Posted on 03/16/2014 5:51:41 PM PDT by mgist
Once rare, heroin use on the rise More people seek help; police seeing more on street
The number of people seeking treatment for heroin addiction has exploded in Allen County in the last five years, according to figures from the Drug and Alcohol Consortium of Allen County.
In 2009, of all the people seeking treatment for addictions, less than 1 percent, or about 15 people, were addicted to heroin. That number fell in 2010 to only half a percent of all people with addictions, or less than 10.
By 2012, the number of people with addictions who were addicted to heroin jumped to 12 percent, meaning hundreds of people in Allen County were heroin addicts.
In 2013 the number of addicts on heroin had dropped to 5.9 percent, but it still represents a huge increase from only a couple of years before.
While the decline in people coming forward with heroin addictions from 2012 to 2013 might seem like good news, addictions experts note that all reporting is voluntary, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that heroin addiction was undergoing a sudden decline.
During the same period, the amount of heroin seized by Fort Wayne police, something that was rare just a few years ago, tripled in the three years from 2009 and 2012.
Though the amount of heroin seized by police in 2012, the last year for which numbers were available, seems small – only about 4 ounces – it has become almost a weekly event for police to announce they’ve seized heroin in a drug raid. This month, six men were indicted for allegedly plotting to distribute more than 5 kilograms of heroin in the region and rob other drug dealers in the area, including in Fort Wayne.
Today, police say the heroin, which used to be uncommon here, is flowing in from Chicago and an area known as the Region in northwest Indiana; some is also coming in from Indianapolis.
Marion Greene is a public health research analyst at IUPUI in Indianapolis who compiled the addiction figures that the Drug and Alcohol Consortium uses. Greene said she can only speculate on why heroin is suddenly becoming more common, but she suggests it has its roots in the introduction of some prescription painkillers in the 1990s.
Those drugs were accepted and easily available by prescription, but people came to rely on them. Then in 2013 there was a significant crackdown on the prescription drugs and doctors who were freely prescribing them, Greene said.
By then heroin had become more available, and it provided a better high and was actually cheaper than prescription drugs, Greene said. Heroin can cost $50 to $100 a day, while illegally obtained prescription drugs can cost twice that much, she said. Dealers recognized the emerging trend and took advantage of it.
Meanwhile, heroin was also seeing a resurgence among moneyed celebrities, and it has taken its toll, contributing to the death just this year of Philip Seymour Hoffman and others.
What Greene and others are concerned about is that heroin is shifting to younger users. People addicted to heroin used to typically be 45 to 55. More people in the 18-25 age group are becoming addicted, Greene said, and there has been a frightening jump in heroin use among people younger than 18.
Greene said the experts she has talked to don’t seem particularly surprised by the jump in heroin use. She said one colleague compared combating substance abuse to a game of whack-a-mole. Crack down on one substance and a different one pops up.
Jerri Lerch, executive director of the Drug and Alcohol Consortium, says the willingness to turn to heroin, which used to be viewed as a drug for dead-end addicts, is the result of an aging-out of awareness that people had of the drug a couple of generations ago.
Actually measuring the amount of heroin to be found on the streets, though, is difficult because it is illegal and users don’t respond to surveys, which Lerch said are one of the few ways the consortium gathers intelligence about the prevalence of drugs.
Regarding exactly how much heroin is on the streets, Lerch cited a quote that says things that are easy to count aren’t worth counting and things that are worth counting can’t be counted.
Dan Mawhorr, a sergeant with the Indiana State Police in Fort Wayne, was an undercover officer for nine years, ending about seven years ago, and in that role he said he bought heroin only one time. Now, he says, heroin is going gangbusters.
Like Greene, Mawhorr attributes the rise of the drug to the crackdown on prescription painkillers. Since the crackdown started, the price of those pills on the street has risen to $1 to $1.50 per milligram, so a 30-milligram tablet will cost $30 to $45. Meanwhile, a tenth of a gram of heroin can be had for $15, and in some places for as little as $5.
Estimating just how much heroin is out there, though, is difficult, Mawhorr said. Though various law enforcement agencies keep track of their drug seizures, they don’t compile the numbers.
Heroin use, oddly, can in some ways be attributed to an increase in the use of other drugs. In Kosciusko County, where there appears to be heavy use of methamphetamine, which creates a high, users will sometimes take heroin, which has the opposite effect, to alleviate the meth, said Kip Shuter, the public information officer for the Warsaw Police Department.
Why people are willing to deal with a drug that is so potentially deadly, and which has gained more notoriety recently as more famous actors have died from overdoses, might be hard to understand.
To Lerch, it’s just the result of a society that has become accustomed to and accepting of mood-altering substances, and young people who don’t look at the end game.
“They only look at the front end, not the back end,” Lerch said.
You can thank the CIA for that!
As someone else said, Karzai won’t last a month after we leave.
My semi-rural Pennsylvania county had 19 heroin OD deaths last year.
SIXTEEN in just the first two months of this year!!
Øbamastan sucks.
Soros, and the cartels, have been pushing for drug legalization, including heroin, since 1996. He (they) have spent millions and they have obviously influenced many people. I grew up in Miami in the 80’s and 90’s. There was a legitimate drug war. There is no “drug war” right now. Holder’s response to the heroin deaths is a medicine for first responders. He is in charge of the DEA!!! When I was growing up there was cocaine. Since there really was a war on drugs and shipments were seized daily, cocaine was expensive. Kids and people with limited resources didn’t have easy access to drugs. There were no deaths that I knew of. I knew one addict, in my entire life, and I know a lot of people.
The crap they are bringing is cheap. It is cheap because they isn’t stopping the massive distribution of highly addictive and dangerous heroin, so it is cheap. It is cheap and therefore very appealing to silly kids curious, or trying to have fun. No bueno. The governments job is to protect citizens. Heroin destroyed China, and reality is that drugs are already legal to Pharma industries who ruthlessly supply highly addictive opium products in pill, patches, and even lollipop form for kids, and those “legal” drugs are also abused in epidemic numbers. Don’t be fooled,the “failed” war on drugs was a Soros campaign, but the fact is we didn’t have so many deadly opiates available to kids before Obama was president. Opium production has reached unprecedented levels under Obama. Iran, and covert Narco Islamists have funded South American elections, and have been in the region for decades. Now this last week I read about a toddler going to day care with heroin in his jacket. The heroin being sold out of McDonalds! Opium production in Afghanistan has more than tripled under Obama. The banks, Soros, are laundering Billions $, and rest assured that money is greasing a lot of palms. May God help us.
Did I read somewhere that heroin is the drug of despair?
Has despair gone up since The One stopped the seas from rising and cooled off the economy?
Uh, I meant stopped the employment from rising and cooled off the climate...
Seems like a new pipeline has opened. Wonder, did we provide a new cartel with guns, ammo, and intel?
Doesn’t medical marihuana cure dat?
What county? Allegheny has had quite a few already this year. Butler (especially around Butler city) is turning into a mecca of heroin.
Where are the dopers with their argument that it’s caused by “prohibition” and their calls to legalize it?
Obama is an idiot because he doesn't take a stand against the destructiveness of drugs. But destruction is what Obama does best.
Addicts want to be free...but they need help. And prisons don't help with that problem.
It does no good to imprison an addict when is path to liberty is outside said prison.
Just like the way the Brits brought in opium to China. China resisted which resulted in the Opium Wars.
Yes! I read a report that the Sinaloa cartel got enough guns and ammo to arm an army. They were also given security information about their competitor cartels.
York...and many of the victims (and I don’t use that word lightly) are NOT “traditional” junkies but persons with chronic pain, who, “thanks” to Øbamacare can no longer afford their prescription pain meds.
when you have a prez and doj that refuse to enforce the laws, what the heck....give it a go.
That’s marijuana you dolt. Marijuana, a plant in the same schedule as a narcotic. Heroin is far, far different as it is manufactured through chemical processes. Marijuana just grows and dries. But you knew that already, yes?
One more thing to thank Democrats for...
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