There is some “bad heroin” in metro Atlanta that is killing people, a Smyrna detective said.
An extraordinarily strong batch of heroin caused the overdose deaths of two 28-year-old men in Smyrna earlier this year, Detective Mitch Plumb said, and it contributed to recent overdose deaths in Roswell and Cartersville and possibly others in the metro area.
“It’s been going on for a year and half now, it’s still going on and it’s been traced to Midtown,” said Plumb, a member of the Smyrna Police investigative division. “Heroin in this area is becoming very toxic. What’s odd about these cases is they’re resulting in double deaths, which is unusual. We’re finding out that a lot of these probably shouldn’t be overdoses.”
Jack Killorin is director of the Atlanta’s division of High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas), a federal agency that tracks illicit drug trafficking for the DEA. He said heroin has been coming in from Mexico recently and that it is extremely pure and being sold cheap.
“‘Mexican Brown’ has been coming into the area,” Killorin said. “It’s a lot more potent than what we traditionally see in this area. People get acclimated to a certain level of purity. If some heroin gets loose that’s above the level they’re used to, that can be trouble.”
But Killorin said they see “a cocktail of heroin” in Atlanta.
“It comes in from all over and often is a ‘mix-up,’ if you will, of a variety of kinds,” he said.
As a result, dealers often don’t know exactly what they’re peddling.
That appears to be the case in the deaths of Brad Mostellar and Michael Mead, who died Jan. 10 in Smyrna after a night of partying in Midtown. Plumb said the two men bought what they thought was cocaine from a dealer on the street before heading home with their girlfriends to play cards.
“They wanted to stay up all night and play spades,” Plumb said. “But they did what they got and it killed them.”
The two men were found dead in the backyard of their home. Their girlfriends “were messed up, too” but survived, Plumb said.
After seeing an increase in overdose deaths in his jurisdiction, Plumb began to research the problem around Atlanta. Plumb said he discovered a case in Cartersville in which three individuals injected heroin bought from the Midtown entertainment district. One individual awakened from a coma two days later to find his other two friends dead.
Plumb said he found at least a half-dozen similar cases around Atlanta. “That’s when I realized we had a problem,” he said.
Mike Cosper, operations manager of the Cobb County Medical Examiner’s Office, performed the autopsy on the two Smyrna men. He said normal street heroin consumed by users is about 3 to 4 percent pure. “Bad heroin” can be three to five times more pure than that.
“Ingesting heroin that is too pure will kill you,” said Cosper, who said he handles about two or three heroin deaths a month. “The dose you’re taking is tripled or quadrupled.”
Still, heroin use in Georgia is relatively low compared to other states, authorities said. Of 638 drug overdose deaths in 2008, only 95 were attributed to illicit drugs, according to the GBI. More than 500 of those deaths involved the use of prescription drugs, the agency reported.
But heroin use is up.
“We’re seeing an anomaly of increased use and a wider distribution area,” Killorin said. “As a result you’re getting more new users and a lot of those people that don’t know what they’re doing.”
