Crime & Safety

In La Grange and La Grange Park Heroin Arrests Aren't Increasing

In two articles last week, The Doings took a look at heroin in the western suburbs.

Two articles published in The Doings last week took a look at the prevalence of heroin abuse in the Western Suburbs.

, The Doings' Jane Michaels reported that police chiefs in La Grange and La Grange Park both said they don't get many arrests for heroin in our two villages. La Grange Park police chief Dan McCollum suggested that if the towns were closer to the Eisenhower Expressway, both communities might see more of it. However, La Grange Police Chief Michael Holub said he believed 45 percent of crimes like theft and burglary are drug related.

In a second article, Micheals reported on the outreach efforts of organizations like the Robert Crown Center to address the, "increasing heroin threat in the western suburbs." The center said that heroin users in its survey were reported to believe that snorting the drug was less likely to lead to addition. Participants ranged from 22-31. LT officials reported they had not seen an increase in the use of the drug at the high school.

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The Doings isn't the only area paper reporting on the issue. In March, the Chicago Tribune reported on the overdose death of a Naperville teen. about the mother of an Oak Park River Forest High School teen who believes her son's death last month was due to a heroin overdose.

A 2010 study by Roosevelt University found that heroin use in the Chicago area "is more extreme than anywhere else in the country. And young suburbanites are a primary reason," the study reported.

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