Posted on 06/06/2006 10:06:26 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
Three deaths, 35 overdoses are blamed on the lethal form of drug plaguing the city. And the mixture has caused at least 100 deaths from Philadelphia to Chicago
City police detectives were working overtime to scoop up drug dealers and lean on users for information as a lethal batch of heroin snaked its way through city neighborhoods and beyond, causing at least 35 overdoses and as many as three deaths.
The heroin, which has cropped up in at least eight Pittsburgh neighborhoods since Saturday, is likely laced with the potent painkiller fentanyl, about 80 times stronger than morphine.
As authorities tried to make a dent locally in the heroin trade, the federal government announced yesterday that it had worked with Mexico to close a lab across the border that might be the source of the fentanyl that has killed heroin users in Pennsylvania and seven other states.
John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said it was still not clear whether the fentanyl was mixed with heroin at the lab in Mexico or after it entered the United States
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Fortunately, my heroin is fine.
Just bringing in the lethal drugs Americans refuse to do...
Stretches the supply further = more $$$
I heard it was written "Get high or die trying"
Self correcting problem bump
Let's say you stole (or otherwise secretly obtained) a bunch of fentanyl. Who else are you going to sell it to, if not heroin junkies?
The problem here is that they misunderestimated the potency of the fentanyl.
SD
Think of it as evolution in action.
Oh, I had not heard it as being "laced". Local news said cut...I did hear yesterday that whatever is being added makes the heroin up to 80 times more potent.
I don't know about the heroin, but I like the way this reporter writes. "Leaning on users," "heroin snaking its way through," "scooping up dealers." Good strong verbs and a tinge of Walter Winchell. I like it.
Fentanyl is "china white" .. it's a synthetic opiate which has almost the same effect. It's a cut made to stretch the amount of product/increase the potency.
Fentanyl made into a gaseous form was also the gas pumped into the theater in RUssia to knock eveyone out as rescue those hostages.
It is also used as a pain killer in hospitals, sometimes in child patients of surgerty who are given fentanyl "lollipops" to suck on because it's more gentle than pain pills. The dosage of Fentanyl is in the micrograms though, so "china white" being used as heroin or a cut for it is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.
"I am unfamiliar with heroin, I know it is a liquid caues people shoot it with needles"
It is a crystaline powder, disolved in water befire injection.
Yeah, they gave me one of those lollipops before a painful procedure, I told them opiates made me sick, and they said, oh, this won't. LIARS! Not only did it do nothing for the painful procedure, I was sick as a dog for 2 days! Yucky stuff.
susie
I'm supposed to be sympathetic?
Don't addicts read the warning label on the baggy?
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