A new report confirms that there has been a dramatic increase in heroin use in the United States. That’s up from under two per 1,000 about a decade ago, a 62% increase that translates to hundreds of thousands more people, government researchers said.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the report, which is based on yearly face-to-face surveys of about 67,000 Americans, on Tuesday. The report paints a clear picture of the shocking change in the demographics of users, especially in those groups historically untouched by street drugs, particularly among whites and women. But the report also detected a 100 percent heroin increase among woman since 2002. But the biggest surprise in the report was the changing demographics of heroin users. The CDC’s investigation alongside the Food and Drug Administration not only found that heroin use among Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 had doubled in the past decade, but also that the number of fatal heroin overdoses had almost quadrupled in the same timeframe with more than 8,200 deaths in 2013 alone.
So, why do health officials say they are very anxious about this?
“When you have a population of people with a real affinity for opiates, and a new, cheap, widely available opiate on the market, it’s not surprising that we see a lot more people using heroin”, Unick said.
Authorities seized more than 4,800 pounds of heroin on the US southwestern border in 2013.
Increasing heroin dependence is closely tied to prescription pain reliever abuse, said Dr Jay Unick, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and author of a 2013 study on trends in heroin- and opioid-related overdoses. That compares to people addicted to cocaine, who are 15 times more likely, people addicted to marijuana, who are three times more likely, and people addicted to alcohol, who are two times more likely. These medications are often doled out by physicians not properly trained in pain management strategies.
Still, most heroin users are young white men with low incomes.
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When someone injects, snorts, or smokes heroin, the brain converts it into morphine. One other issue was addressed in the report. Wider availability of such treatment options has been shown to reduce drug use, overdose and related high-risk behaviors, such as injection drug use which can lead to HIV and hepatitis C transmission, Jones said.
