Heroin In Our Neighborhood

We've endured a lot in this neighborhood.  Prostitution, theft, vandalism, murders, child sex offenders, the mentally ill and of course, meth.  But, last week brought us a new danger .... heroin.

Around lunch time a few days ago, Sheila noticed a fire engine parked in front of a neighbor's house.  Within moments, EMSA followed.  The lady of the house came out in tears and stood in our front lawn as events proceeded.

They had found their young adult daughter slumped over a pile of laundry.  Her face was blue, she wasn't breathing and there was a syringe nearby.  After they got the girl breathing again, a quick search revealed a small quantity of black tar heroin, syringes, a spoon and a lighter. Pure heroin is usually adulterate or "cut" in drug terms to reduce its deadly strength and increase profits.  In this case, the drug appeared to be almost completely pure and showed no sign of the grainy or playdoh texture consistent with being cut with lactose or baby formula.  It is a good bet that this girl was dealing close to the source and either didn't know what she had or somebody wanted her dead because the heroin she shot into her vein was obviously extremely powerful.

The police took forever to respond and didn't make a report or an arrest when they finally did arrive since they didn't see the drugs in the young woman's possession.  The timing of their arrival also conveniently assured there would be no bothersome paperwork or court appearances over one nearly OD'd hype.  In law enforcement eyes, it was just another throw away case involving a throw away person not worth the time and attention of the system.

Black tar heroin is produced in Mexico and Latin America and is distributed by the drug cartels. These are the same people who line overpasses with severed heads and kill cops that cannot be bribed on both sides of the border. Black tar heroin is a terrible drug that is almost instantly addictive and usually ends in the death of the user either by overdose, complications such as necrotizing conditions of the skin and underlying tissue, organ failure or needle transmissible diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.  Heroin is the death knell for a drug user, the end of the pharmaceutical line that often begins with marijuana and moves on through pills and meth.  Heroin is the last stop and heroin addicts are truly the living dead.

But, heroin is also the death knell for a neighborhood.  Where you find heroin you find heroin

dealers.  Somewhere in our neighborhood, some of the most dangerous people on earth are making very good money selling slow death in little plastic bags.  And, they are the type of people who will kill anyone that gets in their way.

We have a lot of new people in the neighborhood.  Some of them are Mexicans.  Many if not most are here illegally.  Most are nice people.  But, without an immigration policy to find out who is actually entering the country, the very social problems the nice folks  fled in Mexico will follow them here and it won't be long before our cities are as dangerous and corrupt as theirs.