Posted on 09/01/2006 7:05:38 PM PDT by Coleus
The dime bags seized in Cranford were called "Bloody Money" and "Superman." The drug samples found in Hillside during a vehicle stop were called "Dunkin Donuts."
But more ominous than the names were what authorities announced yesterday they found inside: fentanyl-laced heroin. It's the first confirmed appearance in northeast New Jersey of a drug cocktail that has in recent months become a public health scourge, trigging a rash of overdoses and deaths in South Jersey, Philadelphia and New York.
"Of all the drugs available on the street right now, fentanyl-laced heroin is the deadliest of the deadly," said Jim O'Brien, CEO of South Jersey's Maryville Treatment Centers, where there have been two overdose deaths in the last month. "Nothing else will kill you as quickly as this stuff does."
Officials have blamed fentanyl for more than 500 deaths nationwide this year and authorities in northern New Jersey have kept a wary eye as the drug slowly encircled the area from the north and south. "It's almost like a disease spreading," Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said. "We've got to get parents to keep an even closer eye on their children and citizens to start thinking more about the dangers of drug abuse."
Fentanyl is a synthetic drug 80 times more potent than morphine. Developed by New Brunswick's Johnson & Johnson, it has been used legally for decades in anesthesia and pain management. The fentanyl found on the streets is being manufactured illegally, law enforcement officials say. When mixed with heroin and injected, snorted or smoked, it provides a powerful high. New Jersey heroin is dangerous enough on its own -- it's the purest in the nation, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
But it's the combination of the drugs, both depressants, that has a particularly lethal effect.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
By definition they figger if a person is willing to get high but leave everybody alone, what's the big deal. Cuts down on street crime and pharmacy robberies. Unfortunately drugs are a one-way ticket to loserville.
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
What's with the strawman? Can't face the fact that the Drug War is a total failure?
My, my, my..........will wonders never cease. The company that funds the foundation that funds groups that claim tobacco is as or more addictive than heroin is the maker/crator of the drug that is killing users of heroin.
Isn't that just peachy.
To prevent organized crime from making millions of dollars they can use to further corrupt law enforcement and judges?
To regulate and tax the drug trade?
Nah. That would be silly!
Why legalize drugs? This is a perfect example of one of the arguments: you can regulate quality and purity when they are legal. No heroin adict would die because their dose had a different drug mixed in, or because it was of higher purity and they accidentally took twice their usual hit.
Overdosing, lethal or otherwise, is primarily a harm of the current prohibition regime which puts quality control in the hands of unscrupulous criminals rather than the government and openly identifiable businesses whose bottom line would suffer if customers died from quality fluctuations. Pre-1913, little old ladies who took their laudnum (tincture of morphine) provided by an identifiable 'tonic' manufacturer didnt' OD.
No kidding, we should add fentanyl to tobacco. People have no right to smoke that stuff.
Perhaps you should re-read this sentence over and over. This is just one of the many unintentional consequences of the Drug War.
If drugs were legal, this form of drug (manufactured Fentanyl) wouldn't be out on the streets. It would still be in the pharmaceutical labs and hospitals, regulated and administered by physicians in its suitable form, instead of being illegally mixed in with heroin and other drugs.
Some are users, some are dealers, some are both, and others just think it's cool.
It certainly hasn't helped the LP.
This could really hurt the RAT voter base.
Why not? Drug addicts and their dealers will always want to do something that is outside the scope of regulation.
It's not just the libertarians, I would like to see it legalized, and piled as high as an elephants eye! The drug problem would take care of itself in short order. Of course the mortician business would experience a short boom in business!
Sorry, I meant to ping you to my post at #7.........
So they druggies can lay around and get high on taxpayer expense and suck off society while the rest of us work to provide them with drugs, food, housing, and free medical care to take care of the health issues that come up with a druggie lifestyle. If the libertarians are willing to personally foot the bill themselves out of their own private finances, they may have a point but I've seen enough of the welfare system; count me out.
my only child died from a drug overdose and i can assure you he was not human refuse.
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