The symbol of Carroll County's war on drugs -- a toe tag on a body -- is everywhere.
The toe tag reads "Heroin Kills" and appears on 10,000 bumper stickers, 30,000 refrigerator magnets and up to five billboards along county highways.
"Heroin Kills" is also a Web site; thousands of litter bags read "Heroin Kills"; and the graphic movie "Heroin Kills" is playing in Carroll County's eighth-grade classrooms and at schools and community forums throughout the state.
Three-thousand drug awareness booklets with the "Heroin Kills" logo are being distributed this year to schoolchildren and community groups.
Now -- almost two years into an anti-drug campaign that started with the heroin overdose death of a Westminster teen-ager -- Carroll's drug problem is pushing the rural county into the national spotlight.
A television network has broadcast a program about the effort and another is planning one, and a White House staffer has informally endorsed the campaign.
"These kinds of efforts from communities are the sorts of things that are going to turn this heroin problem around," said Joseph Peters, an aide with the White House Office on National Drug Policy, who came to a Westminster school during the summer to watch the film and listen to reactions.
The ABC News program "20-20" has sent film crews to Carroll County to interview drug counselors, addicts, teen-agers, parents and law enforcement officials. Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey broadcast an interview last month with Michael O'Hara, a federal employee from Westminster whose son's death sparked the campaign.
Community activists and police say the focus on Carroll County should help combat a problem that began sweeping through Maryland's suburbs a few years ago. It is better to publicize the problem than deny it, they say.
"You can put your head in the sand and ignore it, or aggressively attack the problem, and that's what this community is doing," said state police Sgt. Michael College, supervisor of the drug task force at the Westminster barracks.
College said heroin is appealing to more middle-class youths because it is cheap, easy to get and potent enough to be snorted -- not injected with a needle.
"Once these kids get hooked, the things that they're willing to do to support their habit, the break-ins and thefts and prostitution, are things I hadn't seen with other drugs," said College, a drug investigator for more than 20 years.
