Heroin Is A Dangerous Drug

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.

In Nolan and Amico’s article, “How Bad is the Opioid Epidemic?” they argue the opioid epidemic has become the worst drug crisis in American history. Heroin and other opioids overdose kill more than 47,055 people a year. Deaths caused from drug overdose has outnumber as much as 40 percent compared to the death caused from car crashes in 2014 (Nolan and Amico 3). Furthermore, in 1999 there were only 15000 people died from drug overdose. This number has tripled in 15 years. Also, in his article, “America’s Addiction to Opioids: Heroin and Prescription Drug Abuse” Volkow also presents the fact that “with an estimated 2.1 million people in the United States suffering from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers in 2012 and an estimated 467,000 addicted to heroin. The consequences of this abuse have been devastating and are on the rise. For example, the number of unintentional overdose deaths from prescription pain relievers has

A huge epidemic that is obtaining a lot of attention from Congress and medical professionals across the county is the spiking heroin overdoses that are rising at alarming rates. (Krisberg, 2014). My question to everyone that is researching this topic is this:

Deaths from opioid prescriptions settled down while overdose deaths from heroin started to rise. So you wondering why this happened? Drug addicts went from Prescription opioids to using Heroin because the government put a stop to painkillers. A large number of people who used heroin after 1995 changed from prescription opioids to using heroin because it was easier to get. The use of Heroin from whites has been rising since before 2011. From the beginning of the crisis adults who were addicted to opioids would move to using heroin because it wasn’t expensive.

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.

Attention getter: 41 people die everyday in America due to heroin overdose. According to the national institute on drug abuse heroin usage have risen from 2002 to 2016 from around 404k users to 948k users. The overdoses have blow up from two thousand deaths in 2002 to 15 thousand deaths in 2016. That means about 1.6% of heroin users die to overdoses a year.

rate and cities are struggling to find solutions. The CDC reports that 27,000 people die each year due to heroin overdoses. The jails are filled with offenders, that once released go out and use again, continuing a cycle of insanity without producing answers. Youths experiment with drugs, which is nothing new, but the availability of heroin, meth and the lack of education has contributed greatly to this epidemic. No one seemed to be paying any attention until it reached epidemic proportions, or as some have suggested, became "a white middle class problem" that surpassed the poor minority population.

I spoke with a good friend of mine Robert Ramos about this issue. He is a recently retired, 17-year veteran of the Attleboro Police Force in Massachusetts. He stated the problem is that with the addition of Fentanyl, a painkiller, heroin has gained an increase in popularity and has become more fatal. Overdoses from heroin laced with the painkiller Fentanyl jumped to new levels across New England over this past year.

In the US, according to CQ Researcher, the number of those that used heroin had more than doubled between the years of 2002 and 2004 and doubled again between 2011 and 2013. It is a growing issue especially due to

One of the huge dilemmas in our country is heroin. Heroin is very dangerous due to the fact that the drug is very

Erin Daly, the founder of Oxywatchdog website, blamed the Pharma Purdue for her brother’s death (Andrzejczyk 275). Her brother’s addiction started with the prescription drug and when 40 to 50 dollars per pill became too expensive, he turned to Heroin which was widely available on the street. It is an opioid drug, inducing the same euphoria as Oxycontin. The demand for heroin was fulfilled by the drug cartels of Mexico and South America, hence, the “second wave” of the prescription drug epidemic in the country (Andrzejczyk 273).

One would think with developments in Science and all of the negative publicity opiates and their users get in media these days, that people would be less likely to use them. This is unfortunately not the case. In fact, as time has passed there has been more open and blatant use of opiates throughout society, especially in American society.

Heroin has ravaged the lives of millions of Americans in the United States and its prevalence is only growing. In states such as Kentucky and Ohio, the amount of heroin overdoses and deaths are now reaching epidemic levels. (Second Ohio) With heroin having such a devastating effect on families, users, and those involved, one would expect every individual to know of its adverse effects. However, even with all the media attention heroin stories have received, many are still unaware of its lethalness.

The effects of heroin are presented after using for long time. It starts with addictions and then it escalates with the medical consequences. Addiction is the greater effect because this will generate damage to physical health of the use. Overdose can be very dangerous for the user and can provoke convulsions, confusion, comma, and even death, among others. Heroin works as a central

Heroin has been regarded as one of the most dangerous – if not the most dangerous – drugs in the world for ages. Its effectiveness is revered in the drug using community for providing such an intense “high.” Also, it has proven to be an incredibly addictive substance, with horrible side effects leading up to, and including death. Many professionals have considered heroin to be the worst substance you can ingest – until now. Enter Krokodil.