HEROIN DEATHS WORRY CORONER

Westmoreland County Coroner Ken Bacha asked for toxicology tests on two
recent cases to be accelerated because of a concern about an increase this
year in the number of county deaths involving young adult males.

The findings came back to his office Thursday, and the results were the
same as in seven previous cases in 2002 - the deaths resulted from drug
overdoses, he said.

In both of the recent cases, heroin was a factor, Bacha said.

"We know of three heroin deaths and possibly a fourth one since the first
of this year," he explained. "In a county this size, where we don't have a
lot of them, it got our attention."

According to speculation, increased competition among suppliers has
resulted in the circulation of a purer form of the drug than usual.

"(That's) a possibility but we have no proof of that, and neither do state
police," Bacha said earlier this week.

The nine drug-related deaths recorded this year equal the entire number of
drug overdoses recorded for 1999 in Westmoreland County.

From 1992 through 1998, 33 people in the county died from drug overdoses,
defined as fatalities caused by one drug, a combination of drugs, a
combination of drugs and alcohol or from alcohol alone. That computes to an
average of 4.7 deaths per year.

In 2001, 16 deaths were attributed to drug overdoses in the county,
according to the coroner's office.

All the drug overdoses in the county this year have involved males,
"most in their 20s or early 30s," Bacha said.

Dr. Charles Winek, a toxicologist and director of PC Laboratories, an
uptown Pittsburgh firm that does toxicology testing for Westmoreland and
other western Pennsylvania counties, guessed that purer-than-usual heroin
could be a factor in the increase in deaths.

"It's not uncommon for this, and it's because of the competition in New
York, Cleveland wherever it comes from," he said.

Winek said speed shooting - injecting heroin into a vein too quickly - is
another possible explanation. Problems also can arise for a user new to a
drug, he said.

Winek, a professor of toxicology at Duquesne University for 38 years, said
it may be up to police to find the specific reason for the increase in
overdoses.

"The only way you find out is to get some of it and analyze it," he said.
"The only way we'll resolve that is if we have the syringe, the bag, the
powder."

But Winek agrees that deaths as a result of drug overdoses appear to be
increasing.

"We're starting to see an influx. We have them from all the counties -
Butler, Westmoreland, Beaver," Winek said, adding that he doesn't keep a
tally of the drug-related fatalities tested in his office.

"It's ongoing, but there appears to be an increase."

Efforts to immediately retrieve statistics from Beaver and Butler counties
were unsuccessful. Coroners in those counties also couldn't be reached for
comment.

Fayette County reported three accidental drug overdoses from January
through March of this year. The coroner's office there attributed three
suicides to drug overdoses in 2001 and eight others to accidental deaths
related to drug overdoses.

Fayette County Coroner Dr. Phillip E. Reilly said it's difficult to make
judgments based only on three months of statistics in a year, but he
guessed that the number of drug-related deaths is higher so far this year
in Fayette.

He was not aware of a strong, purer form of heroin being sold in Fayette
County.

"I'm not aware of any highly potent heroin at all. It hasn't come across
the coroner's desk," Reilly said.

But he agreed that stronger than normal heroin can be a problem and cause
deaths.

"I think that happens in the bigger cities when too strong a mix is
involved," Reilly said.

Heroin appears as morphine in the blood, Winek explained.

Of the two most recent Westmoreland County cases, one death resulted from
heroin alone. Heroin was present with cocaine and alcohol in the other
case, Bacha said.

He said the other drug-related deaths in the county this year involved
cocaine, OxyContin or combinations of other substances.

No particular Westmoreland County area has been tied to drug-related deaths.

"The biggest bulk of them ... has been from suburban, rural areas," Bacha said.