Roy Exum
About 3:30 on Monday afternoon, a crowd began to gather on Crump Avenue, this in the shadow of the VA Hospital in Memphis. Cars stopped in the middle of the street and cell phones snapped pictures of a white man and woman, appearing to be middle-aged, who were both in the throes of a heroin overdose. A video tape, raw and with graphic language, went viral and has now been seen by over 3 million people and, once again, this just happened. This week. In Tennessee.
Memphis Fire emergency personnel said it was believed the two had just snorted heroin in the restroom of a nearby drug store. Then, minutes later and less than a block away in broad daylight, another chapter in America’s most lethal catastrophe began to unfold as both were overwhelmed. Drug overdoses – opioids and heroin – killed more people last year than car wrecks and guns combined.
A Facebook Live tape, taken at the scene, clearly shows the incapacitated heroin victims but, if you dare to watch it, you will be appalled by the jeers, the foul language and the raucous onlookers laughing with one another. I present it today because I believe every teenager in America needs to see what it is “really” like. This is a slice of modern-day America we rarely see and it is feared by many this epidemic is just beginning. Again, be warned -- this is graphic. To see the tape from Memphis television WREG-TV, click here.
The Centers for Disease Control say the latest wave of drug abuse is staggering with – get this -- 580 Americans trying heroin for the very first time every day. U.S. Attorney Wilfredo Ferrer, who prosecutes federal crime in South Florida, said there is now an emergency case of drug overdose in Palm Beach County every six hours and it is sky-rocketing.
“The unacceptable rise of heroin and opioid abuse has gotten to such a level we all realize no one can battle this by him or herself. No one office, no one community, no one institution, no one school can do it alone,” he said at a recent crisis meeting.
What was equally of note is how heroin has sneaked its way into the opioid equation.
Experts say the street cost of heroin is about one-fifth of what prescription opioids sell for on the street. As law enforcement tightens its noose on the availability of prescription drugs, those who have been addicted to opioids are 40 times more likely to turn to heroin. But, in this game, the buyers are never quite sure of what they are getting.
First, you must know that street dealers are business men. They compete with each other. One of the biggest reasons Chicago has so many shootings is because the black gangs are fighting with the Mexican cartels for turf. Gang-against-gang is actually about who sells drugs where. The cartels have heroin that is reputedly stronger and cheaper but all that matters, in a nutshell, is the same as selling anything else -- the best “product” gets the customers. That’s why the bottom line is just one word -- money.
So, if your heroin isn’t the quality of the dealer on the next street corner, the “sales manager,” so to speak, will add far more potent fentanyl to the already-cut heroin to give it a bigger punch. The problem is there isn’t a lot of quality control involved. The fentanyl used to pack the wallop is synthetic and comes from Mexico, China, Thailand and a number of other international sources.
Think it through: Rarely is the synthetic from Mexico, for instance, the same as what comes out of China and here is the bigger horror. The derivative drugs, while lethal indeed, are called analogs and --- as unbelievable as this may seem – are not illegal. Anybody can buy them over the Internet if you know where to look.
So “Dandy the Dealer” has no problem at all in ordering synthetic derivatives – these analogs – from Mexico, China or other foreign countries. The catch is the dealer thinks he is getting synthetic fentanyl but instead he gets an analog that looks like it -- he ain’t exactly ready for a taste test. What does it matter to him? He’s in it for the money and that is why you are seeing a severe outbreak of sudden drug overdoses – and deaths -- in some small communities.
The savvy dealers have a thousand ways of getting analogs delivered. Some drug distributors will pay for a very vanilla somebody to receive the package at their home address then deliver it to them, or have it delivered to a vacant house. They’ll use human “mules” to carry it, over-the-road truckers who need extra cash. And, again, analogs are not illegal.
In Chicago, where we know somebody gets shot every two hours, 517 have been shot and killed this year to date. But in just the past two years, there have been 2,113 heroin deaths. Chicago is not only the shooting capital of America, it is the No. 1 city for emergency rooms that treat heroin overdoses. And one of every four emergency room visits for heroin overdose in all of Illinois are inside Chicago’s city limits.
Before 1999 – just 17 years ago – Chicago might had had two or three heroin overdoses a year but now heroin is Chicago’s No. 1 killer. The city of Chicago treats more than twice the national average in heroin overdoses and experts say the death rate could be more – many death certificates simply read, “Overdose.”
“We have housewives, athletes, grandparents, cheerleaders, straight A students,” said coroner Patrick O’Neal, “and they are anywhere from 17 to 72,” he said, which prompted Illinois to pass a 250-page Heroin Crisis Act that should be copied by every state.
An NBC News story explained what makes the act so notable. “(The law) requires Medicaid to pay for medication-based substance abuse treatment, authorizes pharmacies to dispense heroin reversal drugs, allows a school nurse to administer reversal drugs, and imposes strict reporting requirements on health care providers in order to promote more reliable data, among several other mandates. The law also takes focus off of criminal punishment and puts it on health treatment for drug users by allowing them to stay in care facilities instead of prisons.”
Heroin is no longer just a problem. It is epidemic. And it kills more Americans than car crashes and gunshots combined.
* * *
FROM THE ‘DRUG FREE WORLD’ WEBSITE -- “From the day I started using, I never stopped. Within one week I had gone from snorting heroin to shooting it. Within one month I was addicted and going through all my money. I sold everything of value that I owned and eventually everything that my mother owned. Within one year, I had lost everything.
“I sold my car, lost my job, was kicked out of my mother’s house, was $25,000 in credit card debt, and living on the streets of Camden, New Jersey. I lied, I stole, I cheated. I was raped, beaten, mugged, robbed, arrested, homeless, sick and desperate. I knew that nobody could have a lifestyle like that very long and I knew that death was imminent. If anything, death was better than a life as a junkie.” —Alison.
royexum@aol.com