Uncomfortably Numb: KCPD warns of heroin’s increased popularity
If you want to know what’s happening in Kansas City’s drug culture, just ask the narcs. The third-quarter report of the Kansas City Police Department’s Narcotics and Vice Division reads like a Zagat guide to what people around here are smoking, snorting and shooting. In 2011, more Kansas Citians were shooting heroin. And they weren’t doing it as a retro nod to the KC-associated jazz legend Charlier Parker, either.
Why the dance with Mr. Brownstone? The cops say smack is back because of a crackdown on the prescription drug OxyContin.
Who likes speedballs? The kids, of course. Police say young people are becoming addicted to junk in greater numbers because they can’t get Oxy.
The KCPD says undercover detectives are seeing more heroin on the street (where a gram sells for $100-$150, according to the report). In 2009, undercover cops bought 38.8 grams of heroin. That increased to 94 grams in 2010. In 2011, it jumped to 334 grams, making smack the rare surefire business opportunity in a bleak economy.
The cops are seeing mostly black-tar heroin, though the KCPD reports having picked up some brown powder as well. The method of choice among users, the report says, is injection, though some snort, smoke or swallow. The KCPD counted three heroin-overdose deaths in 2011.
