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Subscribe to RSSDeaths from heroin abuse rose from six in 1999 to thirty in 2011, and this year it is on track to be even worse. NBC's Kate Snow reports.
Yardena Schwartz
NBC News
Chicago Police Capt. John Roberts never thought that moving to the suburbs would mean that his 14-year-old son Billy would immediately be introduced to drugs. And never did he ever imagine that Billy, a high school athlete, would even think of touching heroin.
After 33 years in the Chicago Police Department, Roberts was finally ready to retire. He couldn’t wait to move his family out to the suburbs, where he thought his kids would live in a safer environment, attend better schools and be sheltered from some of the ugly realities of city life.
But after growing addicted to prescription painkillers, Billy and his friends could no longer afford their habit. They soon turned to heroin, which they could buy for a tenth of the price of their favorite pill, Oxycontin. Billy was 19 when he died of a heroin overdose, but he wasn’t the only one of his friends to suffer that fate.
John Roberts, a retired Chicago police captain, started the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization after losing his teenage son to a heroin overdose.
At first, Roberts couldn’t believe what was happening to his family , and that heroin could affect a good kid like Billy. But then he realized he wasn’t alone.
Across the country, heroin use is growing at an alarming rate and is affecting a surprising segment of the population.
“Kids in the city know not to touch it, but the message never got out to the suburbs,” said Roberts, who founded the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization to help other families cope with the shock of teen heroin use. Like most parents in upper-middle class neighborhoods, Roberts said, “We didn’t think it would ever be a problem out here.”
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, initiations to heroin have increased 80 percent among 12- to 17-year-olds since 2002. In 2009, the most recent year for which national data is available, 510 young adults between the ages of 15 and 24 died of a heroin overdose. That figure was just 198 in 1999, meaning that the rate of young adult deaths caused by heroin more than doubled in one decade. Close to 90 percent of teen heroin addicts are white, data show.
Recovered teen heroin addict Alyssa Dedrick and her mother, Mary, discuss their family's struggle with addiction, and how in the suburbs, heroin abuse is "right under our noses."
Crackdown on painkiller abuse fuels new wave of heroin addiction
“Part of the problem is they don’t realize how bad it is,” said Roberts. “After Billy used it a few times, he thought he was OK, because he didn’t seem like a junkie.”
The biggest problem seems to be the connection between prescription painkillers and heroin. The opiate high that teens seek from drugs such as Oxycodone (the actual drug contained in OxyContin brand pills) may also be obtained from heroin, which is much cheaper, easier to buy, and offers users a more intense high.
“It’s hard to talk about the heroin problem without talking about the prescription drug problem,” notes Rafael Lemaitre, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Given new research on skyrocketing prescription drug abuse, the link between opioid pills and heroin is even more alarming.
The number of teenagers seeking treatment for heroin abuse has skyrocketed, and the number of deaths from heroin among high school and college-age kids more than doubled from 1999 to 2009. NBC's Kate Snow reports.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths from prescription drugs tripled nationwide between 2000 and 2008. In a recent national survey on teen drug abuse conducted by the University of Michigan, one in eight high school seniors admitted to using prescription painkillers they weren’t prescribed. Overall, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, drug overdose (from both prescription and non-prescription drugs) is now the leading cause of accidental deaths in the United States. Officials fear that the over-prescription of powerful painkillers and the lack of awareness about the danger associated with them could continue to fuel the problem.
“Kids are going to believe that this is not a problem, and parents are going to continue to leave their prescription opioids unattended if they don’t know about the risks,” said Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Department of Health and Human Services.
While marijuana has historically been the usual suspect, prescription pain killers are now becoming the latest and most dangerous gateway drugs.
In dozens of interviews with former young heroin addicts, NBC News found that every single heroin user had arrived at shooting up the same way: starting with expensive prescription drugs, which they purchased from friends for $20-$60. When they became too addicted to afford pills, they listened to friends who told them they could get a better, cheaper high if they used heroin instead. For $3-$10 a bag, they said, they started off by snorting the drug, never thinking that they would end up injecting it. Most of them started shooting up within weeks.
Alyssa Dedrick was an honor roll student from a nice Boston suburb, and her high school’s cheerleading captain, until she discovered Oxycontin. When she and her friends could no longer afford the pills, they tried smoking heroin. Dedrick, now 23 and fully recovered, never imagined she would ever try the drug, let alone plan on injecting it. She said she just wanted to see what it was like, but within a week she was putting a needle in her arm.
Chris O’Connor grew up in a loving Catholic family in a wealthy Boston suburb. His father works in commercial real estate, his mother is a homemaker. For a while, O’Connor was able to hide the fact that he was driving to the city on a regular basis to score heroin from dealers on the street. He earned excellent grades in high school, and even went on to study at Georgetown University, where he did pretty well at first.
“I just thought it wouldn’t affect me,” said O’Connor, who is now 27 and still recovering after more than 20 stints in treatment. “People who come from a privileged background are generally shielded from negative outcomes in life,” he said.
With the cost of prescription drugs on the rise and heroin becoming purer and cheaper, the drug that spawns fear in other generations has become more appealing to a younger set.
For teens living near major cities, heroin can also be easier to buy than prescription drugs. Rather than having to find someone who has a prescription, they can just do what Chris O’Connor did and take a quick drive into the city, where they know they can score at any hour of the day.
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican heroin production has increased significantly in recent years, from an estimated 7 metric tons in 2002, to 50 metric tons in 2011. That sevenfold increase has made heroin more available in metropolitan areas across the country, including Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
For families like the O’Connors, who once considered themselves immune to heroin, the crucial difference between life and death was early recognition, treatment and constant support.
It’s taken Chris more than a decade, but he can now triumphantly say he’s been clean for at least a year. Many of the friends he once used with have not been as fortunate.
“I think ultimately what saved my life was the love of my family, being there for me unconditionally,” he said. “I had so many psychologists and therapists. The best ones weren’t the smartest ones, they were the ones who cared the most.”
Resources for addiction recovery:
Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization (HERO)
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Partnership for a Drug Free America
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Another problem with people in this country is that they do not know that most drugs prescribed are just concentrated extracted doses made into legal forms. Heroin is illegal yet these drugs are not=
Opiates are so named because they are constituents or derivatives of alkaloids found in opium, which is processed from the latex sap of the opium poppy. The major biologically active opiates found in opium are morphine, codeine, and thebaine. Semi-synthetic opiates such as hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and oxymorphone are derived from these substances. Papaverine, noscapine and approximately 24 other alkaloids are also present in opium, but have little to no effect on the human central nervous system, and are not considered to be opiates.
Opiates belong to the large biosynthetic group of benzylisoquinoline alkaloid Percocet, Vicodin, Tylenol 3 All of these are heroin based products!!!!!!! WTF BIG BROTHER!
I have to agree with those of you making the association with opiates and heroin in reference to the profits made by pharmaceutical companies. Just recently I had to go to the ER for a stomach ache. They wrote out a prescription for vicodin. LOL I don't think so...I just threw it away and thought they were nuts. Who gives out opiates for a stomach ache??
who goes to the ER for a stomach ache?
My question exactly, If you were so ill and your stomach ached so bad that you felt you had to go to an emergency room in a hospital then why are you faulting a Dr who prescribed you pain medication for your stomach ache pain.
Ok, now. Years ago, before so many prescription painkillers were on the market, if you went to the hospital for a bad stomach ache, a dr. would NOT PRESCIBE vicodins!!!!They would ask you your symptoms, possibly do an examination and tell you to take either a laxative or an antacid or even to drink Coca Cola syrup. If the pain was severe they would do an MRI or x ray and determine what was wrong before just giving you a prescription for painkillers. I have been in a situation where a dr. was too quick to prescribe pain killers and refused them as well. I know what Lisa Jones 1 is saying and the doctors who are too willing to presribe painkillers for things that can be treated in a better way are at fault in my opinion. Dr's know full well how addicting these pills are, and they need to take some responsibility in how and when they give out prescriptions for pain killers.
Hey Big Brother I dont pay enough taxes please make me pay more so I may work for the rest of my life and die in debt to you. That is my American Dream. To leave my family in DEBT to your stupid made up laws for profit scandals. Let the oil companies boss you around some more and go kill for that black gold you A.S.S
Hmm. Third party aspirations of victimhood as a vocation. Must be a liberal.
You do realize, of course, the largest 3rd Party in America is the Libertarian Party, right Vern?
We can't wait to destroy the Republican Party from within with our infiltration. We're doing it to...everytime you don't nominate our candidates, we focus on taking over State Conventions, and now control several States.
How does it feel to know that soon either your Party will be dead, or will be taken over by us? How does it feel to know all your statist sadism is coming to an end? That young people don't buy into your BS attacks on freedom out of need to threaten and control everyone? How does it feel to know that before you die, most likely you will see the end of your way, and the dawn of our way via a Kuhnian Paradigm Shift?
You're probably too brainless to see it coming...lol. You'll notice us in Tampa and the Republican National Convention...booing your nominee.
In your dreams! Even Ron Paul will support the republicam nominee
Another problem is when an American feels like they are wrong and have no plausible answer for their arguement they resort to insults first and no valid explanations.
I say good point ol chap.
That's the paradox. You will notice that this article does not mention the obvious fact. It is not by ignorance.
It chooses instead to point out the so-called heroin increase production in Mexico, whereas 90% of the heroin sold in the United States is coming from Afghanistan with the knowledge and the protection of our government and our military.
Pointing out Mexico and the mexican is racist, biais. This "journalist", Yardena Schwartz, should be ashame. Then again, probably not..
In my learned opinion kids get hooked on drugs to begin with at the early age of pre-school or kindergarten. Every active child that doesn't fit the cookie-cutter idea of what the Government and Public Schools want children to be like, is diagnosed with ADHD. So Ritalin is like soda pop or candy. Do you REALLY know what is in Ritalin? Since I can't pronounce the word, let alone spell it, I just call it what a Doctor and several Pharmacists called it when I spoke with them. "It's a dumbed down version of Cocaine". Then as kids grow, now hooked on small doses of Cocaine, after years of Ritalin progress to Concerta which is 3-4 times the amount of the "dumbed down" Cocaine in each pill. It builds up in their systems and what is taken next? All because Public Schools, Social Workers (who actually get more money from the Government when CPS has more kids on drugs, as well as, the more kids CPS adopts out and rips away from their REAL Families, (( a former President of the United States actually signed that into law a number of years ago - any guesses as to who he was?)), Therapists and many others want a Government paycheck. The ONLY way they get one is to turn thinking, inquisitive children into "good little boys and girls" that jump when told to jump and obey every second of every day, like they have no minds and don't know how to think, even when there ARE adults out there (these children's REAL Families) wanting to give them the chance to be great and wonderful human beings. Look to the Government folks, and NO one else as to who is TRULY destroying our Families and our children!
Barack Hussein's grand plan for socialism.
Government Olster65? Parents bear no responsibility how their kids turn out? Jeez, it's people like you that 'are' the problem, not the government.
Blame everyone and anyone, just not yourself, right? I live in what most people call the nicer, upper middle class neighborhood and I see parents like you all the time. Parents who are more interested in themselves and only had children because everyone else they know did and it's what they were expected to do, but aren't very invested in them. Do you know their friends, and if your house is the house the kids 'want' to hang out at, you are doing something wrong. Do you know what your kids are doing at school? Do you know what websites and social networking sites your child is part of and what information is on them? Are there rules for them to live by, do you have bedtimes, homework times, bath times, a curfew? What happens when they don't follow the 'rules'? Parents like you are always surprised when you kid turns out to be a junky, a whore, a cutter, and angry rebel. Maybe you should have put down that drink with the boys, or stop having repeated girls nights, 'me' time, etc. and gone home to spend family time with your kids and your spouse. Maybe dumping your spouse ought not to be a simple as it is, for nonsense reasons, breaking up a family and the family resources. Yes, sorry to the original, first, poster but if you have junkies for kids, there are usually reasons and yes, most of the time, it is because you failed your kid as a parent.
The government, especially ours, was not meant to nanny your kids...
Oldster--I too am very suspicious about the over prescription of ritilin. My best friend was 'diagnosed' ADHD, and had it prescribed for it.
Funny, but he NEVER was anything be well behaved at MY house, because I treated him just like my kids and expected them to BEHAVE. She even would say, while sitting on my couch, that I should feel 'free' to discipline him. Did it NEVER occur to her to do that herself?
And SHE was a TEACHER!
Fortunately, her son had bad side effects of the Ritalin, (headaches, lethargy) and so after his first grade year she took him off the pills for the summer, and never put him back on!
Wow Angela LD! I'm assuming (1) that you have kids? (2) They are raised, grown and productive adults? I have two adult children whom I did the best that I knew how raising them. Thank God I never had to deal with the drug issues. However I would never dream of being as arrogant and confident as you. I now have small grandchildren and pray daily that this darkness never enters their lives. There are some circumstances where parents are to blame but not all of them. Shame on you for making that blanket statement! I hope for your sake that your perfect life continues and karma doesn't bite you on the rear.
Heroin? I knew about heroin 35 years ago and knew it was bad news. 35 years later and with better forms of communication, and the internet, these kids are not educated about heroin!!! I read BS!!! I don't smoke dope or drink in front of my kids and never will. Kids nowadays look for role models who practice what they preach, not the "do as I say not as I do" lazy mentality that has overcome our society. We can no longer live up to the standards we preach to our kids so don't expect our kids to live up to the standards you preach.
Statistically speaking, we are talking about a VERY MINISCULE segment of the population.
500 Heroin deaths compared to 5,000 car accident deaths (+400,000 injured), for example.
So thats OK I guess, Here in Thrumont Maryland, White middle class kids are on Heroin. I am amazed.
I have heard the high obtained from heroin use described as "like falling in love for the first time".
Try to get someone to quit that.
Here is what has happened as a result of the "War on Oxycontin" You see, there are a number of people who need to use this drug for pain relief. All types of cancer patients and all types of long term pain suffers who need it. The first thing is.....Prudue Pharma, thru hook and crook has done away with all of the companies who made a generic type of oxy.
Thus the price has gone from about 500$ a month to 1,100$ per month. And they've cut the strength of oxy. in half. What all of these voodoo Oxy. news articles, fail to mention is that. For all of the people who take oxy. as prescribed.....There's this lil....bug-a-boo called TOLERANCE.
Thru no fault of the patient, over a few months time, the patient MUST take more opioid to attain the same amount of pain relief. Well with this lil War on Oxy. The War on drugs, The DEA's War on Doctors. The net result of this is..... Doctors are not adjusting the doses for their patients, who go under treated and charged a fortune. That goes straight to Prudue Pharma's bank acct. They are the sole maker of this drug, they sued every company that had gone thru the trouble of filling out the paper work to mfg. a Generic.
The other not so pretty aspects of this war on everything is....... Unlimited access to my MEDICAL RECORDS, by DR's and even DENTISTS, and I'm talking Pharmacy records as well. I'm locked into taking these type of drugs the rest of my life. Which I'm told bluntly, isn't likely to be long.
Yes I'm really upset how this has affected my family and myself. But what really bothers me, is the future. How tight will the controls on pain relief be by then ? Heck......One cannot even get proper pain relief with OTC drugs today............What's it going to be like 20 years hence ? Good Luck to you all.
And how much money are we pissing away with the DEA? Its the leadership STUPID! Presently we have NONE. Obama needs to GO.
I'm 19 years old and am a recovering heroin addict. I've been clean and sober for almost 8 months now. All it took for me to get my start was finding a bottle of oxycontin that my dad left laying around when I was 16. Before that I only drank occasionally and I always hated smoking marijuana. These opiates are just a whole different ball game though. And the reality is there is very little difference between the heroin one buys on the street and the pills doctors hand out all the time.
You sound like my sons former best friend. I don't allow association with drug users. Its my rule. Hope you are doing better, and hope you get a chance to SHOOT your drug dealer dead.
Shoot drug dealers in the head, It works every time.
I have offered many times to roll into Baltimore with my sons friend , find the dealer and do the shooting. But they just will not take me along. I would not even blink.
I love reading posts from backwards thinking people like this "Vern" character. He/she just keeps coming back for more! It's laughable....
I think most of us can agree that heroin is bad and that big-pharma is a new white-collar cartel...
Next sensationalist story please. You know, the kind of article with tons of tear-jerking stories from idiots who need someone to remind them to breathe....
"The whole world's comin' to an end, Mal!"
This is what Obama wants all Americans to be like because he does nothing about keeping illegals out of the US. He invites illegals with their drugs. Obama does nothing about the drug problem in the US and he didn't attempt to put a cost limit on drug companies, hospitals, physicians, medical necessities before announcing his Obamacare.
For what I dont understand, Is for the people in this thread that like to call marijuana a gateway drug. In so aspect I can see where you are coming from but mostly I do not. The only reason marijuana is considered to be a gateway drug is the fact that it is illegal. Which in terms is the reason alcohol is no gateway in America's eyes. So if marijuana was legal and had its own shops or stores where it is sold the black market for it would no longer be there. Why go to black market for stuff that is legal that you can buy with the safety of not beaing beat (ripped off). So the likelyhood of us running into other hard drugs will be less likely considering we know those are the real scary drugs. Now I'm sure your going to say typical stonner talking this s***. But actually I am clean from everything. Have been since my run with ectasy. And the only reason I turned to that is because I wanted to enjoy my weekends and rewind the week like any other normal american. And since I was put on probation for smoking this so called marijuana drug, I turned to the harder drugs that are in and out of your system...
The war on drugs is killing more Americans than those importing the drugs. It's like cutting your nose off to spite your face. Legalize drugs, and cut out the middle man, then common sense regulation and taxation can begin. Use the billions spent on the lost war on drugs, to open rehab. and counseling clinics. Drug abuse should be looked at as an illness, not a crime. Putting sick people in prison doesn't really solve anything, that's a band-aid approach to a larger situation. When will a more common sense approach be taken when it comes to drugs. The smugglers are having a nice pay day and laughing at our drug policy. Legalize pot and stop the politics.
Yes yes comrade, Legalize drugs, Just what the USA needs a even more drug infested work force then we already have. I Have a DRUG war going on in my home TODAY. People that will come home from work, on lunch break, SMOKE a JOINT and head back to the power tools. ITS OK, They can handle it. BS. SHOOT DRUG DEALERS, in the back on the head. It WORKS ask CHINA.
Berry, point is society is already doing what you said, just being tossed in jail, instead of a medical clinic, where they can get the real help they need. Our country made huge progress since 1492, without criminalizing drugs. We don't need a Nanny form of Gov.
If your alleged "remedy" actually worked, there would be zero addicts in China left to shoot, correct? To not see that all the punishment in the world will not stop drug abuse, is nothing but folly. Too many judgmental people still believing in all of the reefer madness hysteria. Drug abuse is a medical issue to solve, the legal persecution of those you don't like for whatever reason (drugs, religion, color, politics, etc.), has not worked, and will not work.
You can not legislate morality no matter how much you may hate that fact. The drug war is a well known colossal failure, time to try different approaches. We sure couldn't end up much worse off than things already are. If different approached don't work, change them. Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, is considered lunacy and ignorant. Time to quit being so hateful, judgmental, fearful, and ignorant in the approach to the drug abuse issues. We owe it to our kids and grandkids to try different approaches in this failure called the war on drugs.
It is always the potheads and druggies who want to legalize the drugs. Why is that?
Hawaii, a huge majority of legalization supporters, actual aren't drug users, their just tired of the un-winnable war on drugs, it's been 40 years now since Nixon declared war on drugs, is victory in sight, if so when. Like the Fast and Furious tactic by the DEA, handing out guns with gps, in hopes of making a bust, who got shot, a drug agent. Cartels are smart enough to use detection devices to screen for gps, wire taps, etc. So whose the victor? The means don't justify the end.
Its our lacking leadership STUPID!
i think the most important part about all this is that the number of people seeking help to recover is on the rise. that's great. that tells me that there are many who are trying to turn their lives around.
there will always be a % of the pop, who will use and abuse drugs, religion, money and anything and everything. it's a mind set. getting to the heart of why they feel they must fill the void inside them will destructive ways is the real first step to recovery( but its really step5). if you can't find a NA meeting in your area then boggie on down to any AA meeting and "fake it till you make it", "let go and let god", and/or "bring your ass and your brain will follow".
I have to ask; what in the hell does the president have to do with this problem? For the record, I am not an Obama fan; however, the guy has only been in office for about three years now. This problem goes back a lot further than his stint in office. That said; let us attempt to place this problem along with all of the others that are plaguing this country on the backs of the DEMS. Well, that is hard to justify also considering the fact, and it is a fact, that since WWII the Republicans have headed the Whitehouse almost twice as long as their Democratic counterparts. Actually according to the figures the Republicans have had it for 36 years while the Democrats have headed it for 20 years. I realize that is not a total 2 to 1 ratio but it is close enough for government work as they say. So I would like for all of the Democratic party bashers and Obama whiners to please explain how they attribute this or a majority of any of the problems to the current president or the Democratic party as a whole. In conclusion, I would like to read just one of these articles where some dumb SOB does not inject his politics into the discussion and try to place blame on one particular politician. Are you truly that stupid to believe that one man can be responsible for all of this? You must be or you would not waste everybody’s time puching it into the forum.
The Republican party is dead, Warren (Bank Robber) Buffett, is buying up all of the print media, and other froms of cable media. He will soon be buying up FOX, And then all of the LEFT WING LIBERAL OPPOSTION IS GONE.
I hope your doctor is high on Pot when he cuts you open. ITS OK I guess!
Having flown left and rigth seat many years ago, I can tell you , nothing more thirlling then a STONED PILOT during aerobatics.
When they legalize Drugs here in the USA does that mean that Corporations are going to stop drug testing? NOT, If anything it will increase. Chech out Home Depots sign on the doors. "IF YOU ARE INTO DRUGS, DON't even Apply for a job"
After POT is legalized, Whe pulled over by the police, I guess you will be subjected to a drug test to determine your condition! It will come.