Sunday, May 31, 2009

Heroin's toll

The New York Times follows heroin's trail in Ohio:
Paul Coleman, the director of Maryhaven, the largest rehabilitation center in the region, said the percentage of patients reporting opiates, principally heroin, as their preferred drug — whether it is smoked, inhaled or injected — grew to 68 percent last year from 38 percent in 2002.
. . .
In Ohio, for instance, heroin-related deaths spread into 18 new counties from 2004 to 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. Their numbers rose to 546 in that period, from 376 for 2000 to 2003.
. . .
The share of heroin-related prosecutions among federal drug cases in this region has also been climbing, reaching 15 percent of cases last year compared with 4 percent a decade ago.
Dawn Farm has seen an increase in heroin admissions at Detox (21% in 2002 to 30% in 2008) and residential treatment at the Farm (23% in 2002 to 39% in 2008).

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

2 comments:

Lou said...

Thanks for the link to that article. It never occurred to me that the prescription abusers would turn to heroin. But since it is much more difficult to get drugs from internet pharmacies with the recent law that went in effect, it makes perfect sense.

Jason Schwartz said...

It's really common. Rx drugs are a lot less scary for kids to try and the one's who develop an addiction typically can't afford to maintain it on Rx drugs. So, they eventually switch to heroin.