NEWS: Evil Drug, Heroin Makes Comeback

The recreational use of drugs in western culture seems to have gone by and somewhat accepted as a right of passage from youth to adult but one drug above all does far more damage to lives through the painful almost unbreakable grip of addiction. And far more are now finding themselves trapped in this addiction and it is not just the poor this time...

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MSNBC.com

A growing and purer supply of heroin, and new efforts to tailor the drug to a middle-class customer base, are combining to create what some health officials in the United States and abroad fear is a deadly new trend of addiction in America.

Chicago may well illustrate the complexity of what some call a high-purity heroin epidemic and its impact on the nation as a whole. For one scholar studying heroin use there, it's time to adjust the popular perception of exactly who heroin addicts are.

"The user of today is not the user of the 1970s," said Kathleen Kane-Willis, assistant director of Roosevelt University's Institute for Metropolitan Affairs and lead author of a study last year on heroin use in Chicago. "The user of today defies the traditional stereotype of being minority, urban, male and poor."

In Chicago, 'demographics have shifted' The Roosevelt study found that in 2002 there were almost 13,000 heroin-related visits to Chicago-area hospital emergency rooms - the highest number in the United States for the fifth straight year.

Please click the above original source link for the full report.

Heroin is not one of those drugs one can simply play with. It can bring destruction to anyone who tempts this fate, as well as many other drugs.

We all may see times in life where we seek to escape a painful existence or just to get high and have fun. But illegal drugs of all types come with consequences and none are good. Heroin is one of the worst. ask anyone who has tried to escape this addiction. It is much better to just be high on life in my view.

Related informative web site:

Getting off drugs


[Edited on 31-5-2004 by UM_Gazz]

[Edited on 5-31-2004 by Valhall]

Working in corrections I can tell you that heroin never went away. It just took a media backseat to crack and cocaine. You want to be truly frightened by heroin, talk to someone that's been there. It's amazing that anyone survives this addiction.

An extra little BONUS of the war in Afghanistan is the opportunity for the CIA to get in on the Heroin trade. Not like we haven't sold drugs to hide money historicaly now is it?

Opiates are extremely important legitimate drugs as well as illicit drugs. Interdiction does NOT work. Heroin, in and of itself, is not Evil! Paaaleeeeeeze! "Guns don't kill people, I kill people!" (T-shirt worn in Happy Gilmore movie)

The heroin supply booned when the US got rid of the Taliban that were stomping out Afghan growers. And considering where it comes from is almost exclusively US controlled war zones, I REALLY don't understand how it's getting in the US now.

Actually, I have my theories. War is expensive. Americans once bought bonds to fund wars, now they buy dope. Everything's taxed. It really is.

And as the article insinuates the typical IV user is becoming more and more upscale. It's a Hollywood and Executive type drug now in many cases.

But not to "get high". Once hooked you just want to be well. Your life comes to a crashing halt every 8 hours without it. I hate it when TV and movies make it look like junkies get high and start drooling and pass out. No, they go to work. It's not like alcohol, you'd never know who was hooked. Never even imagine.

No different from Rush's OxyContin addiction. Same thing. Though that drug is getting more low rent abusers lately.

I can agree with that intrepid, but if you read the full MSNBC report you will see the trend is shocking and growing at a more rapid rate than it has in many years. also that it is the middle-class that is getting hit the hardest.

People think before using any drug. you may not be able to escape it's grip or worse it could kill you.

Gazz

You're right. Crack is damn joke compared to herion. Crack is even a joke to IV cocaine users.

Sniffin' and smokin? Kid stuff. But I'm not lauding abuse. It's a serious problem.

One longtime user I talked with said that the way this stuff is "cut", you can get some that is 100 times stronger in the SAME batch. Easy to see why people die. Dangerous stuff.

Here is my thoughts on this if our higher ups would stop bring this stuff over here to kill us see gigarettes,beer,meth,crack, it all fits in the same group

In Canada Methadone is used legally to get people off Heroin. Both the gov't and users say it works.

As far as I concerned, it's just trading one addiction for another. The only benifit it has is that at the end of the day, the average person still has their TV and DVD.

[Edited on 31-5-2004 by intrepid]

Well it's been almost 11 years since the last time I did H. I started out doing it maybe once a month, then after 3 months, it bacame daily. A $300 a day habit. I did whatever I needed to do to get it. The scary part is that I never shot. I was with people who have, and it is scary. I've seen to many Pulp Fictionesque situations go down. The thing is what it was cut with. Most were cut with rat poison, it was less detectable than say baking powder. I also agree that it has taken a backseat in the media. The problem has not gone away, it just is less talked about. The said part is that Addiction keeps business' in business. I'm sure everyone here knows of at least one person who has gone to rehab of some sort. So as of this post, that is about 12,480 people at about $15,000 a pop. Do the math. and this is just the ATS world........

in no way are cigarettes and beer as deadly nor as addictive as crack or meth...not even in the same league...yes ALL will eventually kill you...but the time frames are way off...

In 2000, the most common actual causes of death in the United States were tobacco (435,000), poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000), alcohol consumption (85,000), microbial agents (e.g., influenza and pneumonia, 75,000), toxic agents (e.g., pollutants and asbestos, 55,000), motor vehicle accidents (43,000), firearms (29,000), sexual behavior (20,000) and illicit use of drugs (17,000).

www.cdc.gov...

Tobacco use (i.e. Cigarettes) kills about 25x the number of people that all illegal drugs combined kill every year.

Alcohol Consumption (i.e. Beer, probably more likely liquor, but it's all alcohol) kills about 5x the number of people all illegal drugs combined kill.

Slow and steady wins the race. In more recent years, obesity (cause of death number 2) is threatening to overtake tobacco. These are the most recent stats I could find on the fly, tho.

. . .At the same time, yes, crack/heroin/methamphetamines will kill an individual more quickly, but tobacco will kill an entire hedonistic population . . . (checks notes) . . . roughly 25 times faster than all illegal drugs.

There are also schools of thought that say a professionally corporate engineered cigarette is more addictive than the average dose of heroin you can find on the street in America.

There's no "scale" (not one that I know of, anyway) to measure "how addicted" someone is to a substance. I think we can all agree that heroin is, or at least appears to be, VERY highly addictive. Anyone who has ever spent a period of their life smoking a pack of cigarettes or more every day can tell you that cigarettes are also highly addictive.

Sorry to tirade, and wander off topic, but I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions.

Heroin is an awful drug. I, too, have seen it ruin lives. Everyone reading the above news bulletin should not only resist heroin, but compel everyone you know to resist heroin.

--J1M