DEA Report Reveals that Doctors are Creating More Heroin Addicts than Drug Dealers
A recent online article cites an alarming spike in reported heroin abuse, nearly doubling from a 2007 number of 161,000 to 289,000 in 2013. From 2007 to 2014, arrests for heroin abuse also doubled. It begs the question, what is driving the escalating abuse of heroin?
The Heroin-Use Explosion
According to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) information in a recently released report, 4 out of 5 new heroin users were previously abusing prescription drugs. Entitled National Heroin Threat Assessment, the analysis details highlight that the “War on Drugs” has not only failed to control drug use and abuse, but has actually worsened the problem.
In its opening heroin addiction overview, the report notes that heroin poses a serious threat in the United States, and since 2007, the threat has increased. A larger quantity of heroin is available. A larger number of people use heroin. And heroin-caused overdose deaths are increasing.
The DEA report reveals further heroin-use specifics. Since the 1980s, according to the report, the strength of heroin has skyrocketed; surging from 10% purity in 1981to 40% purity in 1999. Because of the purity, smoking and snorting the heroin is easier, broadening its user appeal.
The 2010 reformulation of Oxycontin with the purpose of making the prescription opiate more difficult to inject led a percentage of prescription pill addicts to switch to heroin, a more affordable opiate alternative to inject intravenously.
Based on these findings, along with a drop in heroin price, the report notes that a “typical heroin user” is a thing of the past. Heroin-use now crosses all demographics, including race, class and age. The current demographic spread is reflected in the doubling of numbers of those reporting heroin use and arrests.
Who are the drug traffickers?
According to the DEA report, the drug trade itself grows more formidable with the expanding influence of Mexican drug traffickers, cited as greater than that of the Colombian influence and spreading like a disease towards the East coast. Heroin was named by 7 of 21 local Drug Enforcement Agencies as the number one threat (2014), with 6 naming it second.
Despite vast resources channeled to the War on Drugs, there continues to be an increase in the influence, strength and flow of drugs.
Of perhaps the greatest concern is the DEA admission that 80 % of new heroin users started using heroin after becoming addicted to legal prescription painkillers. That accounts for 4 out of 5 of all new heroin users.
The report states that by using controlled prescription drugs (CPDs) non-medically, “a very large number of people became opioid abusers”—many after they initially received legitimate prescriptions. The report also states that throughout the U.S., some CPD abusers continue to use heroin when some CPDs are unavailable or expensive.
The fact of the matter is that the FDA has continued to approve countless painkillers for decades, despite their risk of addiction. As recently as November of 2014, the FDA approved a painkiller touted to curb addiction, but which contained a potent dose the highly addictive opiate drug, hydrocodone.
While the DEA report cited that fact of 8,000 heroin-caused deaths in 2013—triple that of 2010—it did not properly assign importance to the fact that 22,134 people died in that same year (2010) from pharmaceutical overdoses. That number is nearly 3 times the number of lives lost to heroin, and accounts for 60% of overdose death totals that year. Prescription painkillers cause 46 deaths per day, and are more lethal than cocaine and heroin combined.
It seems that the painkiller pill addicts resorting to heroin is exacerbated—to a greater or lesser degree—by the government attempts to curtail painkiller addiction it had its hand in creating. The DEA report clearly states that unavailability of painkillers drives users to heroin use to satisfy their opiate addiction.
According to its own report, the DEA has failed to curtail the power of the drug cartels, the spread of drugs, or the rates of addiction.
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