A view of Washington, Pa. Last week, Washington County recorded 16 overdoses in 24 hours and 25 over two days. Three people died. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) 
 
 The first call came at 7:33 p.m. last Sunday: Two people had overdosed on heroin in a home just a few hundred yards from the station where firefighters were awaiting their nightly round of drug emergencies. 
 
 Six minutes later, there was another. A 50-year-old man had been found in his bedroom, blue from lack of oxygen, empty bags of heroin by his body. 
 
 At 8:11, a third call. Then another, and another, and another and another. 
 
 By 8:42 — 69 minutes after the first report — a county of slightly more than 200,000 people had recorded eight overdoses, all believed to be caused by heroin. There would be a total of 16 overdoses in 24 hours and 25 over two days. Three people died. Many of the others were saved by a recent decision to equip every first responder with the fast-acting antidote naloxone. 
 
 The toll wasn’t from a supply of heroin that had been poisoned on its journey from South America to southwestern Pennsylvania. Nor was there an isolated party where careless junkies miscalculated the amount of heroin they could handle. Last week was simply an extreme example of what communities in parts of the country are enduring as the heroin epidemic rages on. 
 
 Valerie Mack, left, is comforted by family friend Carla Stormy Efaw in Washington, Pa. Mack lost her brother, Sammy Mack, to a heroin overdose. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) 
 
 “It’s absolutely insane. This is nuts,” said District Attorney Eugene A. Vittone, a former paramedic who is trying to hold back the tide of drugs washing across Washington County, a Rust Belt community 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. On any day, Vittone said, the county averages five to eight overdoses, almost all from heroin. More are recorded each day in towns just over the county line. 
 
 “There’s been a progressive increase in overdoses the last two years, and it just went out of control,” added Rick Gluth, supervising detective on Vittone’s drug task force. “I’ve been a police officer for 27 years and worked narcotics for the last 15, and this is the worst. I’d be glad to have the crack epidemic back.” 
 
 [Cheap fix: Heroin’s resurgence. ‘And then he decided not to be’] 
 
 The United States averages 110 overdose deaths from legal and illegal drugs every day. The heroin death toll has quadrupled in the decade that ended in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By all accounts, it has only grown worse since. In Washington County, there have been more than 50 fatal overdoses this year. 
 
 The national drug-death total, larger than that from auto accidents, is disproportionately concentrated in the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes region and the Northeast. 
 
 “There is a growing sense of community outrage that we can’t accept this like we are accepting it,” said David J. Hickton, U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania and co-chair of the National Heroin Task Force established by the Justice Department in April. “We just can’t go on like this.” 
 
 In this working-class community near the Monongahela River, where drilling for gas deposits has begun to stoke an economic revival, there is little sign that anything will change soon. 
 
 This man who only wishes to be identified as Sonny, learned that his daughter had a heroin overdose at a nearby Walgreens store in Washington, Penn. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) 
 
 “I’m destroyed. I’m totally destroyed,” Valerie Mack said Thursday on the front porch of the home she shared with her brother and several other people on a modest block here. 
 
 Her brother, Sammy Mack, the second overdose victim in the Sunday night skein, was found dead in his bedroom, curled in a fetal position. Near his body were “stamp bags” of heroin — small paper packets that most closely resemble chewing gum wrappers. They bore the supplier’s brand, “MADE IN COLOMBIA.” 
 
 The label is one of two flooding the area, Gluth said. The other is stamped “BLACK JACK.” Authorities are still investigating but believe both types of heroin are laced with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate that increases the drug’s potency and may have contributed to the rash of overdoses. 
 
 Sammy Mack had long had problems with alcohol and was not unknown to law enforcement authorities. But as so many others have, his sister said, he turned to heroin after treatment with narcotic painkillers prescribed for an ankle injury he suffered a few months ago. Mack’s divorce was recently finalized, she said. His four children are living with his ex-wife not far away. 
 
 [When life begins in rehab: A baby heals after a mother’s heroin addiction] 
 
 As he began to use heroin, Mack’s habits and personality changed, she said. He became withdrawn, spending more time in his room. That Sunday, she was fixing him a chef’s salad and became suspicious when he didn’t respond to her calls. She tried to push open his bedroom door but couldn’t. A neighbor finally forced his way in. 
 
 Mack’s prized possession, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, still sits in the home’s back yard. He had promised it to his 14-year-old son upon his high school graduation. “I’ll just have to follow through,” Valerie Mack said. 
 
 With so much awry in Sammy Mack’s life, his sister said, “Maybe the Lord intervened and decided just to take him.” 
 
 Jessica Neal, 26, another of last week’s overdoses, is still alive after a close call. She was found unconscious in a bathroom at a local Walgreen’s on Monday, her 2-year-old strapped in a stroller in the stall with her. She was revived with naloxone. 
 
 Her father, Sonny, who has a different last name that he requested not be used to protect his privacy, said he threatened to have her committed to the psychiatric unit of the local hospital that same day after Neal spoke of committing suicide. Instead, she agreed to sign herself in. She was released Friday and headed to jail. The child is in her father’s care, he said. 
 
 “She doesn’t need jail,” Sonny said outside the home where the two lived with Sonny’s wife, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), until last week. “She wasn’t out stealing or doing crimes. What she needs is help. She needs to be in rehab. And after rehab, she needs to be in a halfway house.” 
 
 Nationally, there are only a small fraction of the inpatient drug rehab beds needed for addicts, but Hickton, in an increasingly common stance for prosecutors, has agreed that users need help more than they deserve incarceration. Even as he has stepped up prosecution of dealers, he is taking a multifaceted approach to the current problem. 
 
 “If they’re using and trafficking, I prosecute them,” he said. “If they’re just using, they need help.” 
 
 Hickton promises to bring homicide charges against any seller he can link to a death. But that is easier said than done. There are no open-air drug markets in this epidemic like the ones that captured public’s attention during drug outbreaks of past decades. Much of the commerce is conducted on cellphones and by word of mouth. 
 
 With many more middle-class people addicted via prescription opioids this time around, heroin is bought and sold in bars, nightclubs, homes and more unlikely places, said Neil Capretto, an addiction psychiatrist and medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, which has 20 locations in the Pittsburgh area. 
 
 Gluth said he has undercover detectives all over the streets making buys, painstakingly working their way up the chain in search of bigger dealers. 
 
 He believes the latest load of heroin came from New Jersey, but Washington County’s location makes it particularly vulnerable to drug traffic. Not far from the Ohio and West Virginia borders, it sits at the intersection of Interstates 70 and 79, east-west and north-south conduits for drugs and everything else. Vittone said the county receives drugs from New York, Newark, Washington, Chicago, Detroit and elsewhere. 
 
 “We’re kind of like ground zero,” he said. 
 
 On the streets here, prescription drugs are selling for about $1 per milligram, or $20 for a single dose. Heroin is much cheaper, at about $8 a stamp bag, Gluth said. It is also much more potent than the heroin of previous eras, Capretto said. Users often start with a single bag, but as their resistance grows, they need increasing amounts. 
 
 All of which signals more overdoses and deaths, at least until authorities can find ways to stem the demand and the supply. 
 
 “If we had a serial killer killing one-tenth as many [people], we’d have the National Guard here,” Capretto said. “We’d have CNN here every night.” ||||| CEDAR RAPIDS — One narcotics law enforcement officer says taking heroin is similar to grabbing a loaded gun and spinning the chamber. 
 
 Even worse, he added, heroin use is spreading in Iowa, and its deadly reach is likely to continue to grow. 
 
 Heroin overdoses, for example, have surged in Cedar Rapids in the past five years. 
 
 In 2009, authorities responded to nine reported heroin-related deaths and non-fatal overdoses, which represented 45 percent of all overdoses in Cedar Rapids. 
 
 Through June 5 of this year, there have been 52 reported overdoses in the city, 44 of which were heroin-related. Heroin has accounted for 85 percent of all overdose calls this year. 
 
 “It's a serious issue — not just the presence of heroin, but the effects that heroin is having on the users,” Cedar Rapids Police Chief Wayne Jerman said. “The number of overdoses and the number of overdose deaths is very concerning.” 
 
 Cedar Rapids is not alone in facing a growing heroin epidemic. One way to gauge the prevalence of heroin in Iowa and where it is being found is through samples, or exhibits, submitted to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Criminalistics Laboratory. According to statistics provided by the crime lab, 37 of Iowa's 99 counties have submitted suspected heroin to the lab for testing since 2005. 
 
 However, three Eastern Iowa counties make up a majority of the cases sent to the DCI lab. Of the 47 exhibits submitted to the lab in the first third of 2015, seven were from Johnson County and eight were from Linn County. Collectively, they account for nearly a third of all heroin cases submitted to the lab this year. 
 
 Scott County leads the state with 16 submitted cases through the first four months of the year. 
 
 Not only is heroin becoming increasingly common, but authorities warn that it's becoming deadlier, thanks to the presence of a synthetic opioid with 80 times the potency of heroin. 
 
 And one Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement agent warns that heroin shows no sign of slowing down in Iowa. 
 
 “I think it's going to be on the upswing,” DNE special agent-in-charge Dan Stepleton said. “I think it's going to get worse and worse.” 
 
 Metro hubs 
 
 Heroin is a highly addictive opioid produced from opium poppy. Usually injected by the user, heroin also can be smoked and is a powerful painkiller. It is similar to fellow opioid morphine, but 10 times as powerful. 
 
 The heroin found in Iowa is produced by Mexican cartels and distributed through metropolitan hubs, such as Chicago, which helps to explain why Scott, Linn and Johnson counties in Eastern Iowa see more heroin cases than the more populous Polk County. 
 
 “Because you have a predominant heroin source of Chicago and those are the closest three counties to Chicago in Iowa and they're metropolitan counties,” Stepleton explained. 
 
 Stepleton said heroin usually is distributed by gang members with Chicago affiliations. Criminal investigations often begin with an overdose death, he explained. 
 
 “Unfortunately it's usually already a done deal when we get involved,” said Stepleton, who covers a 24-county swath of Eastern Iowa. “We are working toward the source of supply and not just waiting for an overdose to happen. We're trying to avert those as much as possible.” 
 
 According to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control last month, heroin use is rising across all demographics, with women and 18-to-25-year-olds seeing the biggest increases in recent years. Experts point to the rise of prescription drug abuse, especially among young people. 
 
 “What we're seeing is young people — high school and college age — will get addicted to Vicodin, oxycotin,” Stepleton said. “When they run out of the prescriptions, they'll resort to heroin because it's 10 times the potency of that drug. Unfortunately you're already hooked at that point. 
 
 Related story: 
 
 Change in law makes heroin death convictions more difficult to prosecute 
 
 “It doesn't take long to make the switch from oxycotin to heroin, which in essence is going to make you a lifelong addict.” 
 
 Heroin is not a high-volume drug — it lags far behind more common illegal substances in Iowa such as marijuana and methamphetamine — and it's highly expensive. One ounce of heroin is a “huge amount,” Stepleton said, and most dealers work in shipments of 10 to 50 grams. 
 
 Heroin is purchased for about $200 to $250 per gram and is usually sold for about $50 for a 10th of a gram. 
 
 “It's a very expensive habit,” he said. “That's why most of your heroin users have to be dealers. You just can't afford to get the drug.” 
 
 Because of its expensive and addictive nature, heroin abuse often is associated with property crimes such as thefts and burglaries. 
 
 “Addicts will do what they need to do to obtain the next fix,” Jerman said. 
 
 Lethal 
 
 While there is no definitive ranking in Iowa on the most lethal drugs, heroin probably would be near the top of the list in terms of deaths with respect to the number of actual users, according to one state official. 
 
 “It would appear that heroin is more lethal than many other substances,” said Dale Woolery, associate director for the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy. 
 
 Woolery said it appears that a greater proportion of heroin users experience overdoses than users of more common drugs in Iowa, such as methamphetamine. 
 
 “There are a lot of Iowans that have a strong appetite for methamphetamine,” he said. “But it's rare, if it ever occurs ... that you hear of a methamphetamine-overdose death. I think it does occur, but I'm talking very few.” 
 
 Heroin typically is sold at a purity of three percent to five percent, Stepleton said. 
 
 “After that, it gets very, very lethal,” he said. 
 
 However, it's not an exact science and some dealers might not be as careful about diluting their drugs. 
 
 “There's no FDA involved in this,” Stepleton said. “He might dilute it down to 7 to 8 percent ... Taking it at 3 percent and taking it at 8 percent is a big freaking difference.” 
 
 Heroin is becoming even more lethal with the introduction of a drug called fentanyl. A synthetic opioid painkiller, fentanyl is 80 times as potent as heroin and a single piece of pure fentanyl the size of the grain of salt can kill a fully grown man. 
 
 “Now they're lacing heroin with fentanyl,” Stepleton said. “Now you have two drugs together and one is very much more powerful than the other. If I'm taking the same drug dosage unit and it's laced with fentanyl, now I end up with really severe problems ... You don't have long for this world.” 
 
 Stepleton said fentanyl and fentanyl-laced heroin has hit the East Coast hard in recent years, resulting in 2,500 to 3,500 overdoses in major cities. And it's making its way to Iowa. 
 
 Bruce Reeve, administrator for the DCI crime lab, said technicians have been seeing fentanyl in the form of patches prescribed for chronic pain relief for years. But more recently they are seeing heroin laced with fentanyl. 
 
 In January, the lab examined one case of heroin mixed with fentanyl. In April, there were three more. In May, half of the labs 10 heroin cases had samples cut with fentanyl. 
 
 “I think we're starting to see that a lot more in Iowa,” Reeve said. “It's a trend that's alarming. Fentanyl is a dangerous drug if it's not handled right.” 
 
 Stepleton puts it more bluntly. 
 
 “I think it's going to be an extreme problem,” he said. “I can't stress that enough. There is no FDA in illicit drug distribution. It's a crapshoot on what you're going to be buying and putting in your body. ... It's like putting a loaded gun in your hand and spinning the chamber every time.” 
 
 In July, the Cedar Rapids Police Department announced it had received federal funding that would allow it to hire another officer. Having that additional officer will allow the department to place a seasoned professional with the Eastern Iowa Prevention, Treatment and Prosecution Initiative. The officer will emphasize heroin-prevention efforts while also working on the investigation and prosecution of heroin-related crimes. 
 
 “From decades ago, (heroin) seemed to be confined to different areas,” Jerman said. “Now we see there are no boundaries ... It's making its way into all segments of society. 
 
 “Whether it's lower middle, upper middle or the upper class, that's what we're seeing.” 
 
 Change in law makes heroin death convictions more difficult to prosecute 
 
 A grieving mother displayed a photo of her son in a casket during a February sentencing of a man who had sold her child heroin, saying it's all she has left to remember him. 
 
 Stacy Iberg likely is one of many mothers over the past five years in Eastern Iowa who have either lost a child or had a child overdose on heroin. 
 
 Her son, Dustin Legrand, died from a heroin overdose last year after Ramon Freeman, 35, of Chicago, sold to someone who provided the heroin to Legrand. Freeman is now serving 30 years in federal prison. 
 
 Federal prosecutors say Freeman is only one of 75 people charged in U.S. District Court in the past five years for distribution of heroin, and 38 of those have been in Linn County. From 2011 to 2015, 14 defendants in the Northern District have been charged in cases involving heroin deaths and six have been charged with bodily injury that resulted from heroin overdoses. 
 
 But prosecuting these dealers has become more difficult after a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving an Iowa case in the Southern District, he said. 
 
 That case set a higher standard for prosecutors to meet in distribution cases involving death, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Chatham said. There must be sufficient evidence the heroin is what caused the death, according to the law. 
 
 Prosecutors previously only had to prove the heroin was a “contributing cause.” In many of these cases, users may take other drugs along with the heroin. 
 
 In an overdose causing bodily injury, Chatham said, there has to be evidence that the user was at high risk to die without medical intervention. 
 
 Some cases haven't been able to meet that standard to convict for a heroin death, but Chatham and Patrick Reinert, also an assistant U.S. attorney, said they can argue in sentencing for more time based on other factors, such as previous convictions, purity of heroin or how close the dealer is to the main source. 
 
 In the sentencing for Freeman in February, Chatham argued for more prison time based on the purity — in that case, 68 to 73 percent — of heroin he was selling, and Freeman's position in the chain of distribution. Dealers with higher purity levels typically are closer to the main source, he said. 
 
 Chatham said the overdoses usually occur because the purity is so much higher than what the user is used to. In the past, the heroin might have been cut with another substance, so the dealers could have more product and make more money. 
 
 Chatham said there also are cases in the district where users have overdosed because it's mixed with another drug such as fentanyl, used to treat severe pain and often used after surgery. 
 
 There were two defendants indicted in June from Cedar Rapids for distribution of heroin/fentanyl and conspiracy to distribute heroin/fentanyl that resulted in bodily injury. ||||| Law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to stop a growing heroin epidemic from spreading across the United States. (McKenna Ewen, Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post) 
 
 Midwest health officials worried this would happen. 
 
 It’s why they brought together a tri-state coalition — Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky — to talk about the dangers, and it’s why they issued a stern, desperate warning last month to first responders and addiction counselors who patrol the front lines of the opioid war every day. 
 
 They said the situation was “dire.” One Ohio coroner told users they were “literally gambling” with their lives. 
 
 But their public plea could not prevent the heroin on their streets from being cut and sold with a new opioid analog 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 stronger than morphine. 
 
 In chemical terms, it’s called carfentanil. Colloquially, it’s an elephant tranquilizer. 
 
 It’s the most potent opioid used commercially, strong enough to knock out — or even kill — a 15,000-pound pachyderm, and used primarily to sedate other large animals, like ox, moose and buffalo. 
 
 [A new front in the opioid war: Elephant tranquilizer] 
 
 Now drug dealers, in an attempt to stretch their supply and deliver a stronger, longer high, are cutting their heroin with carfentanil — which is far more dangerous than its already troublesome but less potent cousin, fentanyl. 
 
 And in a 48-hour window this week, two counties near the Ohio-Indiana border may have been hit with a dangerous wave of it. 
 
 On Tuesday night, officers responded to at least 11 overdose cases in Jennings County, Ind. That same day and into Wednesday evening, authorities in Hamilton County, Ohio — home to Cincinnati — received more than 50 heroin overdose calls, reported TV station WCPO. 
 
 In Ohio, the calls took first responders all over the city: a United Dairy Farmers bathroom, a McDonald’s, the scene of a car crash and a Rally’s parking lot. 
 
 The man at Rally’s died, according to WCPO. 
 
 Just last weekend, only days before the 48-hour frenzy of calls, about 30 other overdoses were reported in Hamilton County, Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan told Fox 19. 
 
 Officers responding to numerous overdoses this evening in Jennings Co. 11 patients so far. #Narcan in high demand. pic.twitter.com/LMwhWPAaOo — Sgt. Stephen Wheeles (@ISPVersailles) August 24, 2016 
 
 Authorities have been careful not to speculate whether the overdoses across the two states are connected, or whether they all came from one particularly potent batch of heroin, but police told WCPO that is likely the case. It may have been mixed with fentanyl, carfentanil or even rat poison — making it that much harder to treat overdose patients. 
 
 That was a crucial part of the public health warning Hamilton County released last month. 
 
 “Take this as a dire warning to all, if you choose to purchase and use any forms of heroin,” Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi K. Sammarco said. “No one knows what other drugs may be mixed in or substituted and you may be literally gambling with your life. 
 
 “Don’t count on Narcan to be able to reverse the effects of carfentanil.” 
 
 
 
 A box of the opioid antidote Naxolone, also known as Narcan, sits on display during a family addiction support group on March 23 in Groton, Conn. (John Moore/Getty Images) 
 
 Narcan is an FDA-approved nasal spray version of naloxone, a life-saving medication that can reverse the lethal effects of an opioid overdose. It was approved in November 2015 and has been credited with saving countless lives. Across the country, first responders are stocking up on Narcan and some agencies have even started training civilians on how to use it on each other. 
 
 Usually, one, maybe two, doses of Narcan will sufficiently help someone overdosing on pure heroin. 
 
 But when the drug is cut with other substances, especially carfentanil, it can take as much as a half dozen doses, maybe more. Complicating matters is that law enforcement officers have no way of knowing on scene what kind of heroin cocktail the user has injected. Fentanyl and carfentanil are mixed into the heroin in nearly untraceable doses. Both are colorless and odorless. 
 
 Often, users don’t even know until it’s too late. 
 
 “It’s not like they hand you your dope and say, ‘Here’s the carfentanil dope,’” Jessica Sageser, a former heroin user, told WCPO. “You don’t know. The seriousness of it has escalated so much more because this drug is, like, indescribable. It’s a snap of the fingers and the blink of an eye, and you are done.” 
 
 [‘To my daughter’s drug dealer’: A distraught mother’s viral Facebook post] 
 
 Carfentanil is not just dangerous to users, according to an Aug. 12 Washington Post story: 
 
 Veterinarians who handle the drug wear protective gloves, aprons and masks, treating it “almost like uranium,” in the words of one zoo veterinarian who spoke to Fusion. A dose the size of a grain of salt could kill a person, and carfentanil can even be lethal when absorbed through the skin, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. 
 
 The DEA has warned narcotics officers, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer, and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has urged police in his state to stop field testing for fear that handling the substances without proper precautions could be too dangerous. 
 
 “It’s just too high of a risk,” DeWine said, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “This stuff is just now hitting. You’re really not seeing [police] departments with any experience with it at all.” 
 
 
 
 A man injects himself with heroin using a needle obtained from the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, the nation’s largest needle-exchange program, in Seattle in April 2015. (David Ryder/Reuters) 
 
 Earlier this month, prosecutors in Pennsylvania issued a warning on carfentanil, which may be responsible for some of the 200 recent overdoses in the area — 20 of them fatal. 
 
 It also has been linked to overdoses this year in Kentucky and Florida. 
 
 Last week, police in Huntington, W. Va., responded to 26 heroin overdoses in a span of four hours. 
 
 [The latest overdose outbreak shows just how dangerous the heroin epidemic has gotten] 
 
 The Hamilton County Heroin Coalition, which works with law enforcement officials in southeast Indiana and northern Kentucky, is still investigating the widespread spat of overdoses this week. 
 
 “I’ve got to say to whoever pushed this out on the street,” Synan told WCPO, “this was the wrong thing to do.” 
 
 More from Morning Mix: 
 
 Texas law now permits guns in college classrooms. Protesters came armed with sex toys instead. 
 
 World’s largest aircraft takes world’s slowest nosedive during second test flight 
 
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– The Washington Post takes a look at the country's surging heroin epidemic by zeroing in on Pennsylvania’s Washington County, a place one local detective refers to as "ground zero" for heroin in the area. Last Sunday, in less than 70 minutes, eight heroin overdoses were recorded in the county of about 200,000 people. By a day later, that number had jumped to 16; by two days later, 25—three of which were fatal. As the Post notes, this period of time wasn't an isolated case but rather "an extreme example of what communities in parts of the country are enduring." In a Florida community earlier this month, 11 people overdosed on heroin in a 24-hour span, WKMG reported; this year, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had seen 44 heroin overdoses by June 5, the Gazette reported; New Jersey saw 781 overdose deaths related to heroin last year, 101.5 reported. Just yesterday, NPR ran a story on Marion, Ohio, a small town whose police chief says that his team sometimes responds to as many as three overdoses in just one hour. One of the reasons heroin is booming: It's cheap—cheaper than the prescription drugs that, for some, start them down the road of addiction. And one of the reasons there are so many overdoses? Nowadays, the drug is even more potent. The US attorney for western Pennsylvania is one of a growing number of prosecutors who aren't interested in jailing users, the Post reports: "If they're using and trafficking, I prosecute them. If they’re just using, they need help," he says. But finding dealers—including any linked to fatal overdoses, who will be charged with homicide—is no easy task, as these days drugs are sold via cellphone or even, with more middle-class people addicted now, in unlikely locations like homes. The county's supervising detective sums up the "out of control" heroin problem: "I'd be glad to have the crack epidemic back." Click for the full Post article.