Heroin use makes a new surge

Although trending drugs in the US often have modern street names, there is a familiar presence making itself felt in drug crisis centers. A number of factors have combined to make heroin a more attractive drug of choice, not only in the back allies and nightclubs of America’s cities, but in the suburbs and in military circles.

According to Nick Miroff of the Washington Post, there are two main reasons why this is happening.

The wholesale price of Marijuana has dropped because of the legality of recreational and medical marijuana, making it unprofitable for Mexican drug farmers to cultivate marijuana, and increasing the incentive to market the more lucrative opium products.
With the crackdown on prescription pain-killer abuse, heroin is a cost-effective replacement. The Mexican drug cartels have found a receptive market for needle-based drugs in the homes of retiring baby-boomers who are aging, and in search of relief from pain. This augments existing markets for heroin. Other Ibero-American markets are responding in a similar fashion.

Although 90% of the heroin in the U.S. comes from south of the border, another hot-spot for heroin use that is connected to the United States is the poppy fields of Afghanistan, where American soldiers are exposed to this highly-addictive drug. This segment is highly under-reported, perhaps because illegal drug use by a U.S. soldier is a crime, and will result in dishonorable discharge. In his article forPsychiatric Times, Dr. Andrew J. Saxon discusses the high relationship between common head injuries and exposure to opiates as a pain killer, resulting in unreported addiction that can manifest when the soldier returns to the civilian population. This manifestation can often take years to emerge, when treatment is much more difficult.

Writing for Salon, Shaun McCanna describes how easy it is for an American to purchase Heroin in the Afghan markets just outside the military bases, and he suggests that an addiction problem, as well as a supply problem, is escaping the attention of regulatory forces. Afghanistan, he says, is the source of 90% of the world’s heroin.

It is rumored that much of the Afghanistan crop is being stockpiled, and that Russia and Europe are currently the main targets of this market. Nonetheless, this is a significant cradle for American addiction, and McCanna claims that a soldier’s purchase of a $30 bag can bring hundreds of dollars on the streets of any American city.

With these sources of heroin open to U.S. markets, the American cities have noticed, as well. Andrew Welsh-Huggins, writing for Associated Press, notes that several states, specifically California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana and Massachusetts, have expressed particular alarm at the growing number of deaths specifically related to heroin across all age groups.