What is the cost of our indifference toward heroin use? Well, even though you may not be one, and all of your family and friends are not addicted, you may still die from this problem. Follow the heroin addict and you will often find that he or she has shared his or her needle with someone else. You may think, "So what?" That needle has just spread AIDS to another person. "AIDS. I am not gay." Follow the addict a little further. Now that this person has AIDS that person is more susceptible to new drug resistant diseases such as tuberculosis. This person circulates among us. Just one example of a problem you may not have known existed. [continues 65 words]
People with chronic heroin addiction may soon have another treatment option after the conclusion of a groundbreaking study in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The four-year Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME), led by principal investigator Dr. Eugenia Oviedo-Joekes, examined whether hydromorphone, a licensed pain medication, is as effective in treating a chronic heroin addiction as diacetylmorphine, also known as pharmaceutical-grade heroin. The results, which will appear in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, show it is. [continues 639 words]
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan - Afghans have an expression: "Well, whatever has happened, we are still skinny." In other words, they have not gotten rich yet, try as they might. It is an expression heard often here in Helmand Province, the southwestern region that is the world capital of opium and heroin production. Afghanistan accounts for 90 percent of the world's heroin; more than two-thirds of that comes from Helmand's opium poppies, according to United Nations figures. Sometimes, the expression is uttered enviously - how did we miss out? Other times, it is delivered with greedy sarcasm - how much more can we get before the feeding frenzy is over? [continues 1309 words]
Safety Push Local officials are showing interest in making Seattle the first U.S. city to offer a medically supervised site for drug use, which advocates say could reduce overdose deaths, disease transmission and discarded needles on the ground. Seattle could become the first city in the U.S. with a public site where users can inject and smoke hard drugs under medical supervision. One local group plans to open a bare-bones safe-consumption site on a shoestring budget as soon as possible, while another group has launched an awareness campaign to build support among politicians and communities. [continues 1238 words]
Advocates Say Addicts Need Long-Term Care Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the Democratic-controlled legislature are weighing options for tackling the fast-growing heroin epidemic that has taken root across the state and throughout the country. Many of the solutions focus on loosening criminal penalties for drug offenses and shifting more money - including the potential prison savings - to treatment and rehabilitation programs. The efforts have drawn praise from experts, including Joshua Sharfstein, the physician who served as state health director under Hogan's predecessor, Martin O'Malley (D). But they are viewed with skepticism by some advocates, who want the state to immediately and significantly expand long-term residential treatment. [continues 1270 words]
ST. LOUIS - Clara Walker, a mother of nine and grandmother of eight, was peering out the window of her home three years ago after hearing what she initially thought were gunshots from a television crime show. But at that moment, Anthony Jordan, who the authorities say was a gang enforcer known as "Godfather," was spraying gunfire on the street outside, and two bullets struck Ms. Walker, killing her. "St. Louis is a dangerous place right now," Johnny Barnes, Ms. Walker's longtime boyfriend, said during a recent interview. "It's all around us." [continues 1222 words]
WASILLA -- Soaring heroin overdose death rates in Alaska still don't outpace the rate of fatal overdoses from prescription opioid pain relievers, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Deaths from heroin increased from seven in 2009 to 36 deaths last year, according to a bulletin released Thursday by the state Division of Public Health. The number of fatal overdoses from prescription opioids was far higher: 83 deaths last year, down from 104 deaths in 2009. Fatal overdoses linked to prescription pain medications dropped considerably in 2010 after pharmaceutical companies changed formulations to deter abuse but then began rising again, according to Dr. Jay Butler, the state's chief medical officer and director of the public health division. [continues 308 words]
LAWRENCE, Mass. - When Eddie Frasca was shooting up heroin, he occasionally sought out its more potent, lethal cousin, fentanyl. "It was like playing Russian roulette, but I didn't care," said Mr. Frasca, 30, a carpenter and barber who said he had been clean for four months. When he heard that someone had overdosed or even died from fentanyl, he would hunt down that batch. "I'd say to myself, 'I'm going to spend the least amount of money and get the best kind of high I can,' " he said. [continues 1140 words]
In San Francisco, no game of NIMBY bingo is complete without a complaint of "used needles." In Chronicle columns, letters to the editor, and harrowing tales of urban living, evidence of heroin use ends up everywhere: in children's sandboxes, at Muni stops, and anywhere else people walk. For once, this problem could possibly be understated. As this column has pointed out before, it's a small wonder we aren't all swimming in discarded syringes: San Francisco is experiencing a needle boom. [continues 927 words]
ITHACA, N.Y. - Even Svante L. Myrick, the mayor of this city, thought the proposal sounded a little crazy, though it was put forth by a committee he had appointed. The plan called for establishing a site where people could legally shoot heroin - something that does not exist anywhere in the United States. "Heroin is bad, and injecting heroin is bad, so how could supervised heroin injection be a good thing?" Mr. Myrick, a Democrat, said. But he also knew he had to do something drastic to confront the scourge of heroin in his city in central New York. So he was willing to take a chance and embrace the radical notion, knowing well that it would provoke a backlash. [continues 1204 words]
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Sure, let's just hoist the white flag of surrender in the war against heroin addiction. That's what Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) would effectively do with her bill to legalize "supervised injection facilities" for people to self-administer illegal narcotics under the supervision of medical staff. If it's not the dumbest proposal we've heard to battle drug addiction, it has to rank pretty close to the top of the list. And yet we keep hearing it. [continues 505 words]
We've Got the Epidemic All Wrong, Maia Szalavitz Says America's epidemic of heroin and prescription pain reliever addiction has become a major issue in the 2016 elections. It's worse than ever: Deaths from overdoses of opioids - the drug category that includes heroin and prescription analgesics such as Vicodin - reached a high in 2014, rising 14 percent in a single year. But because drug policy has long been a political and cultural football, myths about opioid addiction abound. Here are some of the most dangerous myths, and how they do harm. [continues 1535 words]
Epidemic Stretches From Coast to Coast BALTIMORE - A crowd quickly gathers here on one of West Baltimore's many drug-infested street corners. But it isn't heroin they're seeking. It's a heroin antidote known as naloxone, or Narcan. Two city health department workers are holding up slim salmon-colored boxes and explaining that the medication inside can be used to stop someone from dying of a heroin overdose. Most onlookers nod solemnly in recognition. They've heard about the drug. They want to know more. [continues 1011 words]
BALTIMORE - A crowd quickly gathers here on one of West Baltimore's many drug-infested street corners. But it isn't heroin they're seeking. It's a heroin antidote known as naloxone, or Narcan. Two city health department workers are holding up slim salmon-colored boxes and explaining that the medication inside can be used to stop someone from dying of a heroin overdose. Most onlookers nod solemnly in recognition. They've heard about the drug. They want to know more. [continues 1016 words]
Officials Ask Public to Identify Dealers, Users As Wave Hits Northern Minn. A wave of heroin overdose deaths and hospitalizations across northern Minnesota prompted an urgent plea from authorities Wednesday for the public's help in identifying dealers and users in an effort to prevent further tragedies. Seven people have died and more than a dozen have been hospitalized in the past few weeks after ingesting heroin that in many cases was made even deadlier by the presence of added narcotics such as morphine and fentanyl, authorities said at Wednesday's news conference in Bemidji, Minn. [continues 735 words]
I congratulate the mayor on the plan to provide safe refuge for heroin injections. There may need to be changes to provide safety for all involved. He will and has received many criticisms, but what has worked over the past 100 years? Nothing. His plan deserves a chance; after all, it can be discontinued if there is an insurmountable problem. ITHACA [end]
As heroin-related deaths continue to spike in Central Florida, a task force of education, law-enforcement and public-health experts rolled out more than three dozen recommendations Monday to help Orange County fight the resurgence of the street drug blamed for 82 deaths last year. The group suggested equipping police and deputies with naloxone, a medicine that instantly reverses the potentially fatal effect of heroin; increasing the number of so-called "detox beds" to treat addicts; and creating a program for heroin-addicted inmates in the Orange County Jail. [continues 555 words]
ITHACA, N.Y. - A bustling economy. Record-low unemployment. A ballooning heroin problem. That's how Mayor Svante Myrick describes Ithaca, where he hopes to open the nation's first safe injection facility - a place where heroin users can shoot their illegal drugs under medical supervision and without fear of arrest. His proposal, part of a plan to address drug abuse in the college town of 31,000 in central New York, is not a novel idea. Safe injection sites, which also connect clients to treatment programs and offer emergency care to reverse overdoses, exist in 27 cities in other parts of the world. Some have been around for decades. [continues 592 words]
To the Editor: The recent increase in heroin use in Boston and throughout the country should come as no surprise to anyone. Following an increase in the prescribing of opioid painkillers, a number of steps were taken to reduce such prescribing markedly, but with no attention whatever paid to the patients who had become dependent, not even offers of detoxification. Many, predictably, turned to the much cheaper and widely available alternative of heroin. The only tangential reference to treatment in your article is the statement that a particular stretch of Massachusetts Avenue is known as Methadone Mile. Would that it were so! Along with all other forms of treatment, methadone maintenance - the gold standard of care - should be readily available to all who want and need help for their dependence, and who with tragic frequency die without it. The writer is a health care consultant. [end]
To the Editor: It's not easy to understand heroin addicts. They eschew replacement drugs like methadone and Suboxone that reduce sickness and cravings so they can shoot up and experience that momentary rush and ephemeral bliss. Many of them know that they are chasing that "first high," that first time that opened the door to heaven and hell. Shooting up is an extraordinary experience, but as much as they try, addicts will not get that first high again. For these people, life holds little meaning or joy outside of getting high. Their addiction gives them a reason to exist, a focus and its rewards. [continues 84 words]
