Pubdate: Sun, 09 Jul 2006
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Copyright: 2006 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc
Contact:  http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340
Author: Sam Wood, Dwight Ott and Troy Graham, Inquirer Staff Writers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)

DRUG-CORNER EPIDEMIC

Overdose Despite 100 Deaths In This Region, Heroin Laced With Fentanyl Is Hot

Neighbors saw the guy bolting from the back of a graffiti-stained, 
abandoned house as he shouted the word that soon would ring out on 
drug corners across the country.

"Overdose."

Mercedes Perez, who lives a few doors down on this North Camden 
block, went to investigate.

In a junk-strewn lot teeming with flies and covered in broken glass, 
she found Samantha Bender, a young suburban mother, lying dead on her 
back, surrounded by empty blue bags of heroin.

"She was a pretty girl. Looked very young," said Wanda Guzman, 
another neighbor. "I thought she was only about 16."

Bender was, in fact, 23, and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter. She 
grew up in Gibbstown, Gloucester County. She was an avid fan of the 
local music scene and the author of elegiac poetry. And she was a 
beloved friend and relative.

On that April day, Samantha Bender became something else: a victim of 
the drug corner.

Bender, an autopsy would show, had injected heroin laced with a 
lethal dose of fentanyl, a powerful narcotic painkiller that has 
caused hundreds of deaths across the country.

"We don't know why she was there," said Bender's mother, Mary Ann 
Lanzetta. "She was a smart girl and had so much potential. It doesn't 
make one ounce of sense."

Drug corners like the one where Bender likely copped her heroin have 
been claiming lives through addiction, violence, and the lure of easy 
money for decades.

But Bender's death in the 1600 block of State Street was a harbinger 
for a new epidemic.

Since spring, fentanyl-laced heroin has killed as many as 100 people 
in the Philadelphia region, and hundreds more in cities such as 
Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Despite a huge law-enforcement collaboration, investigators have yet 
to unlock the mystery of the fentanyl: Where is it coming from? Why 
is it being mixed with heroin? How can they stop it?

"It's come as a bit of a surprise, in some respects, that it's popped 
up in so many places at the same time with such vigor," said Jerry 
Daley, the executive director of a Philadelphia-Camden drug task 
force known as HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area). "We know 
a lot less than we'd like to."

The true depth of the problem remains shrouded, as well. No single 
agency has been keeping track of victims spread across the country, 
so no one knows how many have died.

"If there were this number of cases of measles, people would be 
jumping up and screaming," said Steven Marcus, director of the New 
Jersey Poison Center and one of the first people to notice the 
fentanyl outbreak. "But it's affecting a population that people have 
cast off... . There doesn't seem to be anyone in public health making 
a concerted effort to get all the data together."

Still, with so many addicts falling, police and health workers have 
sounded repeated alarms in the news media, bringing attention, once 
again, to an illegal, multimillion-dollar business catering to 
suburban demand and conducted on decrepit, inner-city street corners.

Corners such as Philadelphia's Fifth and Indiana, and Philip and 
Ontario. Corners such as the notorious spot in North Camden where 
Samantha Bender bought the $10 bag marked "D-Block" that would kill her.

Fifth And Grant

The 400 block of Grant Street is a tiny, one-way street where 
crumbling, trash-filled vacant shells outnumber the occupied homes. 
The corner, where Grant opens up to Fifth Street, bustles like a 
Turkish rug market.

Someone has erected a portable basketball hoop on the sidewalk, 
presumably to replace the sagging rim bolted to a piece of plywood on 
the far wall. Below that, a graffiti artist, with an abundance of 
irony, has spray-painted the words "drug free" in huge block letters.

The knot of young dealers passes the time pitching quarters or 
playing games of basketball bare-chested. They tell reporters to 
leave, that no one will talk to them. One accepts a business card, 
then burns a Phillies Blunt cigar through it.

A man sitting on a nearby porch makes a halfhearted apology.

"They're just young boys," he says. "They don't know."

He says his name is Mark. He carries himself like a man in charge, 
like the conductor of this corner. Then, a car rolls down the narrow street.

"No! Park the car!" Mark shouts. "Park the car!"

With a largely suburban clientele arriving in vehicles, corner 
etiquette requires them to park somewhere else, then walk up for a 
less conspicuous transaction.

The money goes to one member of the crew. Then Mark directs the 
customers up an alley, where another crew member will dispense the heroin.

By now, this is an old game, perfected before many of today's players 
were even born.

"It's been here since I came here," said Camden Police Lt. Frank 
Cook, a 22-year veteran, as he sat in his patrol car recently. "It's 
pervasive; especially heroin."

Police have successfully squashed the drug trade on corners such as 
this. But, inevitably, it pops up somewhere else.

Camden Police Capt. Joe Richardson estimated that the city had about 
4,000 dealers, baggers, cutters and lookouts making money off the drug trade.

"We're outnumbered 10-1," he said. "It's a multimillion-dollar-a-year 
business."

North Camden used to be controlled by the Sons of Malcolm X, a mostly 
black street gang. The gang's two leaders, Kevin Money and Jose 
Perez, now reside just a few blocks away, at Riverfront State Prison. 
Their territory has changed hands to a mostly Hispanic crew.

No matter who owns the corners, Fifth and Grant remains prime real 
estate, a short walk from Rutgers-Camden and the Tweeter Center, and 
an even shorter drive from the Ben Franklin Bridge and several of the 
region's major highways.

The advent of fentanyl and its inherent dangers hasn't hurt business. 
In fact, selling lethal heroin has proven a great strategy for 
attracting addicts looking for the strongest dope.

"It's remarkable to me, it's totally counterintuitive. You would 
think when bodies start to fall... it would scare users off. Instead, 
it draws people in," said Acting Camden County Prosecutor James P. 
Lynch. "We've done a fair amount of publicity to warn people off... . 
We're starting to rethink that strategy now because it seems to 
enhance traffic."

And, as addiction psychiatrist Ken Hoffman said, "The difference 
between death and euphoria is a really fine line."

Despite the appeal of fentanyl's high, the fear of crossing that line 
appears to have driven some addicts to try, at least, to get clean. 
Matthew Sabo, a 45-year-old recovering addict from Gloucester City, 
said the number of people attending his Broadway methadone clinic had 
gone up by one-third.

"We had a doctor telling us that fentanyl was 150 times more powerful 
than heroin... . People don't want to die," he said. "It's nothing 
but trouble. Every day, somebody ODs out there. The whole town is infested."

Some authorities think the fentanyl problem is far larger than 
reported. They say an untold number of people overdose but survive 
without medical attention.

In the medical profession, fentanyl is most commonly described as 
being 80 times as powerful as morphine. The experts say 125 
micrograms - the equivalent of three grains of salt - can be lethal.

"It doesn't take much of this drug to get you into trouble," said 
Hoffman, who works at the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health 
Services Administration. "It can paralyze your chest wall so that you 
still have a pulse, but you can't breathe."

That's what would have happened to Samantha Bender and the others who 
have died from the killer heroin.

Yameralis Sanchez, 16, lives a few houses from where Bender died. She 
saw Bender going into the vacant house and tried to warn her.

"She looked at us like, 'It's not your house.' "

The sight of a "pretty white girl" using an abandoned home as a 
shooting gallery wasn't out of place, either.

"They are always whites, every day. They still use it," Sanchez said. 
"I lose count... . I see about 30 to 40 a day. I don't know how many 
use it after I go to bed."

Mixed With Heroin Abroad

Daley's HIDTA task force has been coordinating fentanyl intelligence 
for the region, but most investigators believe that the painkiller is 
being made and mixed with heroin in foreign countries, at the upper 
levels of the supply chain. In fact, federal agents busted an illicit 
lab in Mexico last month, but the fentanyl deaths have continued.

There are at least a dozen home methods for synthesizing illicit 
fentanyl, including one posted on the Internet by someone claiming to 
be an organic chemist. One of the essential chemicals for making 
fentanyl remains unregulated - and can be legally purchased by 
anyone. The Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to have it 
listed as a controlled precursor chemical, Daley said.

As for why the fentanyl is being added to heroin, the theories abound 
"but we can't put any credence in any of them yet," Daley said.

That leaves local police with traditional tactics to fight the 
epidemic - busting dealers and scaring off users. After decades of 
the drug war, veteran investigators have reasonable expectations.

"There are some people you could lock up a thousand times... . As 
soon as they're released from processing, they go right back. You 
can't beat that," said Capt. Joe Bowen of the Camden County 
Prosecutor's Office. "You'll see everything: juveniles, mothers with 
children. If you stop 25 percent from coming back, that's the goal. 
You'd like to do 100 percent, but that's not realistic."

Still, police in Camden have been out on the streets, fighting hard 
to stem the fentanyl tide. In particular, they have targeted Fifth 
and Grant with three "reversals" - sting operations in which 
undercover officers pose as drug dealers to arrest addicts.

In the first sting, they netted 102 people in about five hours, many 
in the morning hours when addicts need a fix to stave off sickness 
from withdrawal. Then, on consecutive days last month, they arrested 
91 more people at Fifth and Grant.

To begin one of the reversals, officers took control of the corner by 
arriving in huge numbers, clogging the intersection with their SUVs 
and allowing a K-9 dog to roam on a leash. They stood there chatting 
and joking, until there could be no mistake that the corner belonged 
to them for the day. Then, they disappeared.

Officers wearing baggy jeans and T-shirts, baseball caps sitting 
sideways on their heads, huge gold chains dangling from their necks, 
took positions at the corner. A few minutes later, about 9:30 a.m., a 
white man wandered up and asked for six bags.

Those arrested were taken to a garage at the Delaware River Port 
Authority building, at the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge, where 
they were photographed and fingerprinted. In a matter of minutes, 
they left with a court summons. The process amounted to a minor, 
embarrassing inconvenience for the addicts, but it gave police a 
chance to discourage them from going back to the corners.

Bowen, a reflective 23-year veteran who helped lock up many of the 
Sons of Malcolm X, approached a jittery Tara Marrollo in the DRPA 
garage. Her arms and hands were covered in scars. She admitted to 
shooting up as a tear mingled with the sweat on her face.

"I just can't stop," she said desperately. At 42, she has been using 
for 10 years after getting addicted to pain pills. She said she used 
two to three bags a day, and said she was unconcerned about a lethal 
shot of fentanyl.

"At this point in my life, I don't care," she said. "If I go to sleep 
and don't wake up, it doesn't matter."

Bowen warned her not to go back to Fifth and Grant, knowing her plans 
for the rest of the day.

"I'm going to go back out there and try to get another bag," she said 
matter-of-factly. "You have to have it to make yourself well."

As Marrollo talked, officers processed two teenage girls. One had 
just finished high school. The girls arrived at Fifth and Grant in a 
car with soaped windows, trumpeting the graduation.

After Marrollo leaves, Bowen stops them.

"You know what she said?" he asks the girls, gesturing toward 
Marrollo. " 'I used to be just like them.' "

Bowen chats with them, asking questions about their lives, offering 
Marrollo's as a cautionary tale. But the girls remain defiant.

"I'm not going to end up like her," says Tara Baker, a 19-year-old 
from Salem County. "We're not stupid."

"I've been doing this for a long time, girls," Bowen says, finally. 
"And they don't get much older than that."

'Dealers have no mercy'

Samantha Bender's time came to an end on April 27, four days after 
her birthday. Her mother figures that she took the 402 bus, leaving 
Gibbstown at 10:20 a.m. She was pronounced dead at 1:45 p.m.

Lanzetta said her daughter had been taking painkillers after a car 
accident. She said Samantha hated needles, hated heroin, hated 
addicts. She blamed the guy she was with. She struggled to make sense 
of her daughter's death.

"Parents, pay attention to what your children are doing. Be aware. 
This is no joke. Drug dealers have no mercy... . That first and only 
time will kill you," she said. "I pray some good comes of this."

At Fifth and Grant, no good has come. Despite the fentanyl scare, the 
200 arrests and the death of Samantha Bender, the corner thrives.

"I'm on my way to get some now," said Joseph D., a 29-year-old from 
Philadelphia, as he headed toward Fifth and Grant. He would not give 
his full name.

"Actually, people are trying to find it because it f-s you up. Dope 
ain't what it used to be. They know it's got fentanyl," he said. "I 
come to Camden because it's good, because the bags are bigger and better."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman