HEROIN MAKING MAJOR COMEBACK IN WABASH COUNTY

There may be a difference in opinion as to whether heroin has become
the drug of choice in Wabash County or merely that, with more police
resources devoted to combating it, more arrests have issued.

Regardless, the very lively Chicago-to Wabash connection in the
heroin trade was one of the top stories in Wabash County this year.
Our newsroom selected it the ninth biggest story.

The Wabash Police Drug Task Force thought the pipeline serious
enough that early this year they shifted some of their resources
from the old standbys - meth, cocaine, marijuana, prescription drugs
- - to heroin.

Officers speculated that one reason for the renewed popularity of
heroin was that it has grown relatively inexpensive - in many cases
half the price for a high as from, say, OxyContin.

The Chicago-to-Wabash heroin connection, officers said, mostly
involves users who travel to Chicago to buy for their own use and
for some sales on a modest scale.

The Chicago to Wabash pipeline took on added urgency late in the
year, when task force officers reported that Fentanyl, a very
powerful painkiller produced in clandestine labs, had been
intercepted in the pipeline here.

So similar looking is it to heroin that officers intercepting it
took it for heroin - until an Indiana

State Police lab identified it as the hot new drug responsible for
numerous overdose deaths in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and other
major cities.