“We don’t want to make a definite confirmation until we know more,” said James Garrow, spokesman for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
Garrow stated the heroin tested by the Willow Grove lab came from an independent purchase, not from an overdose victim, and that the samples were sold outside city limits, and not near where the bulk of the overdoses occurred in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood.
“That said, the reactions that victims displayed upon being revived is consistent with the synthetic cannabinoid being present. We don’t want to make a definite confirmation until we know more,” Garrow wrote in an email.
By Aubrey Whelan
The Collected Works of Jim Garrow 