Heroin Use Doubles in Suburban America
America woke up on Super Bowl Sunday this year to the news that Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman had been found dead of a drug overdose in his apartment. Hoffman was discovered with a needle in his arm, in fact, removing any initial doubts that the death might have been caused by anything but drug use. Investigators at the scene also found heroin in Hoffman’s apartment. This fit in with the fact that the actor had spent 10 days in rehab last year for problems with heroin and prescription painkillers.
The news of Hoffman’s death follows in the wake of the major story from this past summer when Glee star Cory Monteith was found dead of an overdose on a combination of heroin and alcohol. These reports have pushed heroin into the spotlight, but the drug has already become widely familiar in communities across the United States because actors and Hollywood stars aren’t the only people who are having problems with heroin. It is, in fact, making major surges in terms of use rates over the past few years, and the drug has spread to communities where previously it might have been little more than a vague rumor.
Heroin used to be a drug that was mostly associated with the inner city or with groups on the fringes of society. It was also a drug that was common in the music scene, with many performers getting hooked and some losing their lives similar to the cases of Hoffman and Monteith. Now, heroin is increasingly becoming a drug that can be found in the residential communities that so many of the families in this country call home. The rise of heroin has attracted considerable attention in the news.
A news report from last year, “Hidden America: Heroin Use Has Doubled, Spreading to Suburbs,” mentions the fact that 620,000 people in the United States are estimated to have used heroin in 2011, a figure that’s twice what it was in 2003. Heroin is still a relatively uncommon drug, with only a small percentage of the U.S. population using it in comparison to the numbers of people who use marijuana and other drugs. It is, however, far more popular than it was only a decade ago and it is on a trajectory to become one of the most widespread drugs available. This is a disturbing development in light of the fact that heroin is widely recognized as being one of the most dangerous and addictive drug known.
Why is Heroin Use Rising?
How can we explain the shocking increase in heroin abuse? It is easy to understand the source of this problem. Over the past few years, there has been an alarming rise in the rates of prescription painkiller abuse. Pain pills are among the most widely prescribed medications since doctors have become more likely to prescribe Vicodin or Percocet for relatively minor conditions than they were in previous years. More recently, state medical regulators and legislators have taken steps to crack down on prescription painkiller abuse, making the drugs more difficult to obtain. Heroin is a natural replacement, given the fact that it is an opioid drug, just as is the case with opioid painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. Consequently, heroin produces a similar high to that available through painkillers. Heroin is not only easier to obtain, but it is also far less expensive, at about $4 for a bag in comparison to $30 for just a single pill.
Heroin is also easier to use; pharmaceutical manufacturers have taken steps in recent years to prevent painkiller abuse, such as by producing crush-resistant pills that make it hard for a user to crush up a pill in order to snort or inject it. To put it simply, the measures taken to prevent painkiller abuse have been effective, but they have not solved the problem. The solution is to provide effective solutions to drug addiction and to prevent drug use in the first place. And prevent deaths like that of the talented actor; Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
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