Black Tar Matters, Heroin Thriving in Dallas with Border Wide Open

America has higher levels of mind-altering substances traveling through the blood of its citizens than ever before. Whether our leaders view this as bug or a feature is unknown at this time. In any event, drug overdose deaths are up in Texas. They were up about 32% in 2020, and the death rates continue to rise.

Prescription opioids, fentanyl, and meth factor significantly into that rise, but heroin is part of the picture as well. Texas has traditionally escaped widespread heroin use, but that trend looks to be changing. Take a look at Dallas.

To get an idea of the problem, you can look at police incident reports found on the Dallas Open Data page. The data there goes back to 2014. If you search for incidents involving heroin, you will see that from 2014-2017, there were fewer than 40 heroin incidents per year. Then there was a big jump in 2018, when 143 heroin incidents were recorded. The rising trend continued in 2020, when 203 heroin incidents were recorded.

The upward trend jolted even further in 2021. Just over six months into the year, Dallas Police have already logged 155 heroin incidents. If the rate holds steady, as compared to last year, Dallas is on track for about 270 heroin incidents this year,

There are different types of heroin. There is the pure stuff which generally comes from Afghanistan or other stans, and then there is black tar heroin, a cheaper, lower potency form of the drug. Which heroin type is soaring in Dallas? The descriptor "black tar" is certainly rising in police incident reports.

Most police reports don’t differentiate the heroin type. But when they do note which type of heroin is at issue, police reports describing "black tar heroin" are up significantly in 2021. So far, there have been 16 mentions of of "black tar heroin" in 2021. This time last year, there had only been 3 mentions. A conservative prediction is that Dallas incident reports will show 27 such reports by the end of the year.

Black tar heroin is mostly produced in Mexico and controlled by cartels. Now why would there be a surge in the pedaling of black tar heroin in Dallas? It couldn't have anything to do with the open border could it?

Illegal border crossings aren’t just a border town problem. Isn’t it about time our Governor did more than visit and talk? We’re all done trusting the plan around here, amigo.

Governor Abbott and President Trump laughing about actually shutting down the border