Access To Heroin Research Paper

Heroin overdoses, have become a bigger issue over the last few years. Heroin is made from morphine, which itself is a very powerful and addictive drug. In an article on nlm.nih.gov they found that around .6% of people between the ages of 15-64 use heroin. About 23 percent of people who use the drug become dependent on it. Overdoses frequently involve suppression

This is due to the fact that many opioids (such as oxycontin) are FDA approved, yet come from the same poppy plant that gives birth to heroin. Thus, both the legal prescription medications and the illicit drug produce the same effect in users, and have led to a new wave of heroin addicts who formerly used and abused prescription painkillers and no longer have

Heroin is a highly addictive illegal drug that kills users and destroys lives. It is tearing apart communities, ripping up families and ruining millions of lives. About 4.2 million Americans around the age of 12 or older have tried heroin at least once while some have become addicted for life. Heroin is the most dangerous drug in America today because of its harmful effects, widespread use, easily availability, low cost and the high that comes with using this drug.

When young adults start using opioids, either in the form of heroin or painkillers, they do so without understanding the long-term consequences. By the time those consequences become a reality, those same young adults find themselves wrapped up in an insidious addiction. With any luck, they will find the strength to stop using and seek help from a treatment center that specializes in opioid addiction rehab. If you are a parent, this could be your child.

Heroin provides a rush feeling in the brain which is can be accompanied by the following symptoms; a warm flushing of the skin, a dry mouth, and a heavy feeling in the extremities. The following side effects often present themselves nausea, vomiting and severe itching. After the initial effects of heroin have faded, abusers will be drowsy for several hours. With heroin the individual's mental function is often clouded because of the drugs effect on the central nervous system. Long term abuse of the drug can result in respiratory and cardiac functions slowing this are often the cause of death in heroin

Headlines such as ¨Heroin Addiction Sweeps Small Towns¨ and David Muir Reporting Breaking Point Heroin in America¨ (ABC 20/20 March 2016) are only two of hundreds of such headlines that gives credence to this epidemic. This is taking a heartbreaking toll on communities across America. Heroin is a drug that does not discriminate based on sex, age or ethnic backgrounds. A user can be your neighbor, a family member and even someone who has affluence status. The fastest growing segment of society is teenagers and young adults in their early 20ś making up 57% of the total users.

It's scary to think that we live in a world where drug addiction is a growing epidemic plaguing families on a daily basis. One of the most common drug abuse problems to date is that of addiction to prescription medications, but more specifically opiates. Opiates are used to help treat chronic and severe pain, but the drug can become highly addictive. In recent years, more people have overdosed as a result of prescription medications than both heroin and cocaine combined.

Heroin, the Dark horse of drugs. It was little known until recently but it is one of if not the most lethal drug you can use. Why is it such a huge problem in Ohio? How did heroin come to be? Why is heroin so dangerous in this day and age? What makes it so lethal? What are we doing to try and prevent it?

Heroin has been a quiet crisis on the rise over the last few decades, wreaking havoc on communities and families. Hesitance to talk about the heroin crisis makes it difficult to fight the growing trend of abuse. According to the National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health, the increase of heroin abuse has risen 80 percent since 2002 (Jones). The medical effects of addicts abusing their bodies and neglecting their health are a variety of medical conditions. A short term abuser may experience depressed respiration, distorted mental functioning, nausea and vomiting (Volkow). The long term effects of heroin abuse can be addiction, infectious disease as in HIV, hepatitis B and C, collapsed veins, bacterial infections, abscesses and infection of the heart

Facing both the mental and physical effects, they will generally do anything they have to do to acquire their next fix. I interviewed 5 recovering addicts in the Monroe area who are all in a program of recovery now but did not wish to have their names mentioned. One of the female interviewees stated, “When you’re going through withdrawals from heroin, your whole existence is revolved around how you’re going to get your next fix. I would do anything to achieve that goal, whether it be steeling from friends, family, stores, or even selling my body if I became desperate enough.” She claims, “Looking back now, it’s hard for me to believe that was me. That’s something I never would have even thought about doing just a few short years before my addiction began.” They all said that their opiate addiction actually started with prescription pain killers, 4 of them said they took some Vicodin they had found in a family members or parents’ home, and the fifth stated that he was prescribed Vicodin at the age of 13 when he broke his arm. They all agreed that they never meant to become addicted but couldn’t resist the warm, calming, euphoria that the drug produced. Not knowing how addictive the pain medications could be, they all continued taking Vicodin until they were hooked. One gentleman stated “It was all downhill from there. One day I ran out of the medication after a couple weeks of taking it and I felt awful.”

“The rate of past-year heroin use among non-Hispanic whites increased 114.3% from 1.4 per 1,000 in 2002–2004 to 3.0 per 1,000 in 2011–2013” (CDC, 2015). Furthermore, heroin abuse has more than doubled among young adults in the past decade (CDC, 2015), and the problem of heroin use and addiction is becoming rampant in areas where it was never a problem before. More and more, young white males, are becoming the face of heroin abuse. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Between 2002 and 2013, the rate of heroin-related overdose deaths nearly quadrupled, and more than 8,200 people died in 2013” (2015). All of these shocking statistics beg the question, “why?” What is it about young white males as a population that makes them so susceptible to becoming heroin addicts?

Arielle Duhaime-Ross (2015) concludes, “ [In today’s world] those who are most at-risk for heroin dependence are non-Hispanic whites, people between the ages of 18 and 25, Medicaid recipients, men, people who don 't have health insurance, and people who make less than $20,000 a year” (p.1). Though these are the typical stereotypes for heroin users, heroin addiction can affect any human being no matter their age, wealth, or gender. Straight-A students, millionaires, and people with no history of drug abuse ever before, are all potential candidates for drug addiction. Heroin does not care if your friends miss you being sober, or if your family loses sleep each night wondering where you are. People do not think that one time does anything detrimental, but it can and it will.

People that can access prescribed opiates can easily become physically dependent on the high; whereas, an individual who cannot obtain them have symptoms of withdrawal. This causes a broad range of heroin seeking behavior. It has become evident that users who are dependent on

According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), there were 101,000 people who used heroin for the first time in 1995. Of those, 31,000 were under the age of 18 and 55,000 were age 18-25. The study had 67 subjects in the age group 18 to 25, who had a duration of more than 4 years of injectable heroin use. The participants were identified because they were seeking detoxification and buprenorphine treatment at a Baltimore treatment center. The majority of the participants in this study were White, which was consistent with other study results conducted elsewhere. The overwhelming majority of White participants raises the question if this group is misrepresented here somehow. Is it because more Whites have access to treatment or just that African American were less likely to seek treatment for other reasons. All of these participants had used other gateway drugs before trying heroin and their initial method of use was intranasal but at the time of the study more than 75% were injecting. The users reported spending $50 to $100 per day on their habit as compared to a study done in the 1970’s when the daily use was $25 per day (Levengood, Lowinger, & Schooff, 1973). Almost all participants reported purchasing their drugs in Baltimore City even though they lived in surrounding counties (Gandhi, Kavanagh, & Jaffe, 2006).

Heroin addiction being a chronic relapsing disorder, with the alternating on-off periods, makes it difficult to determine the person’s health status. Determining the health status of