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.
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Officers with the Huntsville Police Department say they are seeing a major increase this year.
And the increase comes with a devastating price: Deaths from heroin-related overdoses almost quadrupled between 2002 and 2013.
At this point, call takers have said about 80 percent of their calls have been from people struggling with either heroin or prescription drug addiction.
“It’s about community involvement, and getting the word out to everyone about the problem that we are having”, Sgt.
“Heroin use is increasing at an alarming rate in many parts of society, driven by both the prescription opioid epidemic and cheaper, more available heroin”, said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a statement. From 2002 to 2004, the annual rate of heroin use was 1.6 per 1,000 persons aged 12 or older. At the same time heroin availability went up, there was a “decline in price and an increase in purity”. “Instead, people just shifted over to heroin, which is easier to get and cheaper”. Women, people coming from high income households and covered by private insurance are all in the statistics now for heroin use. More than half (61 percent) used at least three other drugs. That rise in injection drug use has fueled a new set of public health problems, including an HIV outbreak in rural Indiana and a resurgence of hepatitis C nationwide, Frieden said.
But it is the highly addictive painkilling opioids, prescribed and sometimes overprescribed by physicians who are not highly trained in pain management, that concern officials most, Frieden said.
In Pennsylvania, a series of hearings being held around the state this summer will look at heroin-related issues including improving access to treatment.
“Approximately 120 people die each day in the United States of a drug overdose”, Rosenberg said.
She notes, “I can tell you from my experience in the ER that you cannot predict this addiction, any more than you can predict who has diabetes”.
“If we don’t act now, we could lose an entire generation of people – to addiction, to the streets, to jail or to death”, said Sen. He encourages the use of naloxone kits, or Overdose Rescue Kits, which attack the effects of an opiate drug overdose. “We have the medications and we have the know-how”.
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A huge reason why this epidemic has taken over the Garden State is the spike of use in prescription pills. States also should review their Medicaid and workers’ compensation programs to identify trends of inappropriate prescribing, the CDC said.
