FENTANYL AROUND, COKE COMING BACK

The potent and deadly painkiller fentanyl is starting to seep more
into Porter County, said Bob Taylor, head of the county's Drug Task Force.

Officials are seeing more of it, but not to the extent they'd
originally feared, said Don Rospond with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Porter County rang in 2006 with one fentanyl-related death in
January, and book-ended the year with another in late October.

"The fact that we've only seen two, that's a blessing," Rospond said.

What's not a blessing, Taylor says, is an apparent resurgence in
cocaine popularity. Rospond said he while he hasn't necessarily seen
an upward trend, the DEA recently has made "some fairly significant seizures."

"I think coke has remained fairly steady," he said.

Steady enough to kill three times as many people in the county in the
second half of 2006 as in the first.

But, Taylor said, the county is not witnessing a surge in
methamphetamine use, as officials originally had anticipated.