Pubdate: Fri, 07 Feb 2014
Source: East Valley Tribune (AZ)
Copyright: 2014 East Valley Tribune.
Contact: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/opinion/submit_a_letter/
Website: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2708
Author: Bill Richardson
Note: Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the 
East Valley.

PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN DEATH A REMINDER HEROIN IS RAMPANT

It's back.

Actually, it was never gone.

I'm talking about heroin. The drug of choice for a growing number of 
people and I'm not just talking your poor white, Latin or 
African-American drug addict that's the favorite portrayal for a 
thieving heroin shooting junkie.

The recent heroin overdose death of Philip Seymour Hoffman is an 
everyday occurrence, you just don't hear about it. Anyway, who really 
cares about a dead junkie except for maybe their family?

Following Hoffman's death The U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration 
told the Los Angeles Times, "It's reached epidemic proportions here 
in the United States," referring to heroin use. The DEA attributes 
"the problem to a surge in heroin crossing the nation's southwestern 
border, where soaring seizures of the drug are a sign of soaring 
smuggling operations. In 2008, the DEA reported seizing 559 kilograms 
of heroin at the southwestern border; that more than tripled to 1,855 
kilograms in 2012."

Its no secret Arizona's under patrolled highway system is a huge part 
of America's heroin highway and the drug cartels supply chain that 
supplies addicts nationwide.

Heroin is flooding into the mainstream following the growing 
addiction to prescription pain- killers. Cheaper, more powerful, 
extra plentiful and a marketing and delivery network that would make 
the nation's biggest businesses green with envy and its pretty clear 
to see heroin is going to be increasingly popular and contribute to 
serious crime and human misery.

In talking with police in the East Valley they tell me heroin is 
"everywhere." From the barrio, to the housing projects to the to the 
big homes where the wealthy upper crust live in Chandler, Gilbert, 
Mesa, Scottsdale Tempe and all over Arizona, heroin supply and demand 
is alive and well.

While Arizona has made it difficult to buy a pack of over the counter 
cold medicine for fear an honest citizen might make meth during flu 
and cold season, the efforts to curb the transportation, sale and use 
of heroin are barely visible on the radar. The once powerful and 
successful counter-narcotics effort run by the Arizona Department of 
Public Safety's Criminal Investigations Division has been neutered 
with the reduction of the division by hundreds of detectives and the 
agencies failure to maintain a statewide criminal intelligence 
collection, analysis and sharing system.

I chuckle while some police agencies still chase penny-ante marijuana 
dealers instead of going after hard drugs.

As the restructuring of Arizona Child Protective Services and human 
trafficking gets all of the attention and political steam thanks to 
headlines and interest of the influential, Arizona's dirty little 
secret of its serious problem with crime and heroin isn't talked 
about. How many thousands of cases of child abuse and neglect and 
young girls and boys being sold for sex have links to heroin use and 
sales? Heroin has always been one of the drugs of choice to make the 
pain of abuse and of being sold for sex go away. Heroin use is also 
the driving force in robberies, burglaries and identity thefts and 
any number of other serious crimes that produce cash to buy heroin with.

If history is any indicator the heroin problem in Arizona will 
continue to grow and the state's lack of effort to go after the 
heroin problem will stay the same until someone who is related to one 
of the wealthy and powerful is found dead with a needle in their arm 
and their survivors raise holly hell for the state's failure to take 
the heroin problem seriously and to get off their behinds and take action.

Until then I'll continue to believe pretty much no one, especially 
the State of Arizona, really cares about a dead junkie. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D