Eleven dead from highgrade heroin in Greece

ATHENS, Greece (Reuter) Eleven Greeks died from using highgrade heroin in
the past week while the number of drug users in Greece was rapidly
increasing, government officials said Thursday.
Police said the highgrade heroin had been on the market for the past
month and if used with alcohol or sleeping pills could be fatal.
The health ministry announced Wednesday that it was setting up three new
centres in Athens and the northern port of Salonika to provide users with
methadone as a substitute for heroin.
It will also set up a a special ambulance service to treat emergency
cases relating to drug use.
``The increased number of heroinrelated deaths, drug infiltration in
schools and low age of drug users are a cause for alarm and indicate that
drug abuse in Greece is growing steadily,'' Health Minister Costas Gitonas
said.
He said that in 1987 there were 56 drugrelated deaths, reaching 176 in
1996, while turnover from the drug trade was estimated at around $2 billion a
year.