Authorities say they are finding more and more heroin on the North Olympic Peninsula, with most of it turning up in Eastern Clallam County.
Five recent emergency calls for heroin overdoses have been received by the Sequim-based Clallam County Fire District No. 3, said district spokesman Peter Loeb.
One occurred Aug. 19, a day after the fire department and Sequim Police Department held a joint press conference to express concern about a recent rise in heroin overdoses, citing four heroin overdoses of people 16, 17 and in their mid-20s.
The fifth overdose was a man in his mid-60s.
“I was caught by surprise,” Loeb said. “You have relatively young people and then somebody in his mid-60s.”
All survived.
“Five people were revived, and the danger to their lives was mitigated by Fire District 3,” Loeb said.
The fire district wanted to issue a public safety warning, said Sequim Police Detective Sgt. Sean Madison.
Ron Cameron, commander of Olympic Peninsula Narcotic Enforcement Agency, or OPNET, said heroin activity seems to be more in the central part of the Clallam County — Port Angeles and Sequim — than on the West End.
But the trend goes beyond those areas.
“It’s got my attention,” Jefferson County Sheriff Tony Hernandez said. “There seems to be an uptick. We’re coming across it more and more frequently.
“We’re seeing it a lot more than we used to. It seems to be making a comeback.
Hernandez said his deputies have intercepted small quantities of heroin during traffic stops in recent weeks.
He said heroin started showing up in Jefferson County about a year ago.
Clallam County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Troberg said heroin cases started coming across his desk within the “last year or so.”
“It’s certainly here,” Troberg said. “Generally, it’s been kind of slow, but sure, there has been an increase in the number of heroin-related cases.”
While the prosecutor’s office doesn’t keep statistics on heroin cases, Troberg said there has been a noticeable increase.
Cameron said his team is seeing “a lot more heroin than we have in the past.”
He cited a recent case in which a quarter-pound of heroin was confiscated.
“A quarter-pound is a huge amount in our area,” Cameron said.
Cameron provided the following OPNET statistics for heroin seizures:
■ 2008: 1 gram.
■ 2009: None.
■ 2010: 2 grams.
■ 2011: 211 grams to date — with at least 100 grams attributable to the one seizure of a quarter-pound.
“We’ve always had some degree of heroin presence, but it’s always been pretty small and kind of confined to a small group of folks countywide,” Cameron said. “It’s gotten a lot more widespread.”
Troberg attributed the increase to the rising cost of methamphetamine.
Ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine — precursors to methamphetamine — are more expensive and more difficult to obtain, Troberg said.
“Heroin is a cheaper substance than meth,” Troberg said. “Most of the meth these days comes from Mexico.”
Other officials see a different cause: OxyContin is harder for drug abusers to get.
“About a year ago, perhaps a little less than a year ago, there was a period of time, a good few years, when abuse of prescription medications, especially OxyContin, was very popular,” Madison said.
OxyContin is a time-release formula of oxycodone produced by the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma.
The company started making it in a way that it could not be crushed and the vapors smoked, law enforcement officials said.
“When they started making in a different way, the tablet form became expensive and harder to get,” Madison said.
There also was an increased enforcement effort on illegal prescription drug use, Madison said.
“It was much, much harder to get,” he said.
So people who were crushing and smoking OxyContin turned to heroin, first smoking it, and then as they grew more addicted, Cameron said.
“I think it’s the crackdown in the availability in OxyContin,” Cameron said.
Said Madison: “Heroin being the opiate that replaces the synthetic opiate, it becomes something that takes over quite quickly.”
The difference between smoking and injecting is that “you’re putting it in the bloodstream all at once,” Madison said.
When smoking it, a person “inhales only the drug; the impurities are burned up,” Madison said. “Injecting it, you get everything that’s in there.”
The type of heroin seen on the Peninsula is generally black tar heroin, said Madison and Cameron.
That type of heroin is generally made in Mexico, diesel fuel is part of the process, and many impurities are in the finished drug, they both said.
Clallam County Sheriff’s Sgt. Brian King, who patrols the West End, said heroin use has not increased there.
“We’re not seeing a lot of it here,” King said. “Most of what we see abuse-wise is prescription medication.”
King could not recall a heroin bust or heroin overdose in the past year.
Nor could Port Townsend Police Sgt. Ed Green.
“We have not, fortunately,” Green said, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not going to get it.”
Port Townsend police typically encounter abuse of prescription drugs, some methamphetamine and a lot of marijuana, Green said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
