TWO DEAD AS 'HIGHLY LETHAL' HEROIN HITS STREETS

Local News - Kingston Police say there is some "highly lethal" heroin being
sold on city streets that is suspected to have caused two deaths in the
past 10 days.

Members of Project Round Up - a joint-forces drug enforcement squad - and
the Kingston Police are investigating the deaths and trying to locate the
source and distributor of what they say is "pure grade" heroin.

"Ideally, we'd like to get the supplier, but right now we just want to get
it off the streets so we don't have any more deaths," said Staff Sgt. Chris
Scott.

Though police are still waiting for toxicology reports, the heroin is
thought to have nearly twice the potency of what drug users are accustomed
to, Scott said.

"[Users] get to know how much their body can tolerate.

"They can be used to heroin running at 40 to 50 per cent [purity] and then
getting 80 per cent ... if people realize it, they'll use less."

But Scott noted that heroin users are not always mentally stable and might
not choose to use less, even if they know the drug's potency.

Often, people use heroin on their own, making the chances of surviving an
overdose slim, Scott said.

A wave of stronger heroin hits the streets every few years, but it's not a
common occurrence.

In the 10 years Scott served on the Toronto police force he said there were
three such waves of high-grade heroin.

"It happens periodically with heroin because there's no quality control. We
need to get [the information] out to everyone so they're aware of it."

As of last night, several local health officials were unaware of the warning.

The nursing supervisor at Kingston General Hospital hadn't heard of the
overdoses and neither had the head of the emergency department at Hotel
Dieu nor the communications officer for the area health unit.

"I would hope and expect that the outreach coordinators [at the Street
Health Centre] would already have the information," said Justin Chenier,
communications officer for the health unit.

Kingston's Street Health Centre has a needle exchange program run by the
health unit that provides clean needles to intravenous drug users.

Outreach workers in the program are often on city streets handing out the
needles and talking to drug users from the program's mobile unit, Chenier said.

"We're going to make sure we'll get the information out that there are
drugs out there that are killing people," he said.

Last year, the local health unit reported 393,000 needles exchanged in its
program.

Chenier said that though the exchange program is not geared towards
stopping people from using drugs, it helps reduce the number of
communicable diseases in intravenous drug users.

"We're not in place to fix that problem, we just make sure they're not
passing on diseases," he said.

Scott said all of Kingston Police's beat officers have been notified of the
potentially lethal heroin and are actively talking to people on the
streets. Anyone with information is asked to contact Kingston Police or
Crime Stoppers.