TRENDS IN DRUG USE BY GARY F. PATRONE, ARCPOINT LABS OF TEMPE The Deadliest Drug on the Planet
flood of cheap doses of the drug. It can be ordered easily and delivered right to your front door. In some regions of the U.S. heroin is deemed “highly available” in more than three times the number of communities as it was just a few years ago. Te resurgence of heroin has sparked a
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flurry of action from governors’ mansions all the way to the White House. Govern- ment studies estimate the number of heroin users is up about 75 percent from 2009 and nearly 300 percent from 2003. It’s a level of regular usage not seen since heroin’s peak in the mid-1970s and is growing faster than all other drugs of abuse. Heroin is not a new drug. It’s been
around since 1874, when chemists, working to find a less addictive form of morphine, created heroin. Tey ultimately
he United States is in the grips of one of the worst heroin epidem- ics in its history, due in part to a
discovered heroin had twice the potency of morphine, and heroin addiction soon became a serious problem. So what’s new? A new breed of heroin user is emerging.
The Transition From Painkillers to Heroin Te government, law enforcement and medical experts now concur that the heroin surge can be traced to the rise of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin®, Vicodin® and Percocet®. Prescription painkillers are heroin’s chemical sibling—containing com- pounds derived from, or similar to, opium. ”Heroin is just a symptom of the
prescription drug problem,” said Joseph Rannazzisi, deputy assistant administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, during a Senate hearing in May 2014. Doctors wrote millions of prescriptions for opioid painkillers, and from 1999 to 2010 sales increased 300 percent, according to
Past Month Heroin Use 2007–2012
The number of people (in thousands) who are 12 years old or older and who reported using heroin in the past month if federal surveys.
400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0
2007 2008 2009 2010
National Survey on Drug Use and Health, US Dept of Health and Human Services. USA TODAY
Annual survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 2011 2012
the Centers for Disease Control and Pre- vention. Te drugs are now prescribed to 12 million Americans a year with hundreds of thousands becoming addicted. With the reformulation of prescription
opioids to make them harder to abuse com- bined with a government crackdown on prescribing them, availability is dropping and driving up the cost. Tose addicted to pills are seen turning to heroin as a readily available and cheaper option to feed their addiction. Mexican heroin, which now dominates the American market, sells for $4 to $10 a dose compared with $40 to $80 for an 80-milligram opiate pain pill. “People are going to go where the drugs are, and right now, the cheapest and easiest way to keep that addiction going is through heroin,” said DEA spokesman Rusty Payne. Te ‘new’ cheap and very potent heroin
can be snorted or smoked, giving the same effects as if injected. Tis removes a psychological barrier for some users and is leading to experimentation by younger us- ers of school age, and others, who have an aversion to needles. Using needles is associ- ated with hardcore junkies while smoking heroin is regarded as being an act done by a more casual user, giving the false impres- sion that addiction can be avoided. “Now we have people openly admiting a
heroin habit of 20 bags a day, and I haven’t talked to a single person who did not get started by using the pills,” said Jim Baker, chief of police in Rutland, Vermont. “I’ve been blown away by the depth of the addic- tion problem. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this.” Ellen, an addict in Portland, admits “I did a lot of pills and then I moved up here and I started doing heroin ‘cause it’s way cheaper.” Nora Volkow, director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, says surveys show about 80 percent of recent heroin addicts switched from opioid pain pills.
26 datia focus winter 2015
People (Thousands)
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