Probe: Heroin-related deaths not accurately counted

Delconewsnetwork ^ | 5/12/14 | By MARYJO WEBSTER and JESSICA GLENZA

[mgist]

Probe: Heroin-related deaths not accurately counted

Published: Monday, May 12, 2014

Elected officials, law enforcement officers and others proclaim there’s a heroin “epidemic” sweeping the country, and it’s taking hold in rural and suburban communities once considered unlikely places to find illicit drugs.

But nobody knows how many people have died.

Nobody knows how many have overdosed and survived.

Nobody even knows for certain where the problem is most severe.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 3,036 people died in 2010 from heroin overdoses, but due to problems with how death investigations are conducted and how those deaths are documented, the CDC estimates that its tally is at least 25 percent short, possibly more.

“I’m very scared for our nation in how fast this has grown and spread,” said John Roberts, a retired Chicago police officer who created The HERO Foundation after his son died of a heroin overdose in 2010. “This is an epidemic. But it’s not getting the attention that it needs because we don’t know how bad it is.”

Public health researchers, called epidemiologists, say long-standing flaws in data about fatal and non-fatal overdoses compound the already difficult task of monitoring an illicit activity.

Having an accurate and timely picture of heroin abuse and its effects is crucial, researchers said, because heroin has much higher risks of overdose and infectious disease than other drugs. That’s particularly true when compared to the prescription painkillers that many of today’s heroin users started with.

“We need to know what they’re dying from, because our ability to measure drug use is very poor,” said Caleb Banta-Green, a research scientist in Seattle and former advisor to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Death is what you want to prevent, and that data can tell you something about how we keep people alive.”

To make matters worse, it has taken three years for the CDC to make the 2011 death data available to the public and researchers — a full year longer than usual — at a time when local reports from throughout the country indicate alarming increases in heroin use and overdoses.

The 2011 data is expected to be released later this week (May 16), and researchers expect it will show a dramatic spike in the number of heroin-related deaths.

“The rapidly changing picture of substance abuse in the country now demands in the 21st century a more timely reporting of indicators,” said Jim Hall, an epidemiologist with the Center for Applied Research on Substance Abuse and Health Disparities in Miami.

Hall and others said more complete, detailed and timely data would help to inform the policy makers who decide how to fight drug abuse, and heroin in particular.

“Policy should rest upon good data. The better your data, the better policies you make in the first place and the better evaluations of the policies are,” said Len Paulozzi, an epidemiologist with the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “If you have to wait four years to get data, you’re well behind in terms of trying to arrive at an effective policy.”

Prescription painkiller clampdown linked to heroin surge

Fatal drug overdoses have tripled over the past two decades and have become the leading cause of death by injury in the United States, according to the CDC.

Experts say this coincides with the increased use of prescription painkillers, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone.

And now the rise in heroin use — and overdose deaths — seems to be a direct result of efforts to make those painkillers less accessible for illegal use, combined with an unprecedented influx of low-cost, high-purity heroin.

For many, pills were the “stepping stone” to heroin, said Carol Falkowski, a national expert on drug abuse and Minnesota’s former drug-strategy officer.

Pill addicts — and now the new heroin users — often defy the stereotypes, bringing more attention to the topic. Banta-Green said they tend to be “young, white and rural.” Continued...

[lacrew]

“they tend to be “young, white and rural.””

I would change that to ‘young, white, and suburban’. I have witnessed I more than once now. Middle class suburbanite kids go to too many parties, and eventually get caught up in this stuff.

Lots of lies, borrowing money, more lies, more borrowed money...and it doesn’t have a good outcome. Living on friend’s couches in a near homeless state (can’t stay with mom or dad, since they won’t let me ‘party’), inability to hold a job, pawning possessions.

I haven’t yet seen the end game - but it can’t be good.

[mgist]

The $MULTI BILLION heroin trade is flooding world markets with heroin so pure it can be snorted. While the drug legalization campaign demands more drugs (from the cartels of course). Take care of your families!!!!