LOCAL POLICE: HEROIN MIX MAY BE DEADLY

Heroin, already considered dangerous by treatment counselors and
police, becomes even more dangerous when it is mixed with other substances.

The second substance, often added by drug dealers to boost the amount
of the drug available for sale, can range from baby powder to
children's Tylenol to rat poison or Fentanyl, a powerful narcotic. At
best, the substance used to "cut" the heroin could cause an
infection, at worse, death.

Davenport police Thursday night responded to three people from
Tipton, Iowa, a husband and wife, ages 50 and 49, and their son, 26,
found in a drug-induced stupor in the 2300 block of Boies Avenue.
Taken to Genesis Medical Systems, West Campus, where they responded
to treatment, they admitted to using heroin.

The Davenport police warned that the heroin they purchased may be
"bad" and dangerous to use. Whether the heroin used by the threesome
had another substance mixed with it is unknown.

Often heroin users push the amount they use as they build a
tolerance, Heather Olson, program manager for the Center for Alcohol
and Drug Services in Rock Island.

"There is no such thing as safe heroin use," she said. "People can
have different tolerances.

"As they take more and more, it is no longer using for the euphoria,
but so they don't feel sick."

Quad-City Metropolitan Enforcement Group isn't seeing an influx of
heroin in the Quad-Cities, director Rene Sandoval said, but has seen
reports from other parts of the country of deaths related to heroin
cut with Fentanyl. Fentanyl is a narcotic pain reliever considered 50
to 100 times stronger than morphine.

The toxic mix of heroin and Fentanyl is 80 times more powerful that
straight heroin, he said.

Several cities reported fatal overdoses of the drug last summer,
Sandoval said. The number of overdoses, linked to the heroin-Fentanyl
mix, prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services'
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services to put out a warning about the drug.

"It was killing people left and right," Sandoval said. "I'm being
conservative saying 50 people died."

The federal warning cited more than 100 deaths in the Detroit area
over a seven-month period.

"People take chances any time they ingest a drug because drug dealers
will cut it down to increase their sales," Sandoval said. "By the
time it gets to the street, the user doesn't know what they are taking."

The incident in Davenport should be a warning for illegal drug users,
Olson said.

"You don't always know what you are purchasing," she said.