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Fatal Overdose Risks Increase Due to the Abuse of Pure Heroin
Heroin abuse continues to rise in many areas throughout the United States and more and more young people are turning to the drug for various reasons. Heroin is a drug that people are beginning to abuse because their original drug of choice, prescription painkillers, are getting harder to get and the cost is increasing because of it also. Prescription drug monitoring is making it more difficult for people to obtain their pain pills and because heroin is also an opiate and produces the same form of euphoria, young people are switching to the powerful drug.
There are also many people who are already addicted to prescription painkillers and they need a much stronger opiate in order to achieve the same high they experienced at one time with pain pills. Some of the new heroin users are teenagers and young adults who never thought they would ever abuse an illegal street drug but because of their prescription drug addiction, they?re in need of a more powerful opiate.
Unfortunately today heroin is very easy to get, it?s relatively cheap and it?s much more potent and powerful than ever before. Pure heroin is beginning to circulate throughout the United States brought in by Mexican drug traffickers and has already been tied into many drug related overdoses and deaths. The potency levels of some of the heroin that?s circulating vary but some are as high as 90 to 95% pure. Most heroin users don?t know the true potency level of the drug they?re abusing or what it?s been cut with so they?re unaware of the fact that their next high could be fatal.
According to newsnet5.com, 5 deaths were related to pure heroin in Lorain County in a week?s time. TDN.com talks about 7 pure heroin related deaths in Cowlitz County. Foxcarolina.com also talks about 4 deaths not so long ago related to a heroin overdose.
Teenage kids are using prescription painkillers to get high because they think they?re a safer drug to experiment with and abuse. They have no concept of where their abuse of pain pills like Vicodin or Oxycontin could eventually take them and that their future drug of choice could be a lethal dose of heroin. Hopefully young people will start realizing that the dangers and serious risks associated with substance abuse are real and not just scare tactics to get our kids to ?just say no to drugs?.
