OVERDOSE DEATHS PUT POLICE ON ALERT

A drug dealer supposedly bragged that his heroin was so good that his
clients overdosed on it.

Street talk about it got back to police, who worried that he was
right. They figured the dealer from University City was probably
selling heroin mixed with a dangerous painkiller called fentanyl.

The deadly concoction is linked to an epidemic of overdoses across
the country this spring - and as many as 20 deaths in the St. Louis area.

That's why the St. Louis County Multi-Jurisdictional Drug Task Force
made the man a top priority. "We wanted to take him off the streets
right away," said county police Capt. Thomas Jackson, the commander.

The plan was to buy drugs and arrest the suspected dealer, Maurice A.
Adkins, on the spot. But Adkins tried to escape, injuring an
undercover detective in the process, and officers opened fire,
officials said. As Adkins, 27, lay in critical condition in a
hospital Friday, prosecutors filed charges of first-degree assault on
a law enforcement officer, delivering a controlled substance and
possession of a controlled substance

Preliminary laboratory results suggest the narcotics agents' worry
was right, Jackson said. The drugs found with Adkins appear to be
fentanyl-laced heroin.

Now authorities are racing to discover where he got it.

A league of its own

"It's a horrible combination," said Dr. Christopher Long, a
toxicologist for St. Louis and St. Louis County. "There's a high
potential of death."

Up to 20 drug overdose deaths in the St. Louis area over the past
month can be linked to fentanyl, Long said. Exact numbers are not
known because most of the toxicological test results are pending.

A man arrested with Adkins was hospitalized after authorities
discovered that he had swallowed some heroin during the arrest,
police said. Authorities said he was lucky. The lethal mixture of
drugs has resulted in a startling number of overdose deaths across
the United States.

"As a painkiller, fentanyl is a very slick drug," Long said. "It's in
a league of its own. It works."

Fentanyl is usually administered in the form of a patch to cancer
patients with chronic pain. It is 50 times more powerful than
morphine, said Dr. Michael A. Graham, the St. Louis medical examiner.

It can depress breathing, especially in the presence of another drug
such as heroin, experts said.

"Drug users using a fentanyl mix are really playing Russian
roulette," Long said. "Often, overdose victims are found with the
needle still in their arm."

The Detroit area seems to be the hardest hit. More than 40 people
have died in suspected fentanyl-related cases since mid-May. There
have been 130 confirmed fentanyl overdose cases there since January
2005, officials said.

The Chicago area had 50 deaths linked to fentanyl in the past year.
Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., and Florida have also reported
significant numbers of overdoses.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that
more than 200 heroin users have died due to fentanyl within the last
several months.

St. Louis County officials have seen at least six fatal drug
overdoses since May 18. The most recent was Thursday morning, when a
19-year-old woman was found dead in her home in Berkeley, said Terry
Ledbetter, chief investigator for the county medical examiner's office.

A Richmond Heights woman in her 20s was found dead in her home last month.

Maryland Heights police responded to four suspected heroin overdose
cases in the past three weeks.

A 19-year-old man and his girlfriend there were taken to a hospital
after overdosing on the drug May 20. They were both treated and
released. The man overdosed again the next day and died, authorities
said. Lab results confirmed that he died from Fentanyl.

Another 19-year-old from Maryland Heights slipped into a coma after
overdosing Memorial Day weekend. His chances of survival are grim, police said.

"It's knocking people off right and left," said Maryland Heights
police Sgt. Joe Delia. "I've never seen anything like it."

Infiltrating the middle class

In St. Louis, Lt. Mike Lauer, commander of the homicide division,
said that last weekend a man was found dead in his car in the 7200
block of North Broadway. Two other men were found in a van, one dead
and one in critical condition, at the opposite end of town, in the
100 block of Walsh Street. Both cases are suspected heroin overdoses.

The two deaths are among about 11 suspected heroin overdoses in the
city over the past six weeks, Lauer said, one of them on Friday. Are
they fentanyl-related? He thinks so.

"Heroin users normally know what they're doing. Usually, they
overdose only when they don't know the strength of what they're
getting. When you hear what's going on elsewhere, and you've got a
sudden increase in overdose deaths, you put those two together and,
yeah, I think we've got a fentanyl problem here," Lauer said.

Said St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa: "We've got to let the
community know the danger out there." He added, "It may seem a little
strange that I'm worried about drug users, but I am."

Scientists in the area's crime labs began discovering fentanyl in
their results this spring, said Harold Messler, the chief criminalist
for the St. Louis police. "Until March of this year, we had never
come into contact with fentanyl. Now, 10 cases have come through
there in the last three weeks."

One of those came from the fentanyl-heroin mixture found in a syringe
still in the hand of an overdose victim who died at a fast food
restaurant recently in southwest St. Louis.

Federal drug authorities said they had expected the problem to hit St. Louis.

"It hasn't caught us by surprise," said Jack Riley, assistant special
agent in charge of the St. Louis office of the Drug Enforcement
Administration. "We're on top of it (in the St. Louis area), but I
sense it's going to get a little worse here before it gets better."

Authorities said the Maryland Heights, Berkeley and Richmond Heights
cases illustrate a change in heroin use in recent years.

Heroin used to be thought of as an inner-city drug of choice for
middle-aged black men. Now heroin users are white or black, male or
female, young or old. It has infiltrated middle-class suburbs and
high schools, officials said.

Overall, authorities said heroin use is on the rise across the country.

St. Louis reported 344 heroin arrests in 2001, and 558 last year. The
city is on pace for more than 600 this year.

The Multi-Jurisdictional Drug Task Force reports 30 heroin arrests in
2004, 63 last year and 17 in the first quarter of this year.

New varieties of heroin that can be snorted and smoked may be
responsible for its increasing popularity - no needles are required.

Police are trying to track down just where the fentanyl is getting
mixed with the heroin. At least one underground lab producing black
market fentanyl has been traced to Mexico, according to Long. The DEA
speculated that a large quantity of fentanyl seized in California in
February may have been manufactured in China.

Long said drug abusers always look for a higher high. "If you're on
fentanyl and somebody said they'll cut off your arms and legs, you'd
say, 'Go ahead, I don't care.'"

But drug dealers ought to know better than to kill off the market,
suggested Richmond Heights Police Chief Ron Pfeiffer. "Why does the
seller risk the life of the user by adding the fentanyl? Why risk
losing customers? It doesn't make sense to me."