ENHANCED HEROIN SETS OFF ALARMS

A mixture that includes the drug fentanyl has killed more than 100
people and sickened many others.

CHICAGO - Police and health authorities are struggling to track down
the source of a doctored, intensely powerful heroin that has killed
at least 130 people in and around Chicago and Detroit and sent
hundreds more to hospitals in cities from St. Louis to Philadelphia.

In the labyrinthine and often paranoid world of illicit drugs, tales
of killer heroin have come and gone before. But this time is
different, law enforcement and health officials say.

The pattern of cases is broader, involving many markets at once,
suggests a larger and more sophisticated distribution network, they
say. The source of the additive has been traced to labs in Mexico,
which has traditionally supplied much of the Midwest's heroin,
raising fears that other hybrid pharmaceutical street drugs might emerge.

"The biggest new thing is the high mortality rate," said Dr. Carl
Schmidt, the chief medical examiner for Wayne County, Mich. The
county has had more than 70 deaths since September related to the
altered heroin mixture, Schmidt said, including those of three people
found together in a car in April -- overcome so quickly than no one
could get out to summon help.

The additive, called fentanyl, first surfaced as street drug compound
in the mid-1980s on the West Coast, where it killed perhaps 100
people over as many as eight years. It made waves again in the early
1990s in the New York area, where it killed dozens of people who
bought fentanyl-laced heroin under the street brand "Tango and Cash."

Fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, is
not a contaminant or filler, drug experts say, but rather a
deliberately introduced enhancement intended to improve the product.

It kills by shutting down a victim's respiratory system when too much
is taken.Chicago Police Superintendent Philip Cline said the city's
warnings against the deadly drug appear to have partly backfired.
Drug dealers have been boasting that they are selling the very thing
the police are worried about. "The biggest problem is that we have
willing victims," Cline's aid.