Heroin Use increases

The use of heroin – one of the deadliest drugs – has become rife in different communities of the whole country. Youths, all around the country, are becoming the victims of this lethal addiction. Cheap rate and the powerful effect of heroin has affected every aspect of drug abuse – drug overdoses, treatment admissions, and mortality rate. This is indeed an alarming state as the use of heroin has reached even those areas where the drug abuse was rare before.Heroin Use increases

Statistics of Drug Use
Several statistics have been conducted focusing on the condition of drug use in different states. According to statistics, heroin overdoses have increased by 25% from 2008 to 2009 in Ohio and the rate is gradually escalating.  Seven persons have died within five days due to a shipment of heroin on April of this year in Cowlitz County, Wash. If taken the statistics of the past two years, 310 people were killed in St. Louis alone due to heroin addiction. According to the data found in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for the year 2009, almost 3,500 USA people died of heroin abuse, which was almost double than the number of the people died a decade ago.  An analysis of these records and statistics performed by the Scripps Howard News Service showed heroin as a potential threat to all generations, but especially fatal for young people aged under 30. According to the opinions of law enforcement officials and addiction experts, the reason behind youths’ falling prey of drug abuse is there attraction to muscles and bodybuilding, which ultimately leads them to drugs sold in streets.  The alarming rate of drug abuse among the youths is also supported by the fact that drug addiction killed 3,358 people under 30 in 2009, including 93 teens. A study in 2001 showed heroin as the killer of 1,901 people of which 22% were under 30 including 45 teens.

Heroin – A Multi-Generational Addiction

However, the experts confirm that the users of heroin are not confined to any particular class or level. Despite the differences in their class, financial status, educational level, and age, heroin has driven them all to one direction – death.  Wilson Compton, working at the National Institute of Drug Abuse as the director of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention, said that the death certificates were showing the patterns of heroin use that had broken the boundary of generations. His words are echoed by the surveys conducted at the Federal level in 2011, which shows more than 350,000 American’s involvement in drug addition, of which 2.9% are high school students. According to a national surveillance network, more than million visits had been made in 2009 in the hospitals’ emergency rooms for illegal drug abuse, of which 219,000 cases were involved with heroin use.

The Common Casual Factors of Heroin Addiction

The experts find the availability and cheap rate of heroin as the prime factors behind the increased rate of death due to heroin use. Another reason for heroin’s popularity is its ability to dissolve into the water more easily than other prescribed opiates like OxyContin. In addition, unavailability of OxyContin also compels many users to make a switch to heroin. Heroin is also very cheap, can be obtained in $10 while Oxy or other similar drugs are no less than $50 even at the street vendors. On the other hand, though heroin addiction is identical to that of opiates, its aftereffects are uncertain. Depending on the level of purity and additional substances added to it, heroin can lead the users to any consequences.  Analysis has shown that most of the heroin abusers start with painkillers. With the passage of time their tolerance level enhances and then they tend to go for the cheaper alternative – heroin. However, it is by any means a deadly habit because only snuffing unusually pure heroin may lead to immediate death. A counselor Nancy Knott, working with the Scripps Treatment Program, said that heroin addiction had become an epidemic. St. Louis is one of the most affected areas hit hard by this epidemic. Due to heroin, 116 people died in this area in 2010 and the number increased in 2011 counting 194 deaths.  The addiction of heroin is really strong. For this reason, most of the addicts cannot go back to their normal life easily. The treatment process is also very complex. Medications can be applied to resist the effects, but these processes are not free from side effects.  However, the time may have come to put some serious thoughts on how to reduce and remove this problem from the root.

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