• Q-Tips missing (used to filter their heroin into a syringe)

• Q-Tips pulled apart and found in garbage or rolled up in a tiny ball

• Spoons missing, spoons with bent handles, spoons with burn marks on bottom (used to melt the heroin into liquid form to inject)

• Burn marks on clothing

• Chore Boy (copper strings; signs of crack usage)

• Aluminum foil, burned or with burned lines on it (smoking heroin or OxyContin; called “chasing the dragon”)

• Hose clamps, used for grinding pills into powder for snorting or injecting

• Grinders, which look like round, flat pill boxes - used for grinding pills

• Dismembered pens, with ink cartridge removed for snorting or “push hits” for crack

• Rubber tubing (for “tying off” arms or legs to make veins fill with blood)

• Glass tubes for smoking crack

• Missing money/clothes/jewelry/DVDs, game consoles, games

• Missing checks; forged checks

• Little orange syringe caps

• Pepsi/Coke cans in garbage cans (shake them to see if they contain needles)

• Kleenex or towels with black or brown marks from cleaning off spoons

• Syringes/Needles

Physical symptoms

• Track/needle marks on arms, legs, between toes

• Wearing long sleeve clothing even in hot weather (to hide track marks)

• Rapid weight gain or loss

• No appetite, restless

• In a really bad mood or really good mood

• Sick like bad flu, then miraculously cured

• Nodding/falling in and out of sleep

• Constricted pupils of the eyes

• Slurred speech

• Loss of/change of friends

Provided by STEP-Up Tamaqua