Heroin's Back, But Prescription Opiates Are Still a Much Bigger Problem David Weinberg - Marketplace
go to original February 8, 2014

More people are dying in the US from prescription drugs than from heroin and cocaine combined, a new study says, signaling that pill abuse is not just the leading cause of drug overdose deaths, but that it also requires more oversight and training by both doctors and state health agencies. (The Young Turks)

Heroin use is on the rise in rural and suburban counties all across the U.S. In the latest federal survey of drug use found the number of people who used heroin recently nearly doubled to 335,000 in the last five years.

At the same time, the use of prescription opiates, like Oxycotin and Vicodin, has also risen. Prescription overdose is now the leading cause of death in at least 29 states, far larger than heroin. "That's a dramatic change over the last decade," says Jeff Levi , executive director of Trust for America's Health. "And that is reflected by the huge increase in prescriptions written for these drugs."

In response to the rise in prescription overdoses, the federal government and the medical community restricted access to prescription opiates. A secondary effect of that restriction says Levi, is that "many people have been turning to more accessible and less expensive approaches - including heroin."

Dr. Christopher Jones heads the prescription drug overdose team at the CDC. His research found that many heroin users started on other opiates. "When you ask those people to report which drug they used first, about 77 percent of the time they say they used opioid analgesics prior to initiating heroin," says Jones.

Read the rest at Marketplace

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