Heroin is an opioid, and it's been around for over a hundred years.
Percocet (active narcotic ingredient oxycodone) has also been around many decades, as well as codeine...
So then, why now?
Why all of a sudden are so many people getting opiods for pain? My grandfather worked every day till his 70’s on the farm. He didn’t take ANY of these cocktails till the very end of his life.
His joints were gone, his back hurt, and he just dealt with it.
We are not seeing any epidemic of pain. Either people are getting to lazy and fat to support their bodies (which does happen), or there is something else. I know of a great many former coworkers and friends on some sort of opiod that DIDN’T get into because of pain. I also know some that DID.
Again, I look at my grandfather’s generation (the generation that grew up with morphine being sold as headache medicine), and they worked much harder than my father’s or my generation. Yet it is my generation and younger popping the poppy seeds juice like it is going out of style.
What changed? It isn’t just “Oh, they hurt so they need it”. People don’t have the type of jobs that break them down like our forefathers had. Why all of a sudden is most of the worlds prescription opiods being sold in the US?
Well, sure. There were some pretty fringe people doing heroin then, too. We didn’t have these synthetic opiate/opioid pills being passed around in such quantities, though. That’s what cranked up the addiction which has resulted in the widespread heroin use today.