The best advertising for street heroin? Overdose fatalities, like the nine that have occured recently in south New Jersey and the Philadelphia area. Today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

If you want to make a killing in the heroin business, make sure a couple of customers die. Bad heroin has killed at least nine people in Philadelphia and South Jersey since April 14, and dozens have been sent to emergency rooms, authorities said. But the news has only driven up demand, as heroin users have flocked to drug corners looking for the powerful stuff. Not exactly what you might expect. "But then these aren't rational people we're talking about," Philadelphia Police Capt. Leonard Ditchkofsky said. He said he believed the bad drugs had been put on the street "on purpose."

Junkies agree. According to current users and recovering addicts, a dead junkie is a drug dealer's best advertisement. "If people die, other people think the heroin is good," said Jason Ortiz, 31, of Camden, who said he had used heroin for 10 years. "They think it's pure because somebody died." Said a recovering addict at My Brother's Keeper, a treatment center in Camden: "It's like saying, 'We got the good stuff that's really kicking.'" Most junkies don't know that the heroin isn't killing them - it's fentanyl, a drug used to "cut," or stretch, the heroin. Fentanyl, a painkiller 80 times stronger than morphine, usually is prescribed in the form of a skin patch to treat chronic pain in cancer patients. On the street, it is sold as "China White." Most drugs are measured in milligrams. Fentanyl is so powerful it is measured in micrograms, much smaller units.

Of course, the users drawn by the ODs are angling for slow death, as opposed to sudden. What to do about heroin addiction? Faith-based and other privately-operated intervention programs are a much saner approach than government sponsored clean-needle centers. Then again, maintaining addiction is in the best interests of the social services mafia, isn't it?

TECHNORATI TAGS: HEROIN, PHILADELPHIA, NEW JERSEY, OVERDOSES, CHINA WHITE