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Cheese - Heroin Based Recreational Drug

Heroin isn't just used as is all of the time, and is often combined with other drugs, or put through differing manufacturing processes to achieve a different kind of end product. One such example of this is the narcotic known to the public as 'Cheese', which came to light after a few deaths were caused by the drug in 2006 and 2007.

Cheese is a drug made by mixing heroin with over the counter cough and cold medicine, by crushing the tablets into the heroin powder. Cheese has a far lower concentration of heroin present than in other forms of the narcotic, though it proved in a short period of time to be just as deadly. This derivative of heroin is usually snorted rather than taken by any other method, including intravenous injection.

The drug came to prominence in mainstream America after it was reported to have been found in a number of middle and high schools throughout the state of Texas - clearly a heroin based drug in schools was something the media were all too happy to jump all over and the notoriety of the narcotic was soon assured. Arrests of minors related to cheese were high and made very public, along with the media reporting parents enrolling their children into rehabilitation clinics after they were discovered using or in possession of the drug - at one point some members of the media were labelling cheese 'starter heroin'. By early 2006 the media was reporting the first of a spate of cheese related deaths, and paranoia across the country reached a new high, with some drug stores opting to remove products such as Tylenol - used in the creation of cheese - from their shelves.

The manner in which cheese is made is one aspect of particular concern to drug enforcement officers as well as parents. After black tar heroin is trafficked into the USA it is picked up by street level dealers, these dealers then sell the product on to school children, who then go about the process of mixing the heroin with water, adding the extra drugs and boiling off the mixture to result in the finished cheese.

It may be an example in the media whipping up something of a panic, but heroin use amongst school children certainly isn't something that could ever be advocated.