Free Pure Heroin Samples - Smack & Drugs

Cops and prosecutors trace the spreading smack scourge in Massachusetts back to a calculated decision by South American drug cartels to push heroin over cocaine. The upshot has been a flood of lethally pure smack that just about any Massachusetts eighth-grader can buy with his lunch money. ``The old school rule where you don't sell to kids, those days are long gone,'' lamented New Bedford Juvenile Drug Court case manager Robert McPherson. Authorities say some local drug rings appear to be specifically targeting kids. ``The bags have symbols and colors. They are designed without question to attract young people,'' Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said. ``It's frightening.'' Then there's the free samples. ``They'll give it to you free the first couple of times,'' said Earl Dandy, director of the Boston teen rehab program Project Rebound. ``A $5 bag of heroin? If I'm willing to sacrifice $10, I'm subject to make in the course of your using $10,000. So what's $10?'' George Festa, director of the federal New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, or HIDTA, which coordinates law enforcement efforts, can hardly believe how cheap and pure heroin has gotten here. He was a DEA agent in 1994 when super-pure heroin started showing up. Chemical testing revealed it was coming from Colombia, not the traditional sources in South East Asia. In the years that followed, it became clear Colombian drug cartels were executing a disturbing new business plan to take over and expand the heroin market here by slashing prices and hiking purity. ``It's worked,'' said Lowell Police Sgt. James Trudel, a narcotics officer who says heroin use among young people, especially suburban kids, has grown drastically over the last few years. A recovering teen addict from Lynn, who agreed to share his story on the condition his name not be used, said his years of doing and selling drugs like OxyContin and heroin brought him in contact with peers from all over the North Shore. ``I've met kids that come from some of the wealthiest families in Marblehead, Hamilton, Wenham all the way down to the slums,'' he said. ``It's everywhere.'' Heroin taken off Bay State streets is consistently more than 50 percent pure and often tops 90 percent purity, Festa said. In the rest of the country, average purity is less than 40 percent. Years ago, heroin barely 20 percent pure sold for $30 or $40 a hit. At today's prices, though, just about any kid can afford to tangle with ``Big Harry.'' ``You pick up some money from mommy's change or go in daddy's ash tray and pull the change out of there. Then it graduates to going into pocketbooks,'' Dandy said.
Blodgett figures it's easier and cheaper for most teens to score smack then to get hold of a six pack of beer. ``It's very unsettling,'' he said. ``We're seeing more and more of it in the schools.'' The Essex County Drug Task Force made 300 heroin-related busts last year and seized more than 21,000 single-dose bags of heroin and 2,172 grams of pure heroin, enough for more than 65,000 additional single-dose bags. HIDTA task forces in the greater Boston and Worcester areas scooped up about 4.5 kilograms of heroin last year, the equivalent of roughly 135,000 doses.
 

In 1898 The Bayer Company introduced Heroin as a substitute for Morphine. In the early 1900's the philanthropic Saint James Society in the U.S. mounts a campaign to provide free samples of Heroin through the mail to morphine addicts who are trying to give up their habits. In 1923 the U.S. Treasury Department's Narcotics Division (the first federal drug agency) bans all legal narcotics sales. With the prohibition of legal venues to purchase heroin, addicts are forced to buy from illegal street dealers.

Impediments to opioid availability include concerns about drug addiction, diversion and restrictive legislation on drug control. While only 48% of governments reported that morphine in any form was available in all their cancer treatment hospitals, 54% of governments reported having periodic shortages in opioids, mainly due to insufficient importation, distribution delays and administrative problems in their national health systems.