Yardena Schwartz
NBC News

Chicago Police Capt. John Roberts never thought that moving to the suburbs would mean that his 14-year-old son Billy would immediately be introduced to drugs. And never did he ever imagine that Billy, a high school athlete, would even think of touching heroin.

After 33 years in the Chicago Police Department, Roberts was finally ready to retire. He couldn’t wait to move his family out to the suburbs, where he thought his kids would live in a safer environment, attend better schools and be sheltered from some of the ugly realities of city life.

But after growing addicted to prescription painkillers, Billy and his friends could no longer afford their habit. They soon turned to heroin, which they could buy for a tenth of the price of their favorite pill, Oxycontin. Billy was 19 when he died of a heroin overdose, but he wasn’t the only one of his friends to suffer that fate.

At first, Roberts couldn’t believe what was happening to his family , and that heroin could affect a good kid like Billy. But then he realized he wasn’t alone.  

Across the country, heroin use is growing at an alarming rate and is affecting a surprising segment of the population.

“Kids in the city know not to touch it, but the message never got out to the suburbs,” said Roberts, who founded the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization to help other families cope with the shock of teen heroin use. Like most parents in upper-middle class neighborhoods, Roberts said, “We didn’t think it would ever be a problem out here.”

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, initiations to heroin have increased 80 percent among 12- to 17-year-olds since 2002. In 2009, the most recent year for which national data is available, 510 young adults between the ages of 15 and 24 died of a heroin overdose. That figure was just 198 in 1999, meaning that the rate of young adult deaths caused by heroin more than doubled in one decade. Close to 90 percent of teen heroin addicts are white, data show.

Crackdown on painkiller abuse fuels new wave of heroin addiction

“Part of the problem is they don’t realize how bad it is,” said Roberts. “After Billy used it a few times, he thought he was OK, because he didn’t seem like a junkie.”

The biggest problem seems to be the connection between prescription painkillers and heroin. The opiate high that teens seek from drugs such as Oxycodone (the actual drug contained in OxyContin brand pills) may also be obtained from heroin, which is much cheaper, easier to buy, and offers users a more intense high.

“It’s hard to talk about the heroin problem without talking about the prescription drug problem,” notes Rafael Lemaitre, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Given new research on skyrocketing prescription drug abuse, the link between opioid pills and heroin is even more alarming. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths from prescription drugs tripled nationwide between 2000 and 2008. In a recent national survey on teen drug abuse conducted by the University of Michigan, one in eight high school seniors admitted to using prescription painkillers they weren’t prescribed. Overall, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, drug overdose (from both prescription and non-prescription drugs) is now the leading cause of accidental deaths in the United States. Officials fear that the over-prescription of powerful painkillers and the lack of awareness about the danger associated with them could continue to fuel the problem.

“Kids are going to believe that this is not a problem, and parents are going to continue to leave their prescription opioids unattended if they don’t know about the risks,” said Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Department of Health and Human Services.

While marijuana has historically been the usual suspect, prescription pain killers are now becoming the latest and most dangerous gateway drugs.

In dozens of interviews with former young heroin addicts, NBC News found that every single heroin user had arrived at shooting up the same way: starting with expensive prescription drugs, which they purchased from friends for $20-$60. When they became too addicted to afford pills, they listened to friends who told them they could get a better, cheaper high if they used heroin instead. For $3-$10 a bag, they said, they started off by snorting the drug, never thinking that they would end up injecting it. Most of them started shooting up within weeks.

Alyssa Dedrick was an honor roll student from a nice Boston suburb, and her high school’s cheerleading captain, until she discovered Oxycontin. When she and her friends could no longer afford the pills, they tried smoking heroin. Dedrick, now 23 and fully recovered, never imagined she would ever try the drug, let alone plan on injecting it. She said she just wanted to see what it was like, but within a week she was putting a needle in her arm.

Chris O’Connor grew up in a loving Catholic family in a wealthy Boston suburb. His father works in commercial real estate, his mother is a homemaker. For a while, O’Connor was able to hide the fact that he was driving to the city on a regular basis to score heroin from dealers on the street. He earned excellent grades in high school, and even went on to study at Georgetown University, where he did pretty well at first.

“I just thought it wouldn’t affect me,” said O’Connor, who is now 27 and still recovering after more than 20 stints in treatment. “People who come from a privileged background are generally shielded from negative outcomes in life,” he said.

With the cost of prescription drugs on the rise and heroin becoming purer and cheaper, the drug that spawns fear in other generations has become more appealing to a younger set.  

For teens living near major cities, heroin can also be easier to buy than prescription drugs.  Rather than having to find someone who has a prescription, they can just do what Chris O’Connor did and take a quick drive into the city, where they know they can score at any hour of the day.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican heroin production has increased significantly in recent years, from an estimated 7 metric tons in 2002, to 50 metric tons in 2011. That sevenfold increase has made heroin more available in metropolitan areas across the country, including Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

For families like the O’Connors, who once considered themselves immune to heroin, the crucial difference between life and death was early recognition, treatment and constant support.

It’s taken Chris more than a decade, but he can now triumphantly say he’s been clean for at least a year. Many of the friends he once used with have not been as fortunate.

“I think ultimately what saved my life was the love of my family, being there for me unconditionally,” he said. “I had so many psychologists and therapists. The best ones weren’t the smartest ones, they were the ones who cared the most.”

Resources for addiction recovery:

Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization (HERO)

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) 

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Faces and Voices of Recovery

Nar-Anon

Partnership for a Drug Free America

Parents for a Change

Learn to Cope

Family Healing Strategies

Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy

Addiction Research Institute

Moms Tell

I Can Help

Robert Crown Center

MALIBU, CALIF. -- On a starry night in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean north of Los Angeles, a two-man California National Guard special forces surveillance team sets up a sophisticated night scope. Their mission is to search the horizon and the waters below for an increasing number of Mexican drug traffickers offloading multi-ton loads of marijuana--and sometimes illegal immigrants--on remote U.S. beaches.

"These service members are the eyes and ears of federal law enforcement here," said Lt. Kara Siepmann, of the Guard's National Drug program. When asked about what specifically they are looking for, one of the surveillance team members said, "We're looking for blacked out vessels and any suspicious activity we can find, any unusual boats coming through the area." 

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was captured near Huntington Beach, Calif., in August 2011. The faces of the three men being arrested have been obscured at the request of the HSI.

The soldiers work quietly and in the dark, aware that the Mexican traffickers have their own spotters here watching out for U.S. law enforcement personnel. "They don't want to land where the National Guard or the Border Patrol are looking for them," said Siepmann.

Turning fishing boats into drug boats
In the last few years, law enforcement officials said they have seen a considerable spike in smugglers loading drugs or immigrants onto boats in Mexico's northern Baja Peninsula, then motoring north to offload their illegal cargo along a 300-mile-long stretch of California beaches, sometimes within sight of the many luxury homes on the coastline. 

Courtesy of HSI/ICE

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was found in California's Ventura County in January 2012.

Related: Debate rages over Mexico 'spillover violence' in U.S.

Federal agents said this is the latest smuggling technique employed by Mexico's notorious Sinaloa drug cartel, headed by that country's most-wanted criminal, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The boats are small, open-hulled commercial fishing boats called pangas, which are commonly found in the inshore waters of Mexico and Central America. 

With their low profiles, the pangas are hard to spot in open water, but they can carry a large payload. Sometimes these 30- to 40-foot boats will have as many as four outboard engines, allowing them to outrun most vessels used by the authorities.

"The trend is pretty much going straight up," said Lt. Stewart Sibert, the captain of the US Coast Guard Cutter Halibut, which patrols in search of Mexican smugglers near the California coast. 

"The past few months have been very busy for us," he said. "We caught more drugs in these past two months than in the past two years."

According to arrest statistics reported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, there were 183 known "events" in fiscal year 2011 along the California coast involving the maritime smuggling of drugs or immigrants, up considerably from the previous three years. During the first seven months of this fiscal year, there have already been 113 such events as the numbers climb even faster than last year.

"We're seeing four and five tons of drugs come in per run and we're seeing dozens of runs. It's almost one or two per week at this point," said Sibert.

A dangerous trade heading north
Law enforcement officials have argued the rise in maritime smuggling is a direct result of their crackdown on smuggling operations along the U.S. land border with Mexico. As they first interdicted smuggling boats headed for beaches in southernmost California, near San Diego, they began to see the traffickers moving farther north to drop off their loads, which are then distributed across the country.

Related: Patrolling 'smugglers' alley' by air along the Rio Grande

"As we stop them in one area, they’re trying to go around us. We're sort of leapfrogging up the coastline," said Sibert. Recently, an abandoned panga and a hidden marijuana stash were found near San Simeon, Calif., more than 300 miles from the Mexican border.

"They go far out to sea to try to evade interdiction efforts along the border," said Claude Arnold, the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations. "They typically go 100 miles out or farther due west, and then they come north," to reach the U.S. coastline.

While the panga boats are considered relatively stable when used for fishing in calm inshore waters, officials said, they can be quite dangerous in rougher waters offshore, especially if they are overloaded with drugs or illegal immigrants. The boats rarely have adequate safety equipment and authorities speculate that many may have been lost at sea, along with their passengers.

Courtesy of HSI/ICE

Used to smuggle drugs from Mexico, this panga boat was found on California's Leo Carrillo Beach in August 2011.

"It's a direct indication of these criminal smuggling organizations' complete disregard for human life. They are driven by profit and nothing else," said Troy Matthews, of the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego. "You'll have somebody driving the ship who is not necessarily highly-trained. You'll have poorly maintained vehicles that will break down and subsequently they are loitering out at sea for days."

A border security threat
As they find more boats on the beaches and make more arrests, U.S. authorities are learning more about how the smuggling operation work, and the degree to which they are coordinated with land-based trafficking operations.

"We've seen some pangas that run directly up onto the beach and upload their cargo," said Sibert. "And then we've seen some that will come in and transfer their load to recreational boats that look less suspicious and try to run them directly into the marinas and yacht clubs."

Many times the panga boat operators will land at night on remote beaches near roads or a highway where they met by other members of the smuggling group. "There's usually an offloading team that will have a rental boxcar, U-Haul, or something of that nature to take the payload and transport it to a stash house where an organization begins the distribution process," said Arnold. 

A particular concern voiced by many U.S. authorities is the potential national security threat these boats and smugglers represent.  "They're just as willing to smuggle perhaps a weapon of mass destruction as they are a load of narcotics," warned Arnold.  "And they're just as willing to smuggle a terrorist as people coming here to work."  

To coordinate their interdiction efforts, federal, state and local law enforcement officials have formed a coastal-area task force. "As they adapt, we will adapt, and they'll continually try to find new ways to get contraband and people into the country, and we're going to be right there nipping at their heels," said Arnold.

Authorities conceded, however, that so far they are seeing no let-up in the Mexican maritime smuggling trade, and, in fact, are actually seeing bigger drug loads on boats now than in recent years.

"It's a huge challenge," said Matthews, from the U.S. Border Patrol. "It's an immense geographical area that we have to cover. There is not only single agency that can cover it by itself."