Lethal drug combo has users uneasy

kcrawford@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6242

They looked like they were dead, the second-shift officers say - two men from the Goodrich area, turned blue and barely breathing, slumped in the front seat of their car parked on a Flint side street, needles still stuck in their arms.

But then paramedics arrived and administered a medicine that counteracts the effects of opiate-type drugs. Slowly, the men stirred and regained consciousness, say the officers recounting the incident.

The outcome of that overdose situation, several weeks ago, puts those two men among the luckier Flint-area heroin addicts. While no one in law enforcement says for sure that the illegal drug those men had taken was cut with the cancer pain-fighting medicine fentanyl, the odds are in favor of that possibility, police say.

"We understand that we've had it here for some time," said Lt. Phil Smith of the Special Operations Bureau of the Flint police. "We've probably had a dozen cases of overdoses in the past several weeks.

"The heroin users around the area have been definitely concerned about it. But in terms of law enforcement, when we seize drugs and have them tested, we never hear about what those drugs are cut with."

Medical authorities says that scores of drug users in southeastern Michigan and hundreds across the country from New Jersey and Philadelphia to Ohio and Chicago have died as a result of using heroin mixed with fentanyl, a powerful prescription painkiller.

According to an Associated Press report, the alarm about the lethal mixture of opiates first was issued by officials back in April. In Detroit alone, nearly 20 people died late this week from the heroin-fentanyl combination.

Now, health officials and hospitals - as well as public health and substance abuse treatment officials - are warning heroin users of the potential danger.

As a matter of public health, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want to know about the overdose cases and whether drugs seized by authorities contain fentanyl. But Flint-area law enforcement personnel say in cases against drug dealers, they almost learn what illegal drugs are mixed with, since that typically hasn't mattered previously.

These days, Smith says, he receives messages on a near-daily basis about the heroin-fentanyl mix. Since heroin comes into Flint from both the Chicago and Detroit areas, he and other officers say, it's little wonder that users in Genesee County also have suffered death and overdose because of the mix.

Smith and Capt. Mike Becker of the Genesee County Sheriff's Department, a veteran paramedic, point out that fentanyl is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine.

Smith said heroin addicts usually use tiny plastic spoons that were given out as coffee stir-sticks, formerly available from a fast-food restaurant chain, to measure the amount of dope they put into their fix. As a result, that measure is known to heroin users as a "mac," he said.

That may help to get across just how powerful fentanyl is, when one considers that a drug mixture measured in "macs" is enough to cause the deaths of scores of users across the country. Typically, such drug mixtures contain about 10 or 15 percent heroin, Smith said.

Becker notes that law enforcement officers typically don't know or may never find out what drug an overdosed person has used when they respond to a call. But if paramedics arrive on the scene of an overdose where they have reason to believe the person has used heroin, or morphine or fentanyl, which suppress breathing, they'll administer a drug call Narcan to counteract the effects of opiates.

"We've responded to quite a few of them recently," Becker said about the county paramedics.

But police note that it's difficult, if not impossible, for police to follow up on cases where a suspect has overdosed to find out where they're drugs come from.

"In the vast majority of cases, a person administers the drugs to themselves," he said. "If they did it to themselves, who are you going to prosecute?"

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