{"id":7276,"date":"2010-11-22T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2010-11-22T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=7276"},"modified":"2011-01-28T11:39:46","modified_gmt":"2011-01-28T11:39:46","slug":"police-warning-over-cheese-lethal-combination-of-heroin-and-cold-medicine-behind-20-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2010\/11\/police-warning-over-cheese-lethal-combination-of-heroin-and-cold-medicine-behind-20-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Police warning over \u2018cheese\u2019 \u2013 lethal combination of heroin and cold medicine behind 20 deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a cocktail of heroin and cold medicine that can kill your child – and it goes by the name \u2018Cheese\u2019. Police in New York are on alert for a wave of deaths as young children get hooked on the latest fad drug to sweep the city.
\nCoined \u2018Cheese\u2019 by the schoolchildren who are addicted to it, the brown powder gives a high for just $2 that can easily be sniffed between lessons.
\nVictims: Oscar Gutierrez, 15, and Nick Cannata, 16, both died after becoming addicted to ‘Cheese’. Dealers are increasingly the drug, known as ‘starter heroin’, at children to get them addicted young
\nDealers have been stamping packets with child-friendly brands like Lady Gaga, Mickey Mouse, the Looney Tunes logo and characters from the Lion King in order to lure in ever younger customers. But once children are hooked they find it incredibly hard to quit – withdrawal symptoms start within six hours meaning addicts have to dose themselves up to 15 times per day.
\nThe dark twist is that \u2018Cheese\u2019 also contains a potentially fatal amount of acetaminophen, a common ingredient in cold medicines like Tylenol, giving rise to its other name – \u2018Tylenol With Smack\u2019.
\nThe drug has been linked to a string of fatalities in Texas and now police in New York fear it is heading their way too \u2018It can ruin lives,\u2019 said an NYPD commander who recently taught patrol officers how to spot it.
\nLethal: Cheese is a combination of heroin and cold medicine which is highly addictive and is said to be behind at least 20 deaths in the U.S.
\n\u2018Cheese\u2019 has been on the radar of drugs officials since 2005 since when it has been blamed for more than 20 deaths in Dallas alone. Although just 2.6 per cent of high school students have tried heroin, dealers are using \u2018Cheese\u2019 to get them hooked at a lower cost. The drug is made by mixing the heroin powder with cough medicine, possibly with the addition of water or other ingredients, and then usually snorted.It has a heroin purity of up to 8 per cent, well below the level of intravenously injected drugs, but enough to make it addictive.
\nPolice have found that children as young as 12 have become hopelessly addicted to the drug and only escaped its clutches with the constant help of their families.
\nAmong those who lost their child to \u2018Cheese\u2019 is Dave Cannata from Dallas, who now travels the U.S. warning other parents about the drugs. Mr Cannata found son Nick dead in his bedroom five years ago after he overdosed on the cocktail. The 16-year-old had only been out of rehab for six months when he came home and apparently went straight to bed. He was found dead the next morning.
\n\u2018Parents need to be scared of this stuff,\u2019 Mr Cannata said. \u2018Every day I look at his picture and I wish that I spent the 40 grand a month to send him away to get some help. \u2018You have to jump on the problem right away. This drug is so highly addictive.\u2019
\nThe Drug Enforcement Agency refers to \u2018Cheese\u2019 as \u2018starter heroin\u2019 because of the low amount of the drug in it. Over time users build up their tolerance level so they need increasingly large amounts to get high – before moving on to the real thing.<\/p>\n

Source: – http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk 14th Oct 2010
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It is a cocktail of heroin and cold medicine that can kill your child – and it goes by the name \u2018Cheese\u2019. Police in New York are on alert for a wave of deaths as young children get hooked on the latest fad drug to sweep the city. Coined \u2018Cheese\u2019 by the schoolchildren who are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-specifics","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}