‘THERE IS NO SECOND LINE’

Fentanyl contamination has become so common that one New York man joked that his drug habit has become “a little bit of heroin but mostly fentanyl.”

The man said he’s been injecting heroin since 1992 and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to jeopardize his ability to get housing, to keep his place in a treatment program or to land a job.

He said the test strips are hard to come by, but he’s used them — usually when he bought drugs from a new dealer. All those tests were positive. He said he took the drugs anyway, starting with a smaller dose called a “tester shot.”

One day last month, he demonstrated how the test strips worked on a packet of heroin powder stamped with a blue devil on the side, which he bought from his regular dealer.

He called the dealer’s product “consistently mediocre.” It’s a selling point, since it means he knows what he’s getting “as opposed to playing Russian roulette.”

Inside a Brooklyn apartment, he shook the powder into a tiny cup, added water, and drew up the resulting brown liquid into a syringe. Then he set the needle aside, added a few drops of water to what was left in the cup, and swished it around.

Then he dipped the end of a test strip in to absorb the water and drug residue. In seconds, a red line appeared. “There’s supposed to be two. There is no second line, so this contains fentanyl,” he said.

Then he emptied the syringe into a vein on the back of his right hand, his eyes glazing as the drug took effect.