DEADLY DRUG MIX RESURFACES IN NEW YORK

At least 17 people in New York City have died in the past four months
after taking either cocaine or heroin laced with a powerful
painkiller, health officials warned yesterday.

While this is the first reported cluster of overdoses from the lethal
drug cocktail reported in the city in many years, hundreds of people
across the country have died in similar overdoses in recent months.
The deaths indicate a possible resurgence of the deadly practice of
lacing drugs with fentanyl, a prescription painkiller that can be up
to 80 times more potent than morphine.

"With some 500 deaths around the country, there is a sense that this
is a growing problem," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city's health
commissioner.

The deaths in New York since May have been scattered across the city.
All but one of the victims were men and most were ages 30 to 53,
officials said. Details of the individual cases are still being
compiled and it remains unclear whether the victims knew they were
taking fentanyl.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement that he had
warned police officers to take special precautions, including using
rubber gloves, when handling drugs that may contain fentanyl, because
it can be absorbed through the skin and cause illness. He said the
police believed that most of the fentanyl found in the drugs used by
the victims was manufactured illicitly, not in legitimate
pharmaceutcal laboratories.

Across the country, most similar overdoses have occurred in Chicago,
Detroit and Philadelphia. In June, 400 federal and local law
enforcement officials raided a public housing project in Chicago,
hoping to disrupt what they said was a sophisticated drug ring. The
officials said they believed the ring was responsible for providing
drugs that killed more than 100 people in and around that city.

Worried about the possible spread to New York after nine deaths were
reported in Newark in June, the New York City Department of Health and
Mental Hygiene issued an alert to doctors, asking them to report all
overdoses suspected of involving fentanyl.

The alert noted that eight of the nine deaths in Newark occurred among
users who snorted the drug rather than injecting it.

Fentanyl is a synthetic compound that is typically used by doctors to
treat chronic pain. But since it can be made in clandestine drug labs,
it has been used as either a substitute for heroin or to enhance the
effects of heroin and cocaine.

Drug dealers might want to add fentanyl to the mix because it lets
them both stretch their supply and create a drug with a more intense
high.

When fentanyl is laced with cocaine, it is meant to ease some of the
effects of coming down off the drug.

Whatever the reason illicit drug makers may use fentanyl, it remains
extremely dangerous because it is so potent, lethal in even small
doses. The last time there was major concern about the use of the
tranquilizer was some 15 years ago.

In 1990, a new brand of heroin laced with fentanyl, nicknamed Tango
and Cash, hit the streets and almost immediately, people began to die.
In one weekend alone in 1991, 12 people in the city fatally overdosed.

Perhaps because fentanyl has proved so deadly in the past, until
recently it was rarely seen on the streets in any great quantity. How
widespread its use is remains unknown. Since fentanyl has a biological
effect similar to that of heroin and it is not detected by standard
urine toxicology tests, its presence may go unnoticed, officials said.

For now, health officials say their primary concern is making sure
doctors know to be alert for the drug so they can treat overdose victims.