Free Samples You Won't Get At Costco

Aside from the fact that it is just, plain bold and brazen for drug dealers to feel free enough to pass out samples of heroin, it's just plain insane that so many people took them up on their offer ... and died!

As word circulated this week of people passing out from potent heroin on Chicago's South Side, drug users didn't recoil with fear, police said.

They turned out in droves for a taste.

By the end of Wednesday, 25 people between the ages of 17 and 73 had overdosed, including a 51-year-old woman who died at her home.

"It's a sad commentary when people are racing to a place they know may overdose them," Police Supt. Philip Cline said Thursday.

With 66 heroin overdoses since August, including 11 deaths, police announced they are teaming with federal officials to try disrupting the drug's flow into the city and to staunch the street deals plaguing the South and West Sides.

Though there are close to 250 fatal drug overdoses in Chicago every year, officials said, incidents involving heroin are becoming more concentrated. Fifteen of Wednesday's overdoses happened near the Ida B. Wells public housing complex. In February, 10 people died near the Dearborn Homes after taking heroin that, authorities said, was cut with Fentanyl, a prescription drug often used in anesthesia.

Though Fentanyl is believed to be contributing to most of the heroin overdoses, Cline said, it is unclear if the drugs passed out Wednesday were cut with the substance or if they were simply extremely potent doses.

What is known about Wednesday's outbreak is that samples were being given out in pink baggies in the 500 block of East Browning Avenue and at 64th Street and Ashland Avenue, Cline said.

I think this is taking product marketing and sampling much too far!