Reporters stampeded to Plano, Texas, spotlighting its 19 teenage and young-adults deaths from heroin overdoses in two years as the tip of a national youth smack epidemic (L.A. Times, 11/30/97). As it turned out, the Plano victims didn't know the "chiva" they smoked contained heroin. More crucial, the national media herd never pondered why, if smack was sweeping the young, they had to journey to Plano to find a teen-heroin crisis.
Later, DAWN reports showed 1996's teen-smack panic was another media chimera. Of 8,500 heroin deaths in 1996 and 1997, just 48 were teenagers--and one-fourth of these were Plano's. Of 145,000 hospital treatments for heroin, fewer than 1,000 were youths.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Ky15cDb4VWAJ:www.fair.org/extra/0011/teen-drug.html+plano+texas+teen+drug+deaths&hl=en&start=1
There were too many deaths, period.
Had to do with money, poor parenting, and the availability of heroin in the area.
There was Nighline show about it. But I do believe it was a bigger problem here in the mid-eighties.