Word: heroines
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They look like heroin, they act like heroin, and they satisfy an addict's urge just like the real thing. But when subjected to a chemist's scrutiny, the narcotics that have been flooding California turn out to be something else. They are "designer drugs"--designed, that is, to get around...
Police in Orange County, Calif., first encountered designer drugs in 1979, when they found two young addicts lying dead near samples of a heroin-like powder. Thirteen more users had died before Forensic Chemist Donald Cooper of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration managed to identify the substance. It was a designer version of the anesthetic fentanyl, which is widely used during prolonged surgery. The variant was many times as powerful as heroin; just a little could be an overdose...
...drug was outlawed in 1981, but another modified fentanyl instantly appeared on the streets; when the second drug was banned, a third popped up. So far, six fentanyllike drugs have appeared, one of them a thousand times the strength of heroin. All told, they have killed at least 90 people...
When George Carillo arrived at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose one steamy July day in 1982, he seemed more a mannequin than a man. The 42-year-old heroin addict was bent over and twisted, drooling and unable to speak; almost every muscle was immobilized. No one knew what to make of his condition, so a call went out for Dr. J. William Langston, the hospital's chief neurologist. Langston took one look and was amazed. Carillo's symptoms suggested that he had been suffering for at least a decade from Parkinson's disease, a nervous...
Using stiffened fingers to scrawl answers to doctors' questions, Carillo managed to provide a few clues. The symptoms had come on suddenly after he and his girlfriend, Juanita Lopez, 3l, had tried a new synthetic heroin. Though the drug had caused an odd burning sensation when injected and hallucinations, they continued to use it for three days; two days later both had frozen into living statues...