Students are Saying Cheese - But Nobody is Smiling; They're Dying

[renegades]

Dallas Latino Middle School Students are Saying Cheese - But Nobody is Smiling; They're Dying


The emails started coming this past Monday: "Latino kids being targeted. Please help. Get involved."

That was the gist of a city-wide campaign in Dallas spearheaded by Latino community leaders when they heard the news of a 15-year-old Latino student, Oscar Gutierrez, who died last weekend after a long struggle with drug use.


Oscar Gutierrez

The police say he died from snorting a concoction of heroin and Tylenol PM known to kids as "cheese," — he was the fourth death in the past year in Dallas attributed to the deadly mixture.

Cheese is made by crushing heroin and Tylenol PM together and typically folded into notebook paper. A quarter-gram sells for $5 and a single hit usually sells for $2 — very affordable for kids with lunch money.


Heroin cut with Tylenol PM makes a powder drug dealers call "cheese."
(Source: Dallas Independent School District)

From Monday through Friday, momentum grew within the Latino community as news slowly trickled out from the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) that there were 200 criminal cases against mostly Hispanic students, at five Hispanic-dominant middle schools and high schools, who had been caught with cheese.

Concerned Latino parents met at local restaurants to learn about the drug, Hispanic community leaders appeared on radio morning shows at urban music stations popular with kids to talk about it — and parents and community leaders were getting fed up that their children's own school district seem to be dragging their feet to do anything.

As one mother wrote on a Dallas Hispanic community listserve:

My daughter is now in a rehab clinic because of this drug (cheese). One of her friends died two weeks ago, and yet, nobody is doing anything about it. They are getting kicked out of school but nobody is doing anything to attack the root. I understand it was her choice, and that is what we are working at but the drugs are "ridiculously" available everywhere, especially inside the schools, where they are supposed to be studying.
Maria

On Spanish-language news, the spokesperson for DISD, Celso Martinez, said that DISD was in the business of educating students, not treating drug use. They said the most the school district could do was refer students to treatment centers.

No one asked for the school district to act as treatment centers, but to get involved and to care about the welfare of their students.

According to local drug treatment centers, it was about 18 months ago that they first started seeing kids coming in for treatment for snorting cheese.

In April 2006, a Dallas television station first reported on the drug and its popularity among young kids.

So, the question remains to be asked: why didn't school district officials move before being forced by the community?

It wasn't until the Latino community leaders started making a lot more ruido (noise) that it attracted the attention of U.S. Texas Senator John Cornyn who brought the subject up in a meeting he had come into Dallas for with North Texas law enforcement officers about sharing ideas on gang initiatives.

As a result of the Latino community's efforts this week, it's come to light that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is now sharing intelligence about the local heroin trade and drug testing equipment with Dallas schools' police investigators.

And the school district has decided this week to set up a bilingual drug hotline next Monday.

And though some would like to think the big drug cartels of Mexico are orchestrating this addiction crisis, DEA agents say thre is no evidence of that. What is painfully clear is that cheese is being made by Latino students, some gang members, and being sold to their homeboys and homegirls.

It's been reported that some of the student dealers threaten to beat up kids if they don't try it. Talk about extreme bullies.

It may have reached epidemic proportions in Dallas now, but chances are other Latino students across the nation may either already have cheese on their campuses or will soon.

Since it's mostly a Latino-generated and distributed drug, it's an issue that Latino parents and community leaders must educate ourselves about and remain vigilant.

Kids addicted to cheese:

Are sleepy and have trouble waking up.
They're disoriented.
They have personality shifts, possible aggressive behavior or their grades are dropping.
They also could have flu-like symptoms, nausea, vomiting and anxiety from withdrawl.

The symptoms could mimic a host of different things, and kids will never be straight when asked if they're taking/snorting anything.

So, the job becomes especially harder.

But it's worth it, if mijo/mija are going to have any kind of future at all.

*** snorting Tylenol PM. Gee what some people will do to get a buzz.
Does not sound like something swim would try. $2 a buzz, this sounds like a bad trend and have always believed that you need to be at least 18 before doing drugs. If you live with your parents don't even think of doing it, it will freak them out if they ever caught you. You would be in a 30 day inpatient detox center so fast you won't even have time for a cig and a wiz.

[meep]

Vote for most morbid Thread title ever.
Sounds like a kid fad, like pogs or something. Shame its $2 a go.

[Alicia]

cheese.. *Alicia takes a picture* lol..

[renegades]

Just keeping you informed of new drug trends, so when someone at a party asks you if you want to do some cheese, you'll know what he/she is talking about.

[snapper]

SWIM thought from the title maybe some moldy cheese mutated into a psychedelic / narcotic fungus.
The tylenol PM has an antihistamine in it (bendaryl?) which would boost the effects of the heroin and cut down the dose.

[Nagognog2]

Yes - diphenhydramine (Benadryl). Cut down on the amount of heroin (expenive) to make widdle Joey & Suzy sleep through a'nudder skewl day.

If anyone threatened to beat up my kid if they didn't try it...

[zera]

Originally Posted by Nagognog2

If anyone threatened to beat up my kid if they didn't try it...

I don't know if you've clicked on the link with regards to this, but apparently unsubstantiated gossip from a teenage girl constitutes journalistic fact when it comes to drug scare sensationalism.

[Nagognog2]

Oh yeah. That's why I doubted the whole scarroristic story. Has a hollow-ring to it of Murdochian BS.

[renegades]

Man in custody may be key supplier for 'cheese' dealers
Heroin found could yield 43,000 hits of drug

08:46 AM CST on Friday, March 2, 2007
By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
jtrahan@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...e.37f8707.html
Authorities on Thursday arrested a man thought to be a major heroin supplier to the teens who mix and peddle "cheese," a combination of heroin and Tylenol PM that has killed at least four students.
Authorities say that the $14,000 worth of black tar heroin found inside the apartment and vehicle of Martin Ramirez Laguna, 31, could be used to make about 43,000 hits of cheese. At $2 each, that's could yield about $90,000 on the street.

Martin Ramirez Laguna Although authorities found no cheese or Tylenol PM in Mr. Laguna's apartment, they believe they have broken one link in the cheese supply chain – which originates in Mexico.
Mr. Laguna's apartment – which also contained $87,000 in cash, three pistols and cocaine – is on Dennis Road, near Forest and Josey lanes. It's near four of the five northwest Dallas schools where the drug has taken significant hold in recent months. At least four students are thought to have died by overdosing on cheese within the past year.
"The information we got from people we arrested [for possession and dealing of cheese] led indirectly back up to this person," said Deputy Chief Gary Hodges of the Dallas Independent School District police.
He said it's hard to assess the significance of the bust on the overall cheese problem. "Since we don't know how big the supply is and how many suppliers there are, all we can say is we hope that this will put a significant dent in the supply," he said.
Also Online
Parents' guide to 'cheese': Information, stories and video
Mr. Laguna was arrested Wednesday night by a team of Dallas police narcotics and gang unit officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents acting on intelligence supplied in part by DISD police. Authorities said they happened upon Mr. Laguna unexpectedly while searching for one of his lower-level dealers in northwest Dallas.
When Dallas gang officers pulled him over just before 10 p.m. in the 3000 block of Modella Avenue, police found less than $1,000 worth of heroin in his car and about $4,300 in cash. After getting a search warrant and entering his apartment about 4 a.m. Thursday, they found about three-quarters of a pound of heroin.
"I'd call him a significant heroin dealer," said James Capra, special agent in charge of the DEA's Dallas office, which is working with the DISD and Dallas police. "We think that this will lead us to the people dealing to these kids."
Cheese was first discovered in Dallas schools about two years ago, although its chemical composition closely mirrors the Plano heroin outbreak about a decade ago.
In Dallas, the drug has caught on fast, resulting in about 200 criminal possession cases filed against students.
While the heroin is imported, cheese is homegrown, mixed mostly by Hispanic teenagers – including many gang members – who tend to distribute it to their peers in neighborhood campuses, police say.
The problem in Dallas is mostly confined to Marsh and Cary middle schools and W.T. White, North Dallas and Thomas Jefferson high schools, but there are scattered reports of its use elsewhere in the district and in some suburbs.
Some Dallas teens are consuming the drug in the backs of classrooms, in bathrooms or elsewhere on campus, authorities have said.
Most teenage cheese dealers are also addicts. Kids high on drugs trying to mix correct dosages make the drug particularly dangerous to those who snort it.
Many cheese users have told police and counselors that they've never tried drugs before and weren't even aware that cheese contained drugs.

*** Wonder if the police asked Mr. Laguna to say cheese when they took his picture.

[stoneinfocus]

Yeah, cheese , Casomorphines, a hell-trip of enkephaline and endorphine derived peptide-drug-holocaust, triggered by the ingestion of cheese and subsequent hydrolysis of the amino acids in the stomach.

I´ve seen a lot of children, eating cheese, wrapped in bread, and when they´re asked about it, they just they, they didn´t know what we are talking about.They´re not straight, maybe even gay.

I know it might have been their choice, maybe they were forced to consume it, but what I don´t understand is, why it´s so widely available, why not fix the problem at its roots?

I can see openly feeding of cows, although no bread involved, this has to be one major part of the cheese-connection.

[Nagognog2]

Communist Toe-Jam! It's worse than Moslems, Goddamnit! We must protect our precious bodily fluids! Percy! Percy! Fetch my B-29! We're going back to Japan and finish this once and for all! And this time there will be no suicide in the bathroom!

(see the movie Doctor Stranglove if you haven't yet)