Dealers Give Teens Free Heroin Samples

St. Louis County Police Chief, Tim Fitch, says dealers are giving teens free samples of heroin. Sometimes teens are not told that its heroin. Once they get addicted to it, the teens start buying it from drug dealers.

This year, 69 people have died from heroin in St. Louis County. That's up from last year. And statistics show the people dying from heroin overdoses are younger than in the past.

The police chief says the heroin is coming mainly from Mexico via drug dealers in Chicago. He says Fenton is Ground Zero for heroin.

"I always ask them, how did you use this the first time?" says Fitch. "And they will almost always tell you it was in some party situation. They were already impaired by alcohol, or impaired by marijuana, or impaired by painkillers and they just took the next step."

The St. Louis County Police Department is setting an example for other departments around the country with their town hall forums on heroin. The chief gets calls from other departments about how they are educating the public. The next town hall forum is November 15th at Rockwood Summit High School from 7 to 8:30 PM.

A Community Response to Heroin

TOWN HALL MEETING

A Community Response to Heroin

Thursday, July 21st 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Hazelwood Central High School

15955 New Halls Ferry Road

Florissant, MO 63031

The St. Louis Area is currently experiencing an extremely dangerous epidemic of heroin and prescription painkiller use by teens. Our community experienced over two hundred overdose deaths last year alone! This forum is intended to provide helpful and useful information to the community in order to proactively confront this situation and help stop the epidemic before it gets any worse.

This meeting is open to professionals, parents and students. Speakers will be on hand from the St. Louis County Police Department, the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse – St. Louis Area and the St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund.

There is no charge for this meeting and refreshments will be served. For questions or more information, please call 314-962-3456.

This communication was sent to you on behalf of Sergeant Ray Rice (North County Precinct), the National Council on Alcoholism & Drug Abuse (NCADA), the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (ADA), the St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund, the St. Louis County Police, the St. Louis Police Chiefs Association, and the United Way of Greater St. Louis.