Heroin Overdoses Become Growing Epidemic
April 15th, 2009 by Rick
It’s tragic, but it happens on a daily bassis anywhere around the world — someone dies of a heroin overdose. With the family from Massapequa, New York the mother had a chance to get her daughter the help she needed after her first overdose, but she dropped the ball by allowing her daughter tell her that she didn’t need rehab. Another overdose later and she died.
Her mother was oblivious to her drug activity yet all the typical tell-tale signs were seemingly there; she lost weight, began seeing less of her friends, stayed in her room writing lyrics and poetry, met a new boyfriend, began breaking curfews and began arguing with her parents. I say typical because these could easily be signs of a changing teenager meeting a boyfriend who began influencing her staying out and being rebelous towards her parents.
If her mother had been properly educated on the drug heroin then she would have seen the tell tale physical signs that not even the best heroin user could hide. Things like drowsiness, constricted pupils, lethargy amongst others. Depending on how it was used may have left physical marks as well. The fact that they couldn’t recognize their daughter’s drug abuse is lost on me, there are plenty of families and friends out there that recognize drug abuse, try to put an end to it, then just pray they can curtail it and get the abuser to rebab — and yet they still die.
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, it’s because the heroin of today is much stronger than the heroin of the past. The statistics of it being 10 percent pure back then and 70 percent pure now is what they want you to believe. In reality, it is the exact opposite. The truth as to why people are dying of overdoses is because when the drug comes off the street, it’s cut once or twice over thus losing it’s purity, depending on how many channels the drug goes through depends on the cut. Too many channels, too much cut and a greater chance for an overdose because they are doing larger quantities chasing that dragon.
The National Drug Intelligence Center knows that experiments like in Switzerland and the recent Portugal have been a success with curbing overdoses by distributing heroin in a pure form. What statistics do you believe? Their words and disinformation on a mainstream media outlet that puts a heroin story under an ironically named AM Fix, or statistics tracked from studies done in two separate countries?
Obviously there are many factors to consider on how drugs of this nature actually can be legalized, aside from just doing it. Politics have a tendency to wrap the issue in red tape, much as it has been done over the decades. When heroin can be cheaper than a six pack of beer, people can obtain it without IDs and organized crime profits immensely off of it; then it’s time to cut the tape and figure out another avenue of approach.
The Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment reports that more than half the heroin arrests in the nation are in mid-Atlantic and Northeast states; Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. In 2006 the Department of Health reported that more heroin users sought treatment in the Northeastern states than anywhere else. With many of these states now pushing bills for decriminilization of marijuana and bills seeking laws for medical marijuana, one wonders if heroin use will decrease in those states in the coming years.
