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After 18 months on the job, district Judge Blaise Larotonda said he has noticed a disturbing trend -- an increase in drug related crime involving heroin.

"It's scary," Larotonda told Mt. Lebanon commissioners recently. "A majority of the time these cases involve kids between the ages of 18 to 22. Most of them are begging to quit, but can't. Once you start, you're a slave to the drug."

Commissioners had requested the assessment from Larotonda's, who served 25 years as a Mt. Lebanon police officer before being elected the district judge serving Mt. Lebanon and Dormont.

Marijuana and underage drinking are some of the other significant problems he sees in his courtroom, Larotonda said. He estimates that about 20 percent of the drug-related cases he hears involve heroin.

Mt. Lebanon police Lt. Ken Truver said most drug arrests are more for possession of small amounts of marijuana and paraphernalia than for large quantities of controlled substances.

He said of the 884 arrests in 2004, 134 were for drugs -- up 48 from 2003.

Truver said the non-drug arrests -- such as vending machine break-ins, retail theft, burglaries and car break-ins -- do not specify which ones were committed to get money to buy drugs, but Officer Mike Welsh of the Mt. Lebanon Crime Prevention Unit indicated that could be the case.

"That is typical of someone who needs money fast," Welsh said. "We have some increase in retail arrests and we're tying more crime into drugs as well."

The 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that in 2003, 12,000 youths between the ages of 12 and 17 had used heroin at least once in the past year, compared with 13,000 in 2002. Among the general population age 12 and older, 314,000 had used annually in 2003, compared with 404,000 in 2002.

"Remarkably, it seems that heroin use is almost identical among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders," said Kevin A. Sabet of Oxford University in England who was a senior drug policy speechwriter in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. "It is estimated that 1 percent of those kids used heroin in the last month."

Commissioner Barbara Logan asked Larotonda what the commissioners could to help.

"Try to keep kids busy," Larotonda said, citing examples such as making improvements to the ice rink and providing more ball fields. "Kids get in the most trouble when they have idle and unsupervised time."

He said parents must take responsibility.

"Half of the parents who come through the courtroom have no idea where their kids are, who they are with and what they are doing," he said.

Larotonda said some parents do make an effort to prevent their children from getting in more trouble by doing such things as grounding their children, taking away their licenses, and in some situations, their cars.

"This could happen to any of our kids," he said. "You could be the best parent in the world and things could still happen. It's how you handle the situation after it happens that counts."

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