Smackdown

By Jocelyn Geboy in News on May 15, 2006 8:30PM

We don't know how else to put this -- there's bad junk going around. Chicagoist hopes that you're not nodding off whilst checking the blogosphere, or getting into a comment war and then running off to cop, but if you are into heroin or were considering picking up the habit, you might want to think twice.

Besides the regular old hazards from being riding the big H, (e.g. HIV or Hepatitis C from dirty needles, being dope sick when you can't get any, jail time if caught, and death from overdose) there's a brand new one: dying from heroin cut with fentanyl. It's a synthetic prescription pain killer that's just like heroin, except for how it's insanely more potent.

People have been ODing on the bad heroin in Humboldt Park for about a month now, and there's been one death associated with this recent spate of overdoses. Last month, about 25 people overdosed on jacked stuff on the South Side, and there was also one death. A decent way to tell if you may have gotten the bad stuff? People are supposedly handing it out for free. Huh. We thought that was just a stereotype. You know, "First one's free!" We're reminded of the old standby-- if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Image via cnn.com