Heroin In the Streets of Illinois

In August of 2016, twenty-six people lives changed, and may never be fixed. In only one week these twenty-six people overdosed on heroin, which three of them died (Police). This is the unseen epidemic because of how unaware people are. People are blind to the prevalence in our community, rising rate of deaths, and seizures, lastly that Narcan will become counterproductive. This unseen epidemic is growing faster than anyone knows, and has to be addressed head on.

Many people may not realize this but multiple states, including Michigan, are facing an epidemic. It is not a disease, however, it is a heroin epidemic. In a country where addictive opioid pain-killer prescriptions are handed out like candy, it not surprising heroin, also known as smack or thunder, has become a serious problem. The current heroin epidemic Michigan is facing, as are dozens of other states, has spiraled out of control in recent years. In Michigan, some of the areas hit hardest by this drug are in the southern portion of the state, like Wayne, Oakland, and Monroe Counties. The connection between painkillers and heroin may not be clear, but this is because both are classified as opioid drugs, and therefore cause many of the same positive and negative side effects. As a country, we are currently the largest consumer of opioids in the world; almost the entire world supply of hydrocodone (the opioid in Vicodin) and 81% of the world’s oxycodone (in Percocet and OxyContin) is used by the United States (Volkow). Along with consuming most of the world’s most common opioids, we have gone from 76 million of these prescriptions in 1991 to 207 million in 2013 – constantly increasing except for a small decrease starting in 2012 (Volkow). This widespread use has caused numerous consequences from increasing emergency room visits – for both painkillers and heroin – to sky-rocking overdose cases all over the country (Volkow). Michigan, unfortunately, currently has one of the

Results of safe injection site studies have shown that an expansion may have a greater impact. This may reduce the chance of dangerous encounters between users of these safe injection sites and the public. Children not even out of elementary school, were getting involved in the drug scene. These runaways were a concern to the residents, who witnessed overdoses in the past decade. Over 2,000 lives were lost due to the Downtowns East side’s “drug-fuelled spiral” (MacQueen et al., 2003). Persisting the safe injection site can help in lowering risk behaviors by the drug users of SIS’s and community concerns that are related to public injection of drugs (McKnight et al,. 2007). Overall, SIS’s may have the ability to change the drug users and transform them into potential productive members of society.

This literature review will focus mainly on the drug use of heroin, the scary numbers behind the drug and the sudden rise of overdosing on the drug across the United States. Issues that will be discussed are what is Heroin, what’s in Heroin that makes it addicting, how it can increase the users risk of contracting other life threatening diseases and where it’s use and abuse are most popular across the United states and we will take a look at multiple studies that show examples of our new drug problem in the United States. While we looked at how homicide rates have dropped while in class, the flip side to that is that the amount of drug usage has risen.

Chasing heroin is a documentary giving us insight information on the rapidly growing pandemic of addictions to drugs, notably heroin. The heroin epidemic is rising at an alarming

According to the Heroin Epidemic in Northern Ohio, the best way to lessen the chances of heroin and cocaine abuse is prevention (Heroin Epidemic 2015). By incorporating and highlighting the dangers and warning signs within the school systems it could prevent teenagers and young adults from trying it. Many schools have the D.A.R.E programs offered at schools. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) is a program that provides children with the proper skills when it comes to drugs and violence. The law enforcement also works within the community. They interact more just to show others with a different mindset that they are here to protect and serve the community.

The usage of heroin in the Oswego area is visible to law enforcement, but not noticed as much by ordinary residents. Due to the unseen interactions between buyers and sellers, it is easy to believe drug use is non-existent in a community such as Oswego. The truth of the matter is, this is not true. In retrospect, many of the residents use drugs in part because the neighborhood they reside in is expected to be free of such activity. The people who recognized drug use was a problem became advocates to stop the issue. For instance, there is Tim and Shannon Ryan, who are the parents of a son who overdosed from heroin. Tim Ryan, introduced his son Ryan to the world of heroin, would spend $400-$500 a day on his addiction, causing his family to lose their Oswego home and forcing his wife to file for divorce. Hoping to save her family, Shannon Ryan videotapes her husband and son while under the influence believing if they viewed the tape while sober it would cause them to quit the drug. Unfortunately, this was not what happened. The Ryan’s lost their son Nick to heroin usage. Consequently, Tim and his now ex-wife publicly speak out against heroin usage. Tim who is now clean runs a non-profit organization called A Man in Recovery.

Heroin is making a comeback in the United States and is highly prevalent in certain areas. The heroin epidemic is sweeping across the Midwest, and claiming the lives of young white males. It is very different from the 1960’s use of heroin, and is now typically used because of its low cost and previous opioid addictions to other prescription drugs. Young white males in many different communities are becoming hooked because of the careless use of pain pills prescribed or taking them from parents’ medicine cabinets. The communities include rural towns, big cities, and suburbs all across the country.

Naperville is known as the most safest city in America, but there has always been a reoccurring problem that has been ignored in Naperville for a long time, heroin. Heroin is a drug with a high addiction liability and is commonly used as a recreational drug. Most of the heroin in Naperville comes from Mexico, which has seen its drug industry increase by 600 percent in the last decade. DuPage county’s heroin related deaths increased up to 53% in

The video Heroin and the War on Drugs describes how the world of heroin has changed throughout the past fifty years. In the 1960s, most violence in large cities, such as Chicago, was caused by drug use. New York City seriously struggled with heroin use in the 1950s and the 1960s. When the epidemic first began, many people believed that it was primarily an inner city problem. Nelson Rockefeller declared what later became known as the Rockefeller Laws, which stated that people caught using drugs needed to be harshly penalized. He believed that drug users and sellers all belonged in prison for life. Prisons began filling up, and the drug epidemic did not subside. However, after a test revealed that forty-four percent of people living in Washington

Most kids at the age of 12 are in Middle School learning about science and math. However, in today’s adolescent life at the age of 12, when kids are barely even an adolescent, they are starting to use heroin. Heroin is increasingly spreading an outbreak throughout Long Island and it has become a widespread addiction that has many side effects. Heroin addiction has caused many overdoses, deaths and arrests. Ten years from now, this epidemic will get worse. There are ways we as a whole can help to recover from this outbreak. Such as treatment centers, education, and spreading awareness of the issue.

Heroin, which is a very popular drug of choice in the American drug culture today, is not a new drug that just showed up in the late 1960’s, nor are its negative effects unique to modern times. Heroin is an opium derivative and, as with any of the opium derivatives, there is a severe physical/mental dependency that develops when Heroin is abused.

Ever since I moved to Vermont, I knew that drugs were a problem in this state, and Rutland was the spotlighted capitol of that problem. An article published earlier this week by CBS News highlights Rutland's newly found label as the "place that has become the poster child for heroin epidemic sweeping America." Although most of the drugs in Vermont stream in from larger cities in the Northeast such as New York City, Boston, or states along the East Coast such Florida, it is Rutland that has been deemed the "drug capitol."Just ealier this week, on October 16th, 88 pounds of heroin was intercepted and seized by police in the small southern town of Manchester, VT. Police report that the heroin shipment had been coming from JFK in NYC, however, had traveled a longer distance (guessed to have been from Guatemala) before then.

As parents, grandparents and other family members we are a big influence on children. This influence can cause a child to either go in the direction of drugs or in the path of the straight and narrow. Per the Casa website “Parents who used tobacco or illegal drugs or abused alcohol put half the nation’s children—more than 35 million of them—at greater risk of substance abuse and other physical and mental illnesses. The report found that of all children under age 18:

Since the start of the 1900s, parents throughout the United States have actively come together in a joined effort of productive ways to manage the health, care, and education of their children. In the area of substance abuse prevention, however, the “Parent Movement” first began in the late 1970s. At this time, parents began forming parental action groups, in acknowledgement of the rapid accelerated boost in the use of drugs amidst adolescent individuals. Many drugs, marijuana especially, was once limited to the counter-culture of the 1960s; it was becoming more acceptable socially to the larger population, resulting in a widespread use (National Families In Action).