Mexican Heroin Causing Deaths All Over U.S.

Mexican drug smugglers are increasingly peddling a form of ultra-potent heroin that sells for as little as $10 a bag and is so pure it can kill unsuspecting users instantly, sometimes before they even remove the syringe from their veins.

May 24, 2010


In this May 19, 2010 file photo, escorted by soldiers, Valentin Jaimes, center, stands in front of seized packs containing heroin during a presentation to the media in Tijuana, Mexico. According to the army, Jaimes was arrested with some 42 kg (over 92lbs) of heroin.

An Associated Press review of drug overdose data shows that so-called "black tar" heroin - named for its dark, gooey consistency - and other forms of the drug are contributing to a spike in overdose deaths across the nation and attracting a new generation of users who are caught off guard by its potency.

"We found people who snorted it lying face-down with the straw lying next to them," said Patrick O'Neil, coroner in suburban Chicago's Will County, where annual heroin deaths have nearly tripled - from 10 to 29 - since 2006. "It's so potent that we occasionally find the needle in the arm at the death scene."

Authorities are concerned that the potency and price of the heroin from Mexico and Colombia could widen the drug's appeal, just as crack did for cocaine decades ago.

The Latin American heroin comes in the form of black tar or brown powder, and it has proven especially popular in rural and suburban areas.

Originally associated with rock stars, hippies and inner-city junkies, heroin in the 1970s was usually smuggled from Asia and the Middle East and was around 5 percent pure. The rest was "filler" such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, even brick dust. The low potency meant that many users injected the drug to maximize the effect.

But in recent years, Mexican drug dealers have improved the way they process poppies, the brightly colored flowers supplied by drug farmers that provide the raw ingredients for heroin, opium and painkillers such as morphine. Purity levels have increased, and prices have fallen.

Federal agents now commonly find heroin that is 50 percent pure and sometimes as much as 80 percent pure.

The greater potency allows more heroin users to snort the drug or smoke it and still achieve a sustained high - an attractive alternative for teenagers and suburbanites who don't want the HIV risk or the track marks on their arms that come with repeated injections.

Read full report: CBS News

 

Purity isn't the issue here. PURE heroin is pretty innocuous. The problem is the crap mixed in it that kills you. And black tar heroin, or anything less than a hopeful dull ivory color, is poison.

For any dolt on here who'd consider using even good quality smack, the first time you use heroin, you can actually SEE heroin addiction taking place in the base of the spine on a CT scan. Take it a few times and you're hooked through the bag and back. Good news is, the cure is pretty easy! Break your spine. You can't walk anymore and your cock stops working, but you stop needing the needle real fast. Did I mention it's the only way to actually permanently physically beat addiction that's proven?

 

Santa Cruz drug users hooked on Mexican-produced black tar heroin

Black tar heroin grown and processed in the southern mountains of Mexico travels north up highways, crosses borders and finds its way to Santa Cruz County, where it's sold for $10 a hit. Mexican and Salvadoran gangs control some of the drug trade, but dealers also are tight-knit Mexican families or even addicts. Drug users - from high school- and college-age kids to people in their 50s - get their heroin fix at small camps tucked behind trees along the railroad tracks in Santa Cruz's Harvey West neighborhood or from drug houses scattered across the county.

Rich Westphal, commander of the county's Anti-Crime Team, says he remembers one bust where a user had a syringe dangling from his carotid artery. Others hide their use by shooting up between their toes or just jab the needle into their thighs when their veins collapse from all the drug injections. "It's sad, seeing some of these people," Westphal says. "That's their life. They don't care about anything else."

Heroin use has waned in other parts of the state and country as the popularity of methamphetamine rose during the past decade. But the opium-based drug, which can be injected, smoked or snorted, remains the drug of choice for many users in Santa Cruz County.

Heroin's hold on the county is difficult to understand and even harder to cut off. Despite some large seizures of drugs along the Interstate 5 corridor, law enforcement efforts to stop the flow of heroin across the Mexico-California border have been unsuccessful.

Most heroin used on the Central Coast can be traced to poppy fields in rural Mexico. Farmers in the states of Michoacan and Jalisco sell their raw product to cartels, or the drug organizations grow the flowers themselves.

Read full report: San Jose Mercury News

 

Thank you Mexico. Maybe this will clean out the trash in our own country. I'm not being insensitive

 

Take your black ass down there and thank them in person...sambo.

 

Rather be a so-called Sambo than some ass/head scratching one dimensional Nigga who knows nothing. You wonder why the black race is in the condition that it is anyway.

 

I hear banjo music..

Must be the self-hating one-man...or should I say half a man...minstrel show that calls itself blacktiger2005.

Go find some hillbilly's ass to spit-shine...and stop all the gloom and doom about the Black race...as if you give a shit.

 

Where's chi city on this one. Yeah let the illegal immigrants stay huh

 

lol
"Its all lies created by the Bush administration I tell ya!! Oh wait, whats that? Bush isnt president anymore? Oh well, its just Right Wing propaganda then!!! Wait, you say that CBS reported this news? Okay well....ummm....racial profiling....umm corporations....ummm"

:smt042

 

Lol

 

who really cares as long as illegals dont get profiled and they get over the border and their civil rights are given(mmm even if they are citizens), no one cares about the americans and their deaths

 

1. No one minds if "illegals" are profiled. Many people have a problem with American citizens being profiled as illegal based upon their appearance

2. Profiling illegals won't save lives

3. Legalizing marijuana will, because it is the main draw for these gangs over our border. Cut their marijuana market, and the heroin market will drop as well, as their gang-business model is founded on marijuana.

So if you actually care about Americans and their deaths, legalize weed.

 

I've answered this multiple times. Most everyone who has studied the problem of Mexican drug gangs agrees that the most effective way of eliminating their presence in our country would be to legalize weed. Heroin sales won't support them here, without weed sales they would return to their own country.

We can profile them all we like, but if there is money to be made they'll stay.

 

You can try to pretend to be a random right winger, but I still think you're a troll.

 

why would i be a random right winger, why not just be a right winger and i have been on here many years and call me what you want, i wasnt talking to you, but if i were a troll i wouldnt be here for IR

so not sure what you mean by that

 

don't think she was talking to you, Tucker! :smt110

 

I was quoting Iggy. Iggy's a troll, who has made comments that obviously suggest he doesn't care for WW. Thus, it's politics are irrelevant, because the person is not who they pretend to be.

You never struck me as a troll, although you and I tend to disagree about politics that has always seemed to me to be honest disagreement.

Is Iggy a sockpuppet of yours? Otherwise, why are you responding as if I was talking about you?

 

Please sight examples. Thanks.

Again, there is absolutely NOTHING positive that comes out of illegal immigration. Only a fool would think it would be a positive thing. Sadly, there are a lot of fools who dont have a problem with illegals mooching off of taxpayers hard earned money.

 

Wow that's awesome. A troll putting up a strawman in an argument.

No one said there was anything positive about illegal immigration.

 

(face palm)

So if there is nothing remotely postive regarding illegal immigration...ummm dont you think the US should DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!?!?!?!:smt021
Arizona is trying to fight illegal immigration. Not sure if you are aware, but its a HUGE problem that this state faces. The arguments of racial profiling and Nazi roundups are so overblown and just flat out not true.

Christ, its like I am talking to a plant lol.