The Times goes slumming

I think it's an annual event. The Times sends some unlucky reporter down to Alphabet City to pen the usual summertime "bad heroin/outbreak of overdoses" stories. But geez, don't they have editors? On the front page of their New York Region section appears this headline:

For Addicts, Killer Dope Must Be Good Dope

Just below that,

Mix of Heroin and Cocaine Likely in 4 Deaths, Police Say

So, the lead story is about how some powerful new dope is the scourge of the heroin user community. But just below that is the story that indicates that the two young women who initially brought all this to the Times' attention died because of a mixture of drugs. Not a heroin overdose, and not "tainted" heroin.

The six victims were two 18-year-old college students who were found unconscious on Friday in an apartment on East Houston Street, a 24-year old hairdresser in the East Village, and three men who appeared to be homeless.

Evidence suggested that the two students, a man found dead in a portable toilet near Pier 54 on the West Side, and a man found dead at a storage center in SoHo, had all taken a combination of heroin and cocaine that is commonly called a speedball, the police said. The mixture can be injected, smoked or swallowed.

The evidence included drug residue, paraphernalia and urine taken from one of the students, who was at Cabrini Medical Center overnight before dying on Saturday.

The man found in the toilet appeared to have used a syringe to take the drugs and had a medical history that included one prior overdose, the police said.

The two students did not have any needle marks from drug use, the police said.

The police said they had not found any overdoses related to the six deaths in the area.

Jack Shafer has it exactly right.