NEW JERSEY

Substance abuse tragedy

A probable four deaths in just weeks from heroin ought to sound the alarm bell in Rockland.

As Dr. Lone Thanning, the county medical examiner, said: “Every parent, every sibling and every boyfriend or girlfriend should be concerned.” A 21-year-old Tappan resident was found near death last week in his bedroom by his now-grieving father. He died enroute to the hospital. Preliminary reports were that the young man likely overdosed on heroin, making him the county's fourth fatality from the narcotic in the past month.
Police told staff writer Steve Lieberman that the death is still being investigated, but the probable heroin connection adds urgency to concerns about the drug being sold on the streets of Rockland and New Jersey. So far, six other deaths in Jersey and Pennsylvania are being connected to the drug. And a Spring Valley man remains on life support in Good Samaritan Hospital from an overdose.
On June 15, a Congers teen overdosed on heroin from a small bag stamped “Ray Charles,” named after the late singer. That youth died from snorting the drug. On June 22, a second Congers 19-year-old was found dead with a bag of heroin stamped with lips and the words “Kiss of Death.”
He also may have snorted the drug. A Mahwah. N.J., man also died, in Rockland at Good Samaritan Hospital, from a heroin overdose.

The confirmed heroin deaths and three other possible overdoses have raised concerns about highly potent heroin or heroin containing other dangerous drugs or poisons. Heroin comes from overseas and is distributed regionally to dealers, who can dangerously add other narcotics or powders to increase the amount of doses and make more money. Authorities report that more young people have been snorting heroin, but injecting the narcotic remained prevalent.
Police in Rockland are working with New Jersey authorities because there is a belief some of the lethal heroin was coming from the Paterson area in Passaic County, just 20 miles from Rockland, though Passaic Chief Assistant Prosecutor Paul Chiaramonte, who oversees that county's narcotics task force, said he doubts the heroin contained poisons: “In the drug trade, lacing heroin with some type of poisonous substance is not cost-effective. Our feeling is the unfortunate deaths are probably a misuse of the heroin.”
While speculation about heroin potency, its purity and its “misuse” may lead police to sources and help them and medical examiners complete death certificates, the fact is efforts must again be doubled in attacking substance abuse and its trade.

Parents have to be more concerned and involved, looking for early warning signs and getting help for their children. Friends and schools must be there, too. Most important, individuals have to be alert to what can happen if they fall into a drug habit.
Now, all of this has been said before, and there can be no naïveté that merely bringing up the obvious will automatically save lives. But in the absence of other remedy, we must repeat these words.

Too many young people have died, a tragic number of late, and no matter how many times all of us must shout, even into the wind, we must do so.

We must show that we are concerned.

Editorial
6 July 2005

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050706/OPINION01/507060363/1015

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