SIX months ago, TIME ran a cover story on "Drugs and the Young," which analyzed the new and disturbing pot culture among the youth of today. This week, the cover deals once again with drugs and the young, but now the subject is the rapid rise of heroin use--infinitely more powerful than marijuana, appallingly addictive, horrifyingly lethal. It is not a story that any one correspondent or bureau could provide in the detail that TIME demands. The reports to Writer Keith Johnson, Editor Jason McManus and Researcher Mary Kelley were the work of 16 correspondents and stringers throughout the U.S. For all, it proved a difficult, delicate and shocking assignment.

Correspondents in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington and Boston interviewed physicians, psychiatrists, criminologists and sociologists. Perhaps the most revealing part of the task was talking with youngsters about their experiences with "smack," "horse," or "the big H"--and persuading parents to tell their side of a horror they hardly begin to comprehend. In San Francisco, Reporter Chris Andersen found the problem frighteningly close to home when a good friend was able to summon "a talkative, nonrepentant heroin addict." For Chicago's Sam Iker, it became "a crash education --perhaps too much to take in one massive dose."

Meanwhile in New York, where so much of the ugly action takes place, Correspondent Karsten Prager interviewed ten youngsters at Odyssey House where ex-addicts encourage newcomers as young as twelve to kick the habit. John Austin spent a chilling evening in suburban Westchester County, N.Y., with middle-class high school students who talked freely about police officers, teachers and even doctors who know but don't care about the kids' problem. Other expertise was supplied by Douglas Gasner, whose experience as TIME'S Medicine reporter was invaluable for the box on symptoms parents should watch for.

Much of the story deals with the drug suppliers, the not-so-furtive street-corner pushers and the vast syndicates behind them. That was the province of the New York Bureau's Sandy Smith, who has made the Mafia his beat since the early 1950s when he was with the Chicago Tribune and during his years on LIFE. Since coming to TIME he has specialized in stories about the mob, gambling, crime in general. Sandy drew on his sources in Washington and New York in tracing the role of organized crime in heroin traffic. Says Smith: "The pusher--especially to kids--is lousy, but even he isn't as low as the gangster who finances it. Organized crime is the absolute lowest level of society. With drugs they're making everyone as scummy as themselves."

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