OFFICIALS GATHER TO FIGHT DEADLY FENTANYL OUTBREAK

CHIGAGO -- Just one hundred and twenty-five micrograms -- the
equivalent of six grains of salt -- is enough fentanyl to kill.

Mix it with heroin or cocaine, and you have a high to die for -- literally.

In Pittsburgh, heroin mixed with fentanyl is being marketed on the
street under the name "get high or die tryin.' "

In metro Detroit, so far this year, 83 people have died trying.

The seriousness of the spreading threat drew more than 125 law
enforcement officials, scientists, public health officials and
emergency first responders from seven cities and Mexico to Chicago on
Wednesday and Thursday to learn about the potentially lethal
painkiller and where it's coming from. Even Scott Burns, deputy drug
czar, in the Bush administration was on hand.

"This is a serious drug," said Timothy Ogden, Drug Enforcement
Administration associate special agent,

He held up a little plastic bag in which tiny particles of powder
were barely visible.

"This is enough fentanyl to kill you," he said.

"In my 30 years of drug enforcement work, I haven't seen a threat
that bothers me as much," Ogden said.

He likened the use of illegal drugs to playing Russian roulette with
a single bullet, but with fentanyl, he said, "It's like playing
Russian roulette with six bullets in the gun."

The fentanyl being mixed with street drugs most likely was
manufactured in multiple clandestine labs, possibly in Mexico, Ogden
said Thursday.

This outbreak is more widespread than previous ones, he said. "It
appears there may be independent distributors operating in different
cities," he added.

Chicago has had an explosion of drug overdose cases in the last two
months, many in people taking heroin laced with fentanyl. The city
has had 60 deaths in about a year.

Detroit experienced a similar increase, but in a much more
concentrated period of time. And, unlike in Chicago, where people are
surviving the overdoses, most of the known fentanyl cases in Detroit
have been dead on arrival.

Wayne County officials first sounded the alarm about fentanyl on
May19 after 12 people died in 24 hours from apparent drug overdoses.

Fentanyl is a synthetically manufactured pain medication that is 50
to 100 times more powerful than morphine. In its legally prescribed
form, it typically is administered through a patch, an oral lozenge
or through injections. It often is prescribed to cancer patients.

Although the number of suspected drug deaths has fallen back to more
normal levels in the past two weeks in metro Detroit, fentanyl-laced
heroin has been popping up in more and more cities, with similar
deadly results. And a lull does not indicate the problem is past,
authorities said.

"There's always a concern when the drug is being manufactured that it
can come back at any time, especially if it's being manufactured in
the states," said James Tolbert, commander of the organized crime
division for the Detroit Police Department, who attended the conference.

"That's why we're cooperating with all our local folks and the people
here, to try to determine where the source is."

John Arvanitis, assistant special agent in charge of the Detroit
field division of the DEA, said the most important thing that came
out of the conference, was "the realization of the magnitude of the situation.

"That will facilitate coordination among state, local and federal
authorities in a national effort to disrupt and dismantle the
organizations involved in this," he said.