We've been traveling, but bad news about drug use not only travels but has a way of being there when we arrive.

Pete, Carrick's boyfriend, is watching the house and pets while we're gone. He called yesterday to tell us that the front page of the New York Post told the story of two 18-year-old girls who had fatally overdosed on heroin on the lower East Side, where Carrick lived and used for several years . One was a freshman at Hunter, Carrick's school, the other at NYU, which her cousin, Meghan, attends. The families of the dead girls, who met while attending St. Vincent Ferrer high school in Manhattan, said that they had never been in trouble but sources told the Post that cops had found needle tracks between the fingers of one of them.

Today, the Daily News said that as many as six deaths may have been caused over the past five days by "a deadly batch" of heroin that may be "fatally pure or altered with a poisonous additive."

The police are "taking steps" to arrest whoever is behind the bad dope, police commissioner Raymond Kelly is quoted as saying. But Kelly either didn't say, or the News did not report, the stamp (or brand name) of the suspect bags. Carrick and Deirdre are very upset about this. Publicizing this information could save lives.

We were in Asheville, North Carolina, yesterday and today. It's a prototypical college town — a little self-consciously hip, but teeming with ideas and alternative newspapers. One of them, the Asheville Global Report, ran a story about from the Inter Press Service (IPS) with the headline "'The South is going to explode,' warn Colombian activists." It relates how peasant framers from four provinces have created a civil movement to oppose Plan Patriot, a military offensive against FARC and other leftist guerillas, and Plan Colombia, the country's anti-drug strategy, both heavily funded by U.S. money. A spokesman said that security forces carrying out the strategies were themselves guilty of "arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, verbal abuse and extra-judicial executions."

Bottom line: The innocent peasants not only have to worry about the left and right wing political groups that fund themselves through drug trafficking, kidnap their children and seize their property, they also have to worry about the "peacemakers." In fact, the Jesuit Center for Popular research and Education released a report that held the state responsible for 579 cases of human rights abuses and FARC for 10 between Jan. 2004 and June 2005. I don't believe that the paramilitary forces are active in this area of Colombia.

Meanwhile, the Gannett-owned Asheville Citizen-Times reported that the city council had formed the Asheville Drug Commission with representatives from law enforcement. the courts, education, housing, religious groups, social services and the business community. It will meet monthly to discuss the proper balance between law enforcement, prevention and treatment in addressing the impact of drug use in Asheville. According to the vice mayor, drug use is a factor in 80% of the crimes committed in Asheville, and plays a part in other social ills such as child abuse and neglect. If it's not just a bunch of people talking at each other, this sounds like something every community in America should be doing.