Police: Heroin use on Gogebic Range reaches 'epidemic' stage

BESSEMER - Heroin use on the Gogebic Range has reached the "epidemic" stage, taking over from meth as the preferred illegal drug of choice, the Gogebic County Board of Commissioners learned Wednesday.

Three local law enforcement officers addressed the county board on the deadly problem, which Michigan State Patrol Wakefield Post Commander Lt. Don Horn said will "affect all of us in one way or another."

Jerry Mazurek, an MSP trooper, said the heroin comes to the area mostly from Wausau, Minneapolis and Duluth and people are dying here because of it.

Mazurek said heroin is much cheaper in the cities and dealers who come here to sell it can make three or four times the profit. Once people get hooked on the drug, they will lie and steal to support their habits and that leads to related crimes.

Commonly referred to as "boy" or "smack," heroin is most often injected with a needle from a spoon, sometimes purified through a cigarette filter.

Common methods of distributing the drug can be as simple as the U.S. Postal Service or as complicated as hollowing out a bale of hay, Mazurek said, showing photos of some bizarre methods of transport.

Heroin can also be transferred in dirty baby diapers.

Mazurek said the trouble with treatment drugs administered to heroin users to help them try to kick their habit is that they are highly addictive. Some addicts trade them for more heroin, and the rate of re-use is very high.

Mazurek said a 22-year-old relative of his, a promising woman, overdosed on heroin and died.

Meth to heroin

George Cruz, a deputy with the Gogebic County Sheriff's Department, said the local Gogebic-Iron Area Narcotics Team is dealing with an increasing number of heroin cases.

"It's a constant battle to try to get them out of here," he said of drug dealers.

Cruz noted in 2012, the area went through a meth scourge, involving 24 cases that GIANT investigated, but now heroin is the big problem.

Numerous meth labs were busted up and many people went to jail as a result of the investigations.

There are still a couple of Ironwood meth cases pending through the federal court system, Cruz said.

Cruz said GIANT has been pleased with Gogebic County Court sentences handed out in meth cases, which have averaged four to eight years in prison or jail time.

County commissioner Jim Oliver, of Ironwood, asked how area residents can help officers cope with the heroin epidemic.

Mazurek pointed out a recent incident at a restaurant on Cloverland Drive in Ironwood.

A waitress saw a woman go into the bathroom with a spoon and she was in there for quite awhile. The waitress called the Ironwood Public Safety Department and officers responded. A heroin-filled needle was sticking out of the woman's arm when officers entered the bathroom, Mazurek said.

"She knew something wasn't right and she called," Mazurek said of the waitress.

Horn said similar heroin presentations will be made locally to alert the public of the extent of the problem.