9781422274279

“Heroin is a Beast, and that Beast has infiltrated every town and city in America,” writes Ritchie Farrell, a former heroin addict who now speaks about addiction. “The Beast has come for your sons and daughters. The Beast has come for your fathers and mothers. And that Beast has only one mission, to bury as many Americans as possible.” Rising Rates of Heroin Use Heroin use among Americans has typically been low. It spiked during the VietnamWar era of the late 1960s and 1970s, as soldiers became addicted to the drug while in Southeast Asia, where it was readily available. However, anti-drug programs in the late 1970s and 1980s resulted in a sharp decline in heroin use. Over the past two decades, that decline has been reversed. Between 2002 and 2017, the number of people who have died from heroin overdoses has increased at a staggering rate. In 2002, less than 2,000 people died from heroin overdoses. By 2017, that figure was around 16,000 heroin-related deaths, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have shown that heroin use has increased among demographic groups that once had the lowest rates of heroin use. For example, the rate of heroin use has doubled among females and non-Hispanic whites. Heroin use has also become more common in American suburbs and among wealthier families. “This isn’t the 1940s, 50s or 60s when heroin was only used by the most lowest-life dregs of society in skid rows and downtrodden ghettos in the worst parts of urban areas around the country,” writes Robbie Woliver in Psychology Today . “These young junkies today aren’t looking to some photo of

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Who Uses Heroin?