At least 17 people have died and another 50 have been hospitalized in the northwestern suburbs of Buenos Aires for the use of cocaine adulterated with a substance not yet determined, authorities said Wednesday.
The Police of the province of Buenos Aires raided a house in a low-income neighborhood of Tres de Febrero, 40 kilometers from the capital, where it is presumed that the cocaine whose consumption caused the deaths and hospitalizations was sold.
The Buenos Aires prosecutor’s office investigating the case asked cocaine buyers in the suburbs surrounding the city of Buenos Aires, with some 14 million inhabitants, to dispose of the recently acquired drug as a precaution.
“The general population is informed that it has been determined that a highly toxic substance marketed as cocaine is circulating,” said the San Martín District Prosecutor’s Office, and recommended “adopt positive behaviors in order to protect themselves and take care of your health.”
At least four of the deceased were men between 32 and 45 years old, health authorities reported to the press.
The Buenos Aires Secretary of Security, Sergio Berni, explained that “each dealer (seller) who buys cocaine, fractionates it. Some do it with non-toxic substances, such as starch. Others give him hallucinogens and if you don’t have any type of control, these things happen.”
San Martin’s attorney general, Marcelo Lapargo, described the incident as “absolutely exceptional.”
“People say that this happens in Central America or in other places, but (here) the truth is never. It may be a reckoning, but it is conjectural because we have no record,” the judicial official told Radio Mitre.
In the site raided by the police, which had been investigated 45 days ago, cocaine was found in packages similar to those provided by relatives of one of the victims and which are now being analyzed in laboratories of the Judicial Branch, Berni reported.
The investigation began when four people, who later died, arrived at a hospital in the town of Hurlingham on Wednesday morning and informed doctors that they had used cocaine during a meeting, hospital sources said.
The head of toxicology at the Fernandez Hospital in Buenos Aires, Carlos Damin, said that “he had never seen anything like this.”
“At a minimum we start with 30% adulterant,” he explained to the media.
At the end of the afternoon, residents of the Loma Hermosa neighborhood protested, blocked streets and clashed with the police, who arrested young people in the area, according to the residents.
In 2016, the previous government declared a “National Addiction Emergency” due to the fact that along with “the advance of drug trafficking (…) drug use has increased”, but the measure lost validity in 2018.
According to a last official balance released in 2019, between 2015 and 2018 the number of detainees for illegal drug trafficking in Argentina grew by 147%. 144% more synthetic drugs and 54.7% more cocaine were seized for a total of more than 26 tons in those three years. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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