POLICE HUNTING SOURCE OF 'HOT' HEROIN

Dealer May Not Have Mixed Batch Well Enough

Police are reaching out to junkies for help to find whoever is selling a
suspected bad batch of heroin believed to have killed six people in six days.

The grim toll could rise to seven as a man fights for his life in hospital
following an overdose yesterday morning. A binner found the unidentified
man unconscious in a lane in the 1400-block Kingsway. Paramedics
administered the opiate blocker narcan with some positive effect, but he
was struggling to survive yesterday afternoon.

"We don't want to see anybody die," said Insp. John McKay of the citywide
drug enforcement team. "Somebody knows [who's selling it]. We'd like to
find out, because we'll prosecute them . . . I think we have a duty when we
find out something like this is going on."

Dealers typically mix very pure heroin into other agents, such as powdered
milk, so they can sell more, McKay said. The veteran officer suspects
whoever cut this particular heroin didn't mix it well enough, leaving some
strong enough to be fatal, fast.

"The deaths are occurring fairly quickly [after injection]," McKay noted.

Heroin addicts like 37-year-old Greg, a decade-long user who shot up in the
Insite safe-injection facility on East Hastings yesterday, said the obvious
danger of a bad hit isn't enough to dissuade hard-core users. Nor are
warnings from police and agencies that work with addicts.

"When the word gets out there's good heroin, everyone wants to do it
because it's cheaper. It's killing people, but we still want it," Greg said.

David, another injection-site user, said rumour on the street is the deadly
batch is actually powdered methadone sold as heroin. Methadone is
commercially available as a powder.

Dave has injected the opiate substitute before and says it didn't make him
high fast enough.

"If it doesn't hit right away, we'll just slam another shot," he said.

Dave said the cumulative dose problem may be what killed two men shooting
together in a rooming house Friday, another two men and a woman over the
weekend and a woman found dead Wednesday. Four of the six were in the
Downtown Eastside.

Toxicology tests on the victims' blood and tests of evidence found at the
overdose scenes are not expected for at least two weeks.

McKay said it's not uncommon for dealers to cut their drugs with toxins. He
recalled a batch of heroin mixed with powdered laundry detergent and crack
cocaine showing up on the street earlier this summer that had been cooked
up using diesel.

Anyone with information about the killer heroin is asked to call
CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.