Fatal Decisions in Substance Abuse

# 4

Qualitative Analysis and Quantitative Analysis; Substances are chemicals in large part.

If we took one gallon of cool water and poured a packet of grape KoolAid into the pitcher of water, but failed to adequately stir the mixture, the first glass of liquid poured from that pitcher would have a very high percentage of water and a very low percentage of the sugar and grape flavoring which fell to the bottom of the pitcher.

Common experience in our society indicates that the mixture would get closer to full equilibrium if we took some time to stir and dissolve the solids throughout the fluid.

Perhaps an even better solution would be created if we first dissolved the powdered KoolAid in a small volume of boiling water and then stirred in the remaining gallon of cool, pure water.

Using the above example, and bringing in Forensic Chemists, they are frequently given a fluid or a dry substance and they are asked to reverse engineer an analysis of the unknown mixture back to its original ingredients.

A reverse analysis of the KoolAid mixture may show a Chemist a finding of:

98% water

1.5% refined, sugar

0.05% artificial grape flavoring

Given that such chemical mixtures can be prepared in the clean environment of your home's kitchen, consider some of the scenes, below, where others concoct their mixtures:

From which lab would you want your substances to originate? Which regulatory agency will insure purity for your consumption? What level of insurance has your manufacturer purchased, for your ultimate protection?

The phenomenon of increased levels of purity, for illicit substances sold on the street and reported around the country in 2016, has happened before - even in the Nation's Capital:

HEROIN OVERDOSE DEATHS RISE AS DRUG'S PURITY TRIPLES HERE

By Nancy Lewis June 10, 1990

The level of purity of heroin available for sale on the streets in Washington has more than tripled in two years, resulting in a surge in drug overdose deaths in the last 12 months.

Medical authorities say the new potency and its unpredictability threaten longtime heroin addicts as well as new heroin users who are attracted to the narcotic as a way of easing the crash from crack.

Although complete statistics are not available, the D.C. medical examiner's records show that at least 100 people died last year with lethal amounts of both cocaine and heroin in their bodies -- twice the number who died of heroin-cocaine combinations the previous year and a 2,500 percent increase over the four deaths in 1985.

Most of last year's deaths occurred in the year's final five months. No figures are available for 1990, but sources say preliminary indications are that the high level of overdose deaths is continuing.

"Instead of the crash they normally get from crack, addicts are learning that if they do some heroin they can float down," said Beverly Coleman-Miller, a doctor with the D.C. Department of Public Health.

"Then they find that if they do more and more heroin, the crack lasts longer and longer," Coleman-Miller said.

Law enforcement officials say the deadly heroin is the result of a glut of the drug on the international market that has allowed a new breed of drug entrepreneurs to bypass traditional international networks and import the drug directly from Turkey, China and other producer countries.

Heroin, which used to be "cut" or diluted many times as it passed through numerous middlemen in the drug network, is now reaching Washington wholesalers in the full strength that it left the processing lab -- 80 to 98 percent purity.

The purity of heroin sold on the street is now routinely found to be between 30 and 40 percent.

The emergency medical personnel in the District, where the area's heroin use is centered, are seeing the effects of the stronger heroin.

"They don't wake up the way they used to," one worker said of the efforts to revive addicts who have taken the purer heroin.

The medical protocol calls for administering 2 milligrams of Narcan, the main antidote to heroin, but many addicts here now require much stronger doses, sources said.

Capt. Collin Younger, commander of the D.C. police department's narcotics branch, said the purity of street-sale heroin "started to creep up" several years ago from the longtime level of 2 to 4 percent.

Then, about a year ago, narcotics officers began finding street-sale heroin in the 30 percent purity range, a level that two years earlier was the purity of heroin at the wholesale level.

Law enforcement officials fear the purer heroin, which is strong enough and inexpensive enough to be smoked or sniffed, may also be attracting a new group of users who had previously avoided the drug because of their aversion to needles -- the traditional way to ingest heroin -- and the threat of AIDS from shared needles.

Authorities say they haven't documented a major rise in the number of heroin users, but they say that heroin addiction has been a significant and continuing problem in the District for two decades.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/06/10/heroin-overdose-deaths-rise-as-drugs-purity-triples-here/2da5c3a5-871d-4e94-9755-5483f87a2e22/

How do lawful substance producers ensure consumer safety?

The two pharmaceutical labs displayed above are examples of how lawful drug manufacturers meet and clear multiple hurdles established by the government in order to ensure consumer safety when they produce licit substances.

Headed by Board Certified Physicians and Scientists
Operate in approved, quality controlled and sanitary labs; open for government inspection
Submit samples for qualitative analysis; submit to surprise inspections
Utilize industry standards which ensure thorough distribution of the active ingredient throughout the inert substances
Establish a social contract between lab and prescribing physicians and lab and consumer
Provide adequate insurance for consumer protection
Dedicate large investments to insure safe consumer packaging
Conduct LD50 testing on laboratory animals and prepare reports on lethal dosage

Better understanding of the risks can come from an awareness of the Tylenol Packaging/Adulteration Scandal of 1986

A Brief History of the Tylenol Poisonings

By Dan Fletcher Monday, Feb. 09, 2009

Tylenol capsules are removed from the shelves of a drug store after reports of tampering in February of 1986.

Psychologists called the killer so strange that their normal guidelines "just don't work." And now, more than 26 years after Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide killed seven people in the Chicago area, the Tylenol murders still have enough people scratching their heads that the FBI reopened the case and is taking a fresh look at old suspects.

The murders started in September 1982, when the parents of Mary Kellerman gave the 12-year-old a painkiller when she woke up complaining of a cold. She died hours later. Postal worker Adam Janus died in another Chicago suburb later that morning. Janus' brother and his brother's wife, complaining of headaches while mourning Adam, died too. In a few days the death toll grew — the only link being that each victim had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. (See the top 10 unsolved crimes.)

On testing, each of the capsules proved to be laced with potassium cyanide at a level toxic enough to provide thousands of fatal doses. Police were baffled — the pills came from different production plants and were sold in different drug stores around the Chicago area. Their conclusion was that someone was most likely tampering with the drug on the store shelves. The deaths set off a nationwide panic, as stores rushed to remove Tylenol from their shelves and worried consumers overwhelmed hospitals and poison control hotlines. Chicago police went through the streets with loudspeakers, warning residents of the dangers of taking Tylenol. Johnson & Johnson, the drug's manufacturer, spent millions of dollars recalling the pills from stores.

The tampering inspired hundreds of copycat incidents across the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration tallied more than 270 different incidents of product tampering in the month following the Tylenol deaths. Pills tainted with everything from rat poison to hydrochloric acid sickened people around the country. Some copycats expanded to food tampering: that Halloween, parents reported finding sharp pins concealed in candy corn and candy bars. Some communities banned trick-or-treating all together.

Police never arrested anyone for the original Tylenol murders, but tax consultant James Lewis wrote a letter to Tylenol's manufacturer in October 1982 demanding $1 million to "stop the killings." Lewis had a strange past. He had been charged with a 1978 Kansas City murder after police found the remains of one of his former clients in bags in his attic; charges were dropped after a judge ruled that the police search of Lewis' home was illegal. But police could never tie him to the Tylenol killings and he denied committing them. Lewis was convicted of extortion for the letter and spent more than 12 years in federal prison. Richard Brzeczek, the Chicago police superintendent at the time, said it was unlikely Lewis would ever be prosecuted for the killings themselves.

But when the FBI reopened their investigation in early February, the focus shifted back to Lewis. His Cambridge, Mass. office was searched as well as a storage unit he had rented nearby. The FBI has been tightlipped about the reason for the search and haven't named Lewis in conjunction with the reopened investigation. Police still have some of the tainted Tylenol capsules from the original killings and are hopeful some DNA can be recovered from the pills for testing.

The killings did have a measurable, positive impact, however: a revolution in product safety standards. In the wake of the Tylenol poisonings, pharmaceutical and food industries dramatically improved their packaging, instituting tamperproof seals and indicators and increasing security controls during the manufacturing process. The result has been a dramatic reduction in the number of copycat incidents — although it may be of little solace to the families of the seven killed in Chicago. But now, as the FBI brings modern technology to bear on a case long gone cold, perhaps they can hope again for something else tangible: at long last, some criminal charges.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1878063,00.html

In case today's reader dismisses the old story from 1990, the following 2016 story brings qualitative and quantitative analysis up-to-date and adds a twist which touches on the substance which Prince chose to use...in volumes which were fatal.

Deadly batch of heroin has killed 23 in Erie County since Jan. 29

By Lou Michel | News Staff Reporter on February 9, 2016 - 10:56 AM , updated February 9, 2016 at 1:15 PM

A young couple drove from Seneca County last week to buy some supercharged heroin that was making the rounds in Buffalo.

Soon after smoking it, the 21-year-old Waterloo woman lost consciousness. Her 26-year-old boyfriend managed to call 911. It took three doses of Narcan, an opiate antidote, before Amherst Police Officer Sean D. Shaver revived the woman.

She was lucky. These days, heroin being widely sold in the Buffalo area is really fentanyl or heroin heavily laced with the laboratory-produced opioid that is 30 to 50 times stronger than ordinary heroin.

Nearly two dozen other addicts were not so fortunate over the last two weeks. Twenty-three people have died as a result of opiate overdoses in Erie County during an 11-day period that started Jan. 29. Twelve of the deaths occurred in Buffalo, and the others were in the county’s suburbs and rural areas. The ages of the deceased range from 20 to 61.

Alarmed at the deadly spike, County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz along with County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale R. Burstein and federal authorities Tuesday issued an “emergency warning,” urging drug addicts to discard any packet of heroin they recently purchased but have not used.

The reason?

It could kill them.

‘White China’ heroin

This particular brand of street heroin, sometimes referred to as “White China” heroin, contains fentanyl that Chinese laboratories are manufacturing and sending to Mexican drug cartels, which repackage and ship it to the United States.

“The vast majority of the deaths, 19 of the 23, are believed to be related to heroin laced with an extremely fatal batch of fentanyl,” Poloncarz said. “If you have a packet of this drug you recently purchased, it is basically a death sentence. This epidemic knows no boundaries. It affects people from Buffalo to the affluent suburbs and to rural communities.”

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/police-courts/deadly-batch-of-heroin-has-killed-23-in-erie-county-since-jan-29-20160209

Every four year-old child who is handed a box of Cracker Jacks understands that the box contains a surprise for them and they quickly open the box and search for their surprise. In the world of distribution of illicit substances in the United States, those pills and powders also contain surprises for the youth and adults who chose to purchase them from strangers or associates, knowing that they do not know who manufactured the substance...yet they ingest the substance and hope for the promised effect. This child-like faith in an unknown substance, produced by an unknown person and possibly in an unimaginable "lab" environment (refresh mind by viewing above images) produces too many deaths in America and around the world. Like the Prodigal Son, these adult abusers need to "come to themselves."

High School Football Coach Wisdom :

Men, in life, there are three decisions which are yours and yours alone which you can make:

1. You can chose your faith.

2. You can chose your friends.

3. You can chose what you put into your bodies.