Veteran lawman calls heroin OD spate 'worst ever'

The tools to deliver a typical, potentially fatal heroin dose. Courtesy photo)

Area police expect the occasional spate of heroin overdoses every few months or so, but even seasoned lawmen say they have never seen such a string of potentially fatal overdoses like the region has seen the past 10 days.

"This is the worst ever," Rochester Police Det. Sgt. Anthony DeLuca said on Saturday. "They (users) think they're getting what they think is (regular) heroin, but they're getting something else."

Others close to the heroin investigations blame a drug called fentanyl, commonly spelled fentanil, a synthetic opiate 80 to100 times more potent than heroin, according to http://wikipedia.org.

"Maybe someone's trying to make stronger heroin, maybe a dealer's not mixing it properly. We don't know," said DeLuca who added Rochester Police have seen about 20 overdoses recently.

On Saturday one Rochester woman was found overdosed, unconscious and barely breathing. She was revived using Narcan, or Naloxone, which miraculously and immediately reverses the deadly effects of a heroin overdose. The drug is usually administered as a nasal spray or injection and is available in most ambulances. Rochester Fire also carries the potentially life-saving drug.

DeLuca said the female was found slumped over the steering wheel of her car in the parking lot of Borderline Beverage in East Rochester. She took a couple of nasal spray treatments before coming to. She was stabilized, transported and treated at Frisbie Memorial Hospital and later arrested on heroin possession charges.

Another Rochester man was arrested on Saturday in connection with an incident earlier this month in which he allegedly overdosed on heroin and was found unconscious and not breathing, but revived with Narcan.

Three other Rochester residents were indicted earlier this week on heroin possession charges.

Another four Rochester residents were found unresponsive and unconscious after suspected heroin overdoses in mid-December. All four were revived.

DeLuca said Rochester police as well as the Strafford County Drug Task Force are trying hard to get to the midlevel dealers he suspects are cooking up bad stuff, but this time around the victims have refused to give them up.

"They don't want to give up their supplier," said DeLuca, who has 20 years in law enforcement. "And when we don't get those names, we know more victims will likely follow."

DeLuca said the agonizing thing is that the window of opportunity to revive an overdose victim with this latest bad batch of heroin is extremely small, just a matter of minutes between being revived and being dead.

And he said the crazy thing is that when first responders revive a victim, they don't seem concerned that they almost died and don't see the gravity.

"After the chest compressions, the Narcan, after they come to, they're ready to walk away," DeLuca said. "In several cases, they were flatlined, then they get the Narcan one, two or three times before coming to. They don't get they were legally dead."

DeLuca said the users out on the street know there's a bad batch, but they still shoot up, even knowing deep down they could die.

"I haven't had one (overdose victim) yet say that they didn't know that there's bad stuff out there," he said.

He said some users may be using in pairs, with one watching the other while they shoot up, then waiting for their turn.

"But it doesn't take long. They could go to the store for a pack of cigarettes and come home and they're gone," DeLuca said.

Maine State Police Trooper Michael Pappas, who regularly covers Lebanon, has only been on the job three years, but he also said it was the worst he can remember.

Pappas said on Saturday that they had an overdose victim in Alfred a week ago who would have died had they gone another minute without Narcan.

"I've never seen this many," he said.

He said the bad batches are not just coming from one supplier.

"People know it's a bad thing and they still do it," he said.