ODing in Chicago.

Chicago experiences heroin deaths.

Chicago overdoses from heroin sent almost 72 people to the hospital from Tuesday through Friday afternoon. Some of the heroin overdose patients wound up at Mount Sinai Hospital with needles still stuck in their arms.

The heroin used in the Chicago overdoses may have been laced with fentanyl, a painkiller. Cook County health and law enforcement officials are currently investigating at least one death linked to the rash of heroin overdoses, MSN reports.

“We suspect what is happening is the same thing that happened in 2006 when people were getting heroin that was cut with fentanyl, which is a very strong narcotic,” Mount Sinai emergency room director and nurse, Diane Hincks, said. “That’s what we think is happening.”
Hincks added that some of the overdose patients collapsed immediately after injecting themselves with the heroin. She also said that the hospital typically sees only two or three drug overdoses per day.
 

Where theses cases happen also reveals something about the culture of those neighborhoods.

By Friday afternoon, Chicago area emergency rooms had responded to 74 heroin overdoses in 72 hours. The number of overdoses from the drug was more than double the amount experienced in the city from the same time span last year, according to fire department representative Larry Langford.

Chicago police officials have stated that the heroin prompting the overdoses appears to have primarily been sold in two specific locations on the city’s West Side. A sample of the heroin sold in the North Lawndale neighborhood is being tested for fentanyl contamination.
 

If you're familiar with the city of Chicago, the South Side (SS) is infamous for its gang wars - that's where most of the bad coverage comes from when it comes to national attention for homocides. The West Side is sometime the forgotten sibling which has its share of gang violence and negative press, though not as bad as the SS. Add the latest deaths of the junkies to its CV.

This disturbing news of heroin cause related deaths isn't new to Chicago. It has happened before.

Heroin overdose deaths have increased throughout Chicago and the rest of the state since 2011, Illinois Department of Public Health statistics indicate. In 2014, 633 heroin overdose deaths occurred in Illinois, up from 583 in 2013. Last year in Cook County, 283 people died from overdosing on heroin.

State lawmakers have begun to focus on the mounting number of heroin overdoses in Illinois. Multiple measures have been proposed to address the heroin problem and overdose hospitalizations and deaths.

The significant heroin overdose incident in Chicago happened between 2005 and 2007. There were more than 1,000 drug deaths during that time. Dozens of people in the greater Chicago area died of overdoses, including the ingestion or injection of drugs laced with fentanyl.

But don't worry, people want to legalize drugs and ban handguns, saying the 2nd amendment is no longer needed in this advanced, enlightened society.