Posted on 01/27/2014 12:21:53 AM PST by grundle
Experts are warning about a potent and deadly batch of heroin that is suspected in the deaths of at least 17 people in Allegheny and surrounding counties during the past week.
One local medical examiner is calling the outbreak of overdoses a "major public health crisis."
Medical examiners suspect heroin, in stamp bags marked in red ink with the word "Theraflu," is causing deadly overdoses because it contains the powerful narcotic fentanyl.
Allegheny County officials issued a warning about the deadly combination on Friday, when nine people died of suspected overdoses, but since then, county medical examiner Karl Williams said five more fatalities have come through his door, showing signs of an overdose.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2014/01/26/Allegheny-County-medical-examiner-calls-rash-of-apparent-overdose-deaths-a-major-public-health-crisis/stories/201401260193#ixzz2raL4gvzE
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Actually, the deaths being avoidable are a reason why it is called a public health crisis. Opposition to addiction and illegal drugs should not lead us to indifference to the welfare of or scorn for those who are addicted and to needless deaths among them.
This is a public health crisis like the tylenol poisoning scare years ago. A man I knew stopped using heroin, finished law school, and then to celebrate he got high. It killed him because he used his old large addicted dose, which his recovered body could not handle.
Well of course there needs to be societal scorn for those that voluntarily take heroin (and that's all of them).
Without societal scorn they are just choosing an 'alternative lifestyle'.
I don't want to pay to have these idiots weaned off their habit, but I will because I'm a taxpayer and it's cheaper to treat the ones that are still salvageable, versus having them self-destruct and take some of us with them through crimes or reckless endangerment of others.
I do not rejoice in any of their needless deaths. On the other hand, I do not believe for one second, that anyone in America does not know drugs are no good. Everyone knows this, so if they still stick themselves with bad drugs, I do not know how sorry I should be. I guess I feel as sorry for them, as I do for anyone else who commits suicide. It does not have to happen, but it is suicide, whether it is a fast suicide, or a slow one, it does not have to happen. Don’t do drugs.
Unless people are being forcibly injected, there is no “public health crisis”.
Tonight, low level dealers in Pittsburgh are ratting out everybody they know so they don't end up doing a life sentence.
At the top end, the “boss” is not sitting around waiting for bad news to knock on his front door.
His direct subordinates are either dead or running for their lives.
This just in: Smack will kill you. Film at 11.
No they never did. There was, however, another case they did solve, where some nut case poisoned his neighbors, because he wanted them to move. He has been on death row for a long time.
It should happen to every druggie!!!
It's a CHOICE. Since RATs insist on choice...
I agree with you.. actually it’s helping to clean out the scum so the smart thing would be to remain silent.
heroin that is suspected in the deaths of at least 17 people in Allegheny
This is a problem HOW????
Addiction is not a choice. I’ve seen a lot of good people taken by the grips of it.
They weren’t morally weak in character or any of that other BS
Many people just don’t understand how addiction works.
People don’t live that way because they like it.
I used to think the same way until I started dating an intake coordinator at a Methadone clinic about 30 years ago.
She explained a lot to me and it really was an eye opener.
Opiate addiction is very treatable with Methadone and with Suboxone, but the cost and the strict clinic rules are not always a viable option for many.
For those that it is, many go on to lead normal, productive lives.
Off the subject, but does anyone know what happened to the flu medication with the trade name Theraflu? I have not seen it in the drug stores for a couple years.
Taken off the shelves because it was laced with too much bad heroin? /s
And the gubbmints answer to drug addiction is legalize drugs like pot as they bemoan the loss of life with illegal drugs as a health emergency. How much you want to bet these heroin junkies carry a pot prescription card ?
A firefighter friend of mine got a part-time job driving a taxi. Our local taxi company has a government contract to take welfare recipients on Medicade to their methadone appointments. Free ride and free high for them, all paid for by us.
“Don’t do drugs” is not what you mean, because over 100 adult Americans are doing all sorts of psychoactive drugs, most with prescriptions.
What you mean is:
Be an obedient Soviet citizen, and don’t do drugs that have not been approved by the federal government.
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