Area's heroin plentiful, cheap.

Byline: TRICIA SCHWENNESEN The Register-Guard

Eugene holds the No. 1 spot on a list of cities nationwide for the cheapest heroin on the street, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

The reasons: The illegal drug is abundant here and it is poor quality, Portland-based DEA spokesman Ken Magee said.

If there's a positive spin to the dubious distinction, it's that Eugene has recorded far fewer heroin overdoses than in recent years, and that's partly a result of the low potency of the heroin available here, Magee said.

The drug is going for $30 a gram in the Eugene-Springfield metro area - compared with $100 or more in other cities such as Seattle and San Diego that have higher-grade heroin and relatively smaller supplies, Magee said.

In Boise - at 157,000 people, a city about the size of Eugene - a gram was going for $250 to $300, he said. The price typically increases in places outside metropolitan areas because of transportation costs, he said.

Local police agree heroin is easy to find in Eugene.

"There are some areas of town where if you stand on the street corner and you look a little shady, you may have five or six people who ask you if you want to sell and another two or three who ask if you want to buy," Eugene police Sgt. Tom Eichhorn said.

The street-level dealers here are mostly selling Mexican tar heroin - a gummy brown substance that can be mixed with brown sugar, molasses, coffee or cocoa when heated, thus reducing its purity.

They usually sell it in quantities of an eighth or quarter of a gram or a whole gram, but sometimes sell single hits or "chips" for as little as $5.

Mexican manufacturers typically smuggle it into the country in cars and trucks, and deliver it along the Interstate 5 corridor along the West Coast.

"Eugene is the first major city in Oregon that it hits," Eichhorn said. "There is quite a bit of it here," though he noted that recent prices on the street were closer to $60 a gram.

A conservative estimate of heroin addicts in the Eugene area is between 2,000 and 3,000, he said.

The DEA periodically monitors large, medium and small cities nationwide to compare the cost, quality and quantities of heroin available, Magee said.

Purity levels have increased nationwide for the past decade, reaching about 57 percent pure in some areas.

In Eugene, purity levels average about 15 percent to 30 percent, Magee said. That has had a direct effect on the falling number of heroin overdoses, officials said.

Heroin addiction has plagued Eugene for the past five years with heroin-related overdoses peaking in 1999 with 34 deaths. Last year, the number of heroin-related deaths dropped to 20.

And from January through September this year, the number fell to 11 deaths attributed to heroin.

Although drug addiction specialists and law enforcement officials attribute the decline in part to better education, more treatment and a focused enforcement, they also cite the poor quality of the heroin.

"Users aren't as likely to overdose from it as they might from a more pure supply," said Lucy Zammarelli, senior manager at Willamette Family Treatment.