We ve got a syringe there. The black tar is shown there, and also there s some white powder. Seattle s assistant medical examiner, Richard Haruff, has called the heroin deaths an epidemic, something which he s carefully documented through photographs. This is showing an arm of an individual, died of a heroin overdose, and the small blue area in this slide is the injection site. Haruff has also collected spoons found with the bodies of heroin victims.
Addicts use the spoons to heat heroin into a liquid.
It s just because they re so graphic, and they tell the tale so well, and they also are, are a memory of each death. Those deaths now average two to three a week. Haruff says victims are mostly white males in their mid to late 30's. Heroin is a very potent depressant of the brain function, and it causes depression of all functions of the brain, in particular in terms of causing overdose deaths, it depresses the part of the brain that controls respiration. So in general, the person stops breathing.