For the third time this year, officials in Camden have confirmed a cluster of heroin overdoses, from an unusually potent batch of the drug. 

Heroin
Flickr User CGehlen
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Official have refused to disclose where it was sold.

"If you tell people to avoid the heroin in part of the city, what's going to happen is heroin addicts are going to flock to that part of the city, because they know that's the purest heroin, and everybody wants the best stuff," said Steven Liga, executive director of the  Middlesex County Chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

Liga said drug users are much more concerned with getting a drug that's been cut too many times, thereby decreasing it's potency.  "When you hear about an overdose, you know someone had very pure heroin.  That's where you want to go."

New Jersey faces a double whammy situation when it comes to heroin because we're not only a gateway state for the drug, but we also have a lot of prescription drug use.  "That  gets expensive very quickly.  It's much cheaper to go to heroin. Oxycontin can be $30.00 a pill.  Heroin is $5.00 dollars a bag," said Liga.

He said Garden State residents need to remember that the state has a new overdose reporting law that can save a life.

"Before the new law, if you made a 911 call about an overdose you could face legal consequences, and the person who overdosed could face them too - but now in New Jersey just like a number of other states, you can call 911.  You stay with that person and cooperate with authorities, and neither you nor the person in trouble will face legal consequences," said Liga.

 

 

 

 

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