was particularly popular in largely Hispanic communities,” recalled Phil Jordan, the former head of the Dallas Drug Enforcement Administration office. "In the end, cheese is nothing more than heroin, and heroin is heroin, is heroin," he said. "Drug pushers are no different than advertisers. They're constantly looking for new ways to market their poison, and so now they call it Cheese. But it's the same old garbage, different name and deadlier,” as Jordan reported in the Dallas Morning News.

Heroine is being thrown at kids in different ways and has been for many, many years. Still very few people do anything to stop the problem. Some officials deny that Cheese is a growing trend, and there isn’t much information available to kids about why it’s dangerous, or how they could die on their first use of the drug. One Dallas news station reported that some drug pushers are adding Nestle’s Strawberry drink mix into the Cheese in order to lure a younger crowd with “strawberry flavored Cheese”.

Cheese is not an original drug mix, though. Last year there was a scare with Pepto Bismol mixed with liquid ecstasy, which was called “Pickles”, and supposedly there’s a new drug about to hit the streets, a mixture of flour, methamphetamines, and oatmeal, called “Sesame Seed Bun”.

So my word of advice to my teen audience and their family is to be cautious and aware. This is a deadly drug. Don’t do it. It will kill you. You may never have a second chance.

Your first use of Cheese just may be your last use and your last breath.