The Buffalo News
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A deadly batch of heroin has claimed as many as 23 lives since Jan. 29, top public county officials announced Tuesday in in the emergency room of Erie County Medical Center.
Anyone who recently purchased packets of heroin should discard them or risk dying should they ingest the deadly drugs, Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz and Health Commissioner Gale R. Burstein said.
“The vast majority of the deaths, 19 of the 23, are believed to be related to heroin laced with an extremely fatal batch of fetanyl,” Poloncarz said. “If you have a packet of this drug you recently purchased, it is basically a death sentence.”
U.S. Attorney William Hochul said people involved in the drug scene “are making a suicide pact that could very well lead to your death.”
Some of the heroin has been described on the streets as “China White heroin,” but often turns out to be pure fentanyl that comes from super labs in China and arrives in the United States by way of Mexican cartels, said John Flickinger, the agent in charge of the Buffalo office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
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