Officials Say Heroin Making Big Comeback

Dan Smoot, law enforcement director of Operation UNITE, which handles drug investigations in 29 eastern Kentucky counties, says, "There's always some type of drug to step up when another gets taken out." Law enforcement officials in Kentucky and Ohio say, since a crack-down on drug abuse, the set up an electronic system to track pills and the slowdown of a pipeline that had roots in Florida, they have busted more people for a drug that had long ago faded into the background. Officials say heroin, which is generally snorted or injected in powder form, is being imported into the United States from Mexico and Central America. Kentucky State Police submitted 451 suspected heroin samples to its lab in 2010. By 2011, that number increased to 749. Through September 2012, state police had submitted 1,074 cases to the lab.