GARDAI CLOSE IN ON IMPORTER OF `DIRTY' HEROIN

Gardai are closing the net on the importer of a batch of heroin which may be
at the centre of the investigation into the deaths of eight drug users over
the past two weeks.

Officers disclosed last night they were now following a definite line of
inquiry in their bid to trace the heroin dealer who brought in the
consignment recently.

The dealer operates in south Dublin and gardai are trying to establish if
the shipment came here from Amsterdam, which is the primary route used by
heroin traffickers on mainland Europe.

But garda and health agency investigators have not yet confirmed if there is
a positive link between any of the eight deaths and have so far failed to
find a common contaminant.

Samples of blood, urine, body tissue and body parts taken from the eight
victims will be sent next week for toxicology tests to the world renowned
Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in the United States.

These tests are expected to determine within three weeks the cause of the
deaths and if they are linked. Samples of heroin and drug paraphernalia used
by the victims were also taken away for tests.

Initial garda inquiries cast doubt on whether the entire heroin consignment
was contaminated as the death toll would be expected to be much higher and
detectives are checking out the possibility that the drugs may have been
distributed to sub dealers before some of it was contaminated.

The only common factor in the deaths so far is that all of the victims
injected the heroin into the muscle using acid which creates a high-risk
infectious area. But muscle injection is usually carried out by addicts who
are already in very poor health and whose veins have collapsed.

Links have been suggested between the eight Dublin deaths and the deaths of
12 users in Scotland. However, the heroin involved in Dublin had a
higher-than-usual purity while in Glasgow the purity was lower than usual.

``At this stage we don't know if they are all linked,'' one senior
investigator admitted last night. ``It could end up being largely a series
of unfortunate coincidences but the Atlanta tests should clarify the
causes.''

The eight deaths have taken place since May 16 while the official death rate
for drug users is two a month on average, although it is accepted that this
figure does not include addicts whose deaths are attributed to other causes
such as pneumonia or hypothermia.

Meanwhile, public health officials in Britain said yesterday they were
examining the deaths of seven people in England and Wales to establish if
they are connected to the 12 deaths in Glasgow.

As in Dublin, all are believed to have injected directly into the muscle
tissue and suffered severe inflammation around the site of injection, before
falling seriously ill. Victims suffer a septacemia-type illness and need
intensive care but some have died from multiple organ failure.