Although heroin is sometimes spoken of as a drug of the past, the truth is that it has made a comeback , especially in the United States.
The death by overdose of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman on February 2 is not an isolated event and the New York police are preparing a prevention campaign and hope to have new equipment and antidotes to solve the frequent emergencies that are occurring in the city .
According to a study by the University of Washington School of Medicine based on data from a nationwide survey, and published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry , the significant rebound in the use of this opiate is based in part on economic reasons, accompanied by other factors.
The study’s lead author, Theodore J. Cicero, thinks that most users today start off taking prescription pain relievers , such as OxyContin, Percocet, or Vicodin, and switch to heroin when they can no longer get a prescription. or your consumption habits skyrocket so much that your economy can’t sustain it.
The researchers analyzed the habits of more than 9,000 patients dependent on narcotic or opiate pain relievers. Of these, about 2,800 were taking heroin as their main drug. Among the reasons for deciding to consume this substance are the ease of obtaining it and its affordable price , especially considering that in the United States there is no free medical coverage.
On the street, a pain reliever like OxyContin can cost $ 80, while a heroin roll can be had for $ 10. It also influences that heroin provides its users with a more pleasant high than pharmacy opiates and that it can be taken either snorted, smoked or injected.
Another factor that has led some users to change their habits is that the components of the pills of some of these painkillers were changed so that they were more difficult to crush or dissolve and, therefore, to inhale or inject. Far from dissuading junkies to quit, that pushed them to switch to other drugs like heroin.
The study has also revealed a change in the profile of heroin addicts . Whereas in the 60s and 70s, more than 80% of users were young men living in urban centers and started using the drug at age 16, today’s junkies start on average at age 23 and most had previously started on medication.
Now, heroin has become a recreational drug among wealthy people in suburban or rural areas. More than 90% of the subjects who have started taking it in the last decade are white. They are no longer marginal, but middle class people living on the periphery.
