Heroin addiction, as we’ve said here repeatedly, has been on the rise in the United States and in Ohio, and the CDC is now reporting that deaths from heroin overdose in the US doubled between 2010 and 2012. Heroin use is not to be taken lightly, and if you or someone you love is using this dangerous and addictive drug, please seek help. Here’s an excerpt from the PBS Newshour’s recent piece on this CDC data, by Rialda Zukic, and the trends contributing to it. There’s a link below if you’d like to click through for the full story.
One explanation for the trend is that heroin has become a cheaper alternative for users already addicted to opiate painkillers.
NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown spoke with Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Quinones about this issue in February.
Quinones said:
Oxycodone is very, very similar — almost identical to heroin. The problem is that there is a black market in these pills now, because they have been so widely prescribed. There was a revolution in medicine in the United States back in the ’80s and ’90s that said these pills are nonaddictive ones prescribed to pain patients, chronic pain patients.
So we had this kind of rising sea level of pills all across the country. A very deep black market developed in which these pills now cost a dollar a milligram. Most of these pills come in 30, 40, 80 milligram doses. That means you are having to pay 30, 40, 80 bucks a pill, and a lot of people getting addicted. Their tolerance rises.
They cannot — they end up using three, four, five of these pills. I have met people who had $300-, $400-a-day addictions. Heroin comes in and it is a fifth to a 10th cheaper than that. And if you are already, a lot of these folks, getting addicted to the pills, have already begun injecting.
And when they start injecting, it’s kind of like you crossed the Rubicon in a sense. And so injecting heroin isn’t much different from injecting these pills. It just happens to be far cheaper.