Word: heroines
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...bathroom of a Harlem tenement, Walter Vandermeer died last week from a dose of heroin. Some 800 others have died in New York City this year from the same cause, including more than 200 teenagers. What sets Walter's death apart is the fact that he was only twelve years old- the youngest child on record to die from heroin in the city. John Schoonbeck of TIME'S New York bureau had worked with Walter as a counselor at Manhattan's Floyd Patterson House, a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children. Schoonbeck wrote this report...
...coroner who examined Walt found scar tissue under the skin of the boy's arm, indicating that he had shot heroin before. There was no evidence of the needle tracks common to hardcore addicts. Still, Walter weighed only 80 lbs.; so a double injection of heroin -the suspected dosage-would have been enough to depress his breathing and kill him. Was he deliberately given too powerful a dose? Maybe he had threatened a pusher, many of whom are his own age. Or did he perhaps know exactly what he was doing...
...thing is certain-Walt had no trouble getting the stuff. Take a ride down 116th Street sometime; see the pushers openly peddling heroin to young blacks for $2 a bag. If you go on a mild gray day, you will see doped youngsters nodding listlessly in doorways. This was Walt's Main Street; it was all he ever knew...
...found on the bathroom floor of a neighborhood rooming house, he was wearing one of those Snoopy sweatshirts so popular with kids of his age. It bore the inscription: "I wish I could bite somebody ... I need a release from my inner tensions!" It was not just heroin that killed Walter. Maybe, like many another child born black in the ghetto, he died of his whole life...
...However, smugglers began bringing in opium from Turkey and Afghanistan, and the number of addicts rose to 250,000 in 1968. As a result, the government last July prescribed death by firing squad for anyone convicted of possessing more than two kilograms of opium or ten grams of heroin, morphine or cocaine. Another eight men are scheduled to be executed this week, and at least 50 more are being held...