While police wait on toxicology results to return in a death investigation in which heroin is suspected as the cause, they say they anticipate heroin use continuing to increase in Grant County.
A 30-year-old man died on Oct. 6, and officials believe he overdosed on heroin.
“We suspect it to be heroin, based on what we’re hearing,” said Grant County Coroner Stephen Dorsey. “I suspect that that’s what we’ll find in the toxicology.”
He also suspects the man took other drugs, but the results won’t be back until at least a week.
If the cause of death is determined to be heroin, it’ll be the first heroin overdose in Grant County, Dorsey said.
Another man also overdosed on heroin on Oct. 6, but he survived. In the past couple months, Marion Police have made at least three arrests related to heroin, and members of the Joint Effort Against Narcotics Team say they also have seen an uptick.
“I think it’s because of the prescription drug abuse that we have,” said Marion Police Detective Sgt. Mark Stefanatos. “They get addicted to that opiate-based pill, and it’s a lot cheaper to go buy a bag of heroin.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, a study found that illegal use of prescription pain drugs increased a person’s risk of becoming a heroin user. Researchers found that Americans aged 12 to 49 who had used prescription pain relievers illegally were 19 times more likely to have started using heroin within the past year than other people in that age group.
Heroin use in general has increased in the country during the last few years. The number of Americans who reported using heroin in the past 12 months rose from 373,000 in 2007 to 620,000 in 2011.
Stefanatos said the numbers also are increasing locally. In the past couple years, the heroin cases the Jean Team has investigated have been “few and far between,” but that isn’t the case anymore, he said. So far this year, the task force has had five heroin cases, four of which have just been within the last three months. That number excludes the arrests made by police and the overdoses.
Stefanatos believes most of the drug is coming from larger cities, like Chicago and Indianapolis.
“There are people that have ties to Marion there, and sometimes with drugs all it takes is one person to cause a complete disaster in your community,” he said.
Like methamphetamine, heroin cases can almost always tie together. Stefanatos said there have been 19 meth labs in the county so far this year, and most of them can be traced back to one person.
“One person will start it and introduce it to someone else, who will introduce it to someone else,” he said.
Heroin, however, is more concerning to law enforcement because of the risks associated with needles, which Stefanatos said police officers are seeing more of.
“Patrol does a very good job keeping themselves safe, and they’re very careful during car searches,” he said. “We’ve been better about looking before we stick our hands under a seat.”
With needles come infectious diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C.
Stefanatos said he is concerned about members of the public, particularly children, finding a needle in a public place like a park. The needles are especially dangerous if they still have traces of heroin leftover in them.
He said heroin is dangerous because it’s hard to get off of once a person is addicted.
“A heroin trend can change in just a matter of days because the drug is so highly addictive,” he said. “Once your body becomes physically dependent on it, the withdrawal is atrocious. It’s one of the hardest things to get off of.”
The drug methadone is typically used to wean people off of heroin, and Stefanatos said a lot of abusers are getting help at Premier Care, the methadone clinic in Marion.
“When it’s being used properly, it can help people, however in order to get off drugs a person has to want to get off drugs,” Stefanatos said of the methadone clinic. “My personal belief is that you don’t fix a habit with a new habit. But the methadone clinic has worked for a lot of people.”
He said officials at the clinic have been helpful recently when it comes to removing people who police are having a problem with, but he said it’s sometimes difficult for the two agencies to partner because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
“Whenever we’ve had a problem with a client and we bring it to their attention, they deal with it quickly,” he said.
Stefanatos said law enforcement is trying to tackle the problem of heroin before it gets worse, but he said it’s a popular drug not only because of the price but because it’s attractive to all demographics.
Signs and symptoms of heroin withdrawal include cold sweats, shaking, convulsions and seizures.
“Individuals abusing heroin a lot of times talk about the itch,” Stefanatos said. “When heroin addicts start to withdrawal, they’ll get the itches.”
Signs of heroin use include having needle tracks, possessing burnt spoons and purchasing needles from pharmacies, Stefanatos said.
Dorsey said needle tracks may not always be in the arms. With the death on Oct. 6, the man had needle tracks on his ankles so they wouldn’t be noticeable.
“It may not be in their arms, because that’s out in the open,” he said. “Look for tracks on the ankles, hip – somewhere that’s hidden is probably where they’re going to shoot.”
He said he hopes there aren’t any other heroin deaths in the future, but he suspects there will be. If anyone injects heroin, they should seek medical treatment immediately and be honest about what they took, he said.
Officials are unclear how much heroin it takes to result in death.
“We haven’t ran into this, so this will be a first for us in looking at what the dosage actually entails,” he said. “Injection goes into your blood quicker than sniffing, like with a drug like cocaine. This goes directly into your vein and into your blood, so it’s a direct high.”