Heroin Has Impacted Every Home

guardian ^ | 3/12/14 | duringer

[mgist]

Heroin Has Impacted Every Home Added by Brandon Duringer on March 12, 2014. Saved under Brandon Duringer, Drugs and Alcohol, Health, Heroin, Opinion Tags: heroin In two weeks and a day, it will have been a year since Oliver Chase Peabody left this worsened world from an overdose of heroin. He was only 28 years old and yet, he had cultivated a whole life’s worth of infectious love for those fortunate to know him. Since his untimely passing, thousands of others have succumbed to the same tragic fate. Not long ago the DEA divulged that 3,038 people perished in 2010 due to the seductive and destructive drug, and the death toll is only accelerating. Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder declared heroin an “urgent public health crisis.” It is about time. With the infamous opiate making headlines more and more, and the statistics growing grimmer and bigger, chances are the heroin epidemic has adversely impacted someone every reader knows and invaded every home.

The DEA recently released some startling statistics in correlation to this nationally rising threat. From 2006 to 2010, the reported incidents of heroin related deaths have risen 45 percent. While reports haven’t been accumulated yet for the most recent years, DEA officials and nation wide police reports warn that the problem has already become substantially larger.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy also publicized their own findings for 2010, claiming 1.5 million Americans were habitually using heroin that year. That means over a million parents, friends, relatives, and children, or someone everybody inevitably knows, has injected their veins and impacted their heath with the deceitful drug. Potentially every seemingly impermeable home has been impacted in some detrimental way by heroin. And the sobering figure is apparently only growing.

With the recent death of beloved actor Philip Seymour Hoffman acting as the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, it seems the public is now prepared to shed some light on this cruel and pervasive dark shadow. Attorney General Holder has urged all police precincts to train and administer Naloxone, a drug that has saved 10,000 people since 2001 by counteracting the life-threatening depression of the nervous system, which causes victims to stop breathing. 17 states and DC have currently revised statewide access to the invaluable drug, making it available to more agencies in need. With more desperately needed awareness of heroin’s corrupting power comes more preparation and prevention, and it could not come at a better time.

While agencies report exponential rises in heroin overdoses in northern Texas, northern Ohio, and Indianapolis to name a few, it seems the appropriate and obligatory time to identify this diabolical enemy and arm the nation to its inherent danger. Start with the source. The most common gateway drug for a heroin junkie, according to the DEA, is oxycodone.

It is no surprise that oxycodone and similar opioid pharmaceutical-related incidents are simultaneously on the rising trend with heroin. Many chronic users graduate to the needle from the synthetic prescription pill. To strike heroin at its wretched heart would require striking its domesticated prescribed form as well. This is not an easy undertaking, given that oxycodone and its many minions killed 16,600 people of their own in 2010.

With harrowing death tolls climbing higher and creeping disturbingly closer to home, it will only prove increasingly more arduous to overtake this nation wide affliction. The DEA is making admirable strides along the Mexican border, where most of the drug is deviously delivered from, but FDA policy and the White House will certainly have to lend a legislative hand as well. In the end, the ultimate choice is with the user, whose life rests delicately in his or her hands. The education and shared experiences that lost soul possesses could mean making the choice that saves a life.

Oliver Peabody, AKA Oli, made the quintessentially wrong choice last year, as millions have, and not a day goes by that those he left behind do not mourn his actions for him in his anguished absence. In the naive blink of an eye he was gone forever, but hopefully not in vain. The issue is no longer contained to the gutters and alleyways of everyday discussion; it has infiltrated virtually every unsuspecting neighborhood. Before this societal disease infests Americana past the point of recovery, it must be suffocated and snuffed out, otherwise before long, every home will have a sad story as result of being impacted by the nations newest epidemic: heroin.

[Steely Tom]

That’s part of the cycle. But after their era we get the coke fueled late 70s and 80s, then coke morphs to crack in the late 80s and 90s, heroin had a quick resurgence in the mid-90s, but then meth hit big for late 90s into the 00s, and now has been replaced again by heroin.

I remember sitting on a couch at my aunt's house, reading a story about heroin addicts in Reader's Digest. This would have been in about 1965. I was in fourth or fifth grade. The story literally made me sick to my stomach. My parents thought I was just reading some story about the astronauts.

I'll never forget that story.

[discostu]

Heroin was really popular for a long time. Seems like almost everybody that was big in music in the 40s, 50s or 60s got hooked at some point. It’s definitely a nasty drug, of course once you get hooked anything is nasty.

[punknpuss]

Prayers for your son and your family.

[Jemian]

As far as I know, no one in my family has used heroin. These people the author is claimed as beloved have never entered my purview.

Parallel worlds

[equaviator]

The raw opium being grown, harvested and processed in the Middle East and the heroin that comes from it are ALL chemical weapons of mass destruction and as far as I’m concerned those “poor farmers” over there should be forced to give it up or grow something else.

[mgist]

I live in Miami. Customs agents used to make seizures daily. Heroin is not produced in the US. It is coming in from Mexico border and planes coming from Venezuela. There have been ZERO reported seizures of heroin. The one exception is a Venezuelan private plane caught in the year 2000, in Orlando, with what at the time was a record breaking 30 lbs of heroin.

This is a 2011 report on Venezuela ties to Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, which are also major Narcotics distributors. (heroin)

Government ignoring Iran Venezuela Narco Terrorism Connection

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201112.neumann.narcoterrorism.html

“Press stories, as well as a television documentary, over the past two months have detailed the growing cooperation between South American drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists, proving that the United States continues to ignore the mounting terrorist threat in its own “backyard” of Latin America at its own peril. A greater portion of financing for Middle Eastern terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, is coming from Latin America, while they are also setting up training camps and recruiting centers throughout our continent, endangering American lives and interests globally. Some Latin American countries that were traditional allies for the U.S. (including Venezuela) have now forged significant political and economic alliances with regimes whose interests are at odds with those of the U.S., particularly China, Russia and Iran. In fact Iran and Iran’s Lebanese asset, “the Party of God,” Hezbollah, have now become the main terror sponsors in the region and are increasingly funded by South American cocaine.”

http://www.keckjournal.com/2/post/2013/11/venezuela-a-growing-threat-to-the-united-states.html

[riri]

It's every where.

It's extremely potent.

And what's the worst part--you can now start off (note I said "start off") snorting it.

This is a very serious threat and if you have a teenager--don't be naive and think it's some very unlikely situation your kid could run into.

My co-worker's 16 year old son in Raleigh, NC was hooked on the stuff.

[discostu]

Just because seizures aren’t making the news doesn’t mean they aren’t happening. Drug busts happen all the time, but the fact is unless it’s a HUGE amount it’s a dog bites man story, yet another drug bust on the border. Don’t assume just because something no longer interests the press it’s not happening.

[sushiman]

My brother died a la Philip Seymour at the age of 31 . A close friend in CT got hooked and lost everything he had ( $ , house , cars , etc./..) Last I heard he was homeless amd eating ta soup kitchens .

[mgist]

This is an article from 2004, on how Soros wanted drug legalization including heroin. You probably thought it would never happen. It did.

Gingrich: George Soros “wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin”

In a discussion on the August 30 edition of FOX News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes of unregulated “soft money” contributions by 527 groups, former speaker of the House and FOX News Channel political contributor Newt Gingrich claimed that financier and philanthropist George Soros “wants to spend $75 million defeating [President] George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin.”

Gingrich’s remark, aired live from the Republican National Convention, echoed a smear of Soros made one day earlier by current Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on the August 29 edition of FOX Broadcasting Company’s FOX News Sunday: “I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. ... George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there.” When asked by host Chris Wallace if Hastert thought Soros “may be getting money from the drug cartel,” Hastert responded, “I’m saying I don’t know where groups — could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know.”

http://mediamatters.org/research/2004/08/31/gingrich-george-soros-wants-to-spend-75-million/131762

[discostu]

You’ve always been able to start off snorting it. It’s a powder. That’s how people have generally started for a while, shooting doesn’t start happening until the person is getting deep into it and want it to hit faster.

[mgist]

Soros is an evil man. Does anyone really believe that the NSA can spy and store data of every human being on the planet, and has no idea what is going on?

The cartels are multi billion dollars industries, and the influence peddler George Soros launders world crooks money in his unregulated Hedge Funds.

Our country is in the hands of drug lords and Obama is a manchurian candidate.

[sushiman]

My hometown . I live in Japan . http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heroin-town/

[NVDave]

Hasn’t impacted my home. Won’t, either.

What drug warriors have yet to learn is that there are some people who are going to do self-destructive things, no matter what laws/controls/impediments we put in their way.

These people have a death wish. They’re going to die sooner or later, and they’re choosing to die sooner. After 40+ years of the “war on drugs,” let’s admit that the “war on drugs” isn’t able to be won, and let the dopers be on their way to their early graves, and stop the actual war on civil liberties and common sense.

[ronnie raygun]

gov killing our youth

[forgotten man]

I hear that it is very easy to smuggle heroin into the U.S. from Mexico. You can put an ounce of heroin in your pocket and walk through customs. I don’t know how much an ounce of heroin sells for, but I bet an ounce is worth a lot more than an ounce of other drugs. I also read that Chapo Guzman’s organization brings in heroin that can be snorted like cocaine. Some people are afraid of needles but they will take it up the nose.

[Steely Tom]

Heroin was really popular for a long time. Seems like almost everybody that was big in music in the 40s, 50s or 60s got hooked at some point. It’s definitely a nasty drug, of course once you get hooked anything is nasty.

From what I've seen on the internet, meth is worse. I saw somewhere that the probability of getting clean once you've tried meth is less than six percent. One dose and you're hooked.

As far as musicians and horse, here's a partial list:

Kurt Cobain
Ray Charles
Charlie Parker
John Coltrane
Art Blakey
Gene Ammons
Miles Davis
Stan Getz
Dexter Gordon
Billie Holiday
J. J. Johnson
Hank Mobley
Gerry Mulligan
Anita O'Day
Art Pepper
Sonny Rollins
Zoot Sims
Sonny Stitt

I guess that's one thing the baby boom rockers had over the jazz guys. They stayed with non-fatal drugs mostly, although there are certainly the famous cases (Janice, Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, John Bonham, Keith Moon... gee, I guess that list mounts up too).

[mgist]

Thanks the problem, “The War on Drugs” apparently was working because we didn’t have kids dropping like flies.

Like I said, I live in Miami and there was an effort to stop drugs from coming in the country. It worked.

Obviously home own drugs like marijuana and meth, were a problem but law enforcement was paying attention. Now they are simply stumbling into it.

Soros had an orchestrated million dollar campaign to discredit the war on drugs, and his campaign obviously worked. He also invested millions in drug legalization and made it look like a citizen initiative that just got lucky after Obama was elected.

Wall Street banks have been exposed in lawsuits for criminal activity including major money laundering and the SEC does NOTHING!!!

We have all been duped!!!!

[Billthedrill]

Add Chet Baker to that junkie list.

This is Chet in 1959, pre-heroin:

This is him before his death in 1988:

[DaveA37]

Sorry but the writer missed the mark. Nothing in this house.