Black tar heroin coming to white people near you

Graph: Black tar heroin vs powder heroin, and HIV among injection drug users vs HIV among men who have sex with men, in a map of the US and Canada fromCiccarone and Bourgois 2003--click on the graph for a full-size picture.Black tar heroin is moving east,says the LA Times, in this first part of a three part article I'll be reading over the next days, being moved by folks from Xalisco, Mexico. The strategy described in theLA Times article involves low-profile low-weaponry low-volume operations targeting white people who've been using prescription opiates, and moving small cheap quantities of black tar heroin as an alternative to Oxycontin and Percocet.What will this mean for clinicians on the East Coast if the Xalisco teams and their ilk manage to continue moving black tar heroin eastward? UCSF researchers have hypothesized thatthe properties of black tar heroin itself contributed to less spread of HIV among West Coast heroin users because black tar heroin has to be boiled more; and remaining bits of gooey leftovers in syringes caused users to rinse their works more thoroughly, and to switch out needles more frequently. But black tar heroin also most likely means more bacterial soft tissue infections.When I started as a pre-med in San Francisco, I volunteered on a healthcare for the homeless medical van. The van would stop and I would circle the surrounding blocks, telling everyone who looked homeless, "Outreach van, down there" and sending them to the nurse and the medical re...
Source: hemodynamics - Category: American Health Tags: Afghanistan bacterial ecology black tar heroin drug companies drug dealers Mexico Source Type: blogs