Before the weathermen incident, heroin had been the domain of police and court reporters in Roanoke, widely believed to be an inner-city (read: black) drug. “In the ’80s and ’90s, maybe a few dozen people were doing heroin here,” said Don Wolthuis, the assistant U.S. attorney who became one of the federal government’s top heroin prosecutors in the state’s western half. “Because heroin is a depressant, people kind of withdraw; they go in a corner, shoot up, and sit there in the dark, in a fetal position. They weren’t out there committing crimes like with crack or meth. It was a largely
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