New Heroin warning as drug death toll rockets

[Lunar Loops]

This from the Evening Times in Scotland yesterday:

New heroin warning as drugs death toll rockets

DRUG-RELATED deaths in west central Scotland have almost doubled this year after high-strength heroin flooded the streets.
Since January 1 there have been 82 drug death probes by Strathclyde Police, compared to 48 for the same period last year.
Police said purer heroin is circulating. A typical deal now contains 125mg of the drug where it used to be 100mg and the average strength of a street deal is almost twice as much as this time last year.
The alert comes after the number of Glasgow drug deaths - mostly from heroin - fell from 108 in 2004 to 78 in 2005, thanks mainly to new services for addicts.
Police have called a multi-agency meeting, involving social workers, health workers, and alcohol and drug action teams, to determine how problem can be tackled.
Detective Superintendent John McSporran said: "Heroin of a higher- than-normal strength is being sold but taking any type of illegal drugs is inherently dangerous."
Earlier this year, the Evening Times revealed a new heroin substitute - buprenorphine - is to be prescribed in Glasgow as an alternative to methadone for those on detox and short-term withdrawal.

Publication date 16/05/06

[Abrad]

And (as usual) the solution to this problem is to either legalise all drugs, or at the very least, supply addicts with heroin of a standard strength and quality.

[Sklander]

+1

Over and over again in the Drugnews section this seems to be the case. As time goes on the cases like this get higher and higher in number.

[Forthesevenlakes]

abrad, the solution you or swiy proposes is so elegant and simple. too bad most people will have a knee-jerk reaction against such easy measures to keep people safe. its kind of like occam's razor applied to drugs, where the simplest answer is probably the correct one. but it will probably be an unfortunately long time before most people see this.

[rxbandit]

i heard that fentanyl was being sold as china white and the higher potency was responsible for alot of the deaths. i know fentanyl was the cause of quite a few deaths on the east coast but i do not know if its the cause in scotland.