MEXICO DRUG LAB LINKED TO HEROIN DEATHS IN JERSEY

CHICAGO -- U.S. agents, working in cooperation with the Mexican
government, have closed down a lab in Mexico that might be the main
source of a powerful painkiller that has killed at least 100 heroin
users in New Jersey and seven other states, the federal drug czar
said yesterday.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, said it's still not clear whether the painkiller,
fentanyl, was mixed with heroin at the lab in Mexico or after it
entered the United States.

"There may be more than one source," Walters said. "We think this is
the principal source."

Five people were arrested during the May bust, including one Walters
described as "the chemist." He referred specific questions to the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which declined to provide details.

Walters said that the dealers may have started using Fentanyl because
they were looking for a competitive advantage on the street, but that
inept mixing -- or cutting -- of the drug combination made it deadly.

He also warned that millions of deadly doses of the fentanyl-laced
heroin might still be on the streets. Fentanyl-laced cocaine had
turned up in some cities, as well, he said.

Steven Marcus, executive director of New Jersey Poison Information
and Education System at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of
New Jersey, said that the fentanyl outbreak has been largely confined
to the Camden area, where there have been at least 100 confirmed
cases of people being poisoned, including at least a dozen deaths.

The outbreak seemed to have waned recently, but this weekend there
were at least eight overdose cases reported by doctors in Newark-area
emergency rooms that could be related to fetanyl, Marcus said.

'This is purely anecdotal, and we're trying to get harder data on
that," Marcus said.

Outside New Jersey, deaths caused by fentanyl-laced drugs have
occurred in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Delaware and Maryland, Walters said.