© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Cole County sees increase in heroin use

staxnet
/
Flickr

The Cole County Sheriff’s Department and Jefferson City Police are working on a heroin awareness campaign.

By Amrita Jayakumar

Jefferson City police Captain Doug Shoemaker says the first step of the plan is to gather data on drug problems in the area.

"We’ve clearly had an increase in the reports of those types of issues, but those reports vary from, depending on the source. So in order to get the true facts out, we wanna work with a number of community groups, hospitals, health care providers to get the actual numbers and then formulate a strategy amongst ourselves."

Jefferson City police arrested two people on Tuesday for allegedly packaging heroin for distribution.

Shoemaker says the reason behind higher heroin use is not clear yet. The St. Louis area has also seen an increase in crimes that police are attributing to heroin.