News: Local | "Area drugs pose potent problems" | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon

News: Local | "Area drugs pose potent problems" | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon: "Jason, a 20-something heroin addict with a shaved head and a busted lip, showed up Wednesday at HIV Alliance’s needle exchange on Blair Boulevard to turn in his dirty needles and get some clean rigs.
But he had nothing to put in his new syringes. The town was dry.
Lately, he said, heroin has been hard to come by in Eugene and expensive when he can find it.
“I know 30 people … and everybody I know is out,” he said.
Jason hadn’t had a fix in three days. His girlfriend had run off with his money and his morphine pills, he said, and now he was feeling the effects of withdrawal: hot and cold flashes, sweating, pain and gastrointestinal distress.
“I’m not going to get well tonight,” he said ruefully.
When federal investigators broke up a sophisticated Mexican drug ring in Lane County in 2007, the familiar black tar heroin sold on the streets dried up. It was soon supplanted by a new, vastly more powerful variety, known as gunpowder heroin, or GP for short. While the drug was in short supply last week, the emergence of the powerful new strain has contributed to an increased number of heroin-related deaths in Lane County in recent years, according to law enforcement and health officials."