Heroin Epidemic Spreading Across the United States

With the Jan. 19 publication by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of “Drug Poisoning Mortality: United States, 2002-2014,” public attention has been focused on the nationwide epidemic.  Local authorities have been battling the massive increase in heroin addiction in every part of the country.  A Google News sort on “heroin epidemic” turned up over 133,000 news articles, mostly from local and state publications facing the alarming increases in deaths and crime.

New York State has released data showing the skyrocketing of heroin deaths, which went from 923 statewide in 2003 to over 2,300 in 2014.  Staten Island has the highest rate of heroin deaths of all of the five boroughs of New York City.

Ohio State Attorney General Mike DeWine convened an emergency statewide meeting last week, in which he warned that the state is now seeing 3-4 overdose deaths from heroin every week.

In New Hampshire, where the first presidential primary election will take place soon, voters say that the number one issue on their minds is the drug epidemic, trumping the major other concerns, including jobs and the overall economic collapse.

Huffington Post reported that Mexican drug cartels are flooding with heroin those areas of the United States where the documented rates of prescribing OxyContin and other doctor- prescribed opiates are the greatest.  The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, was recently listed on the Forbes magazine richest families list, with a personal fortune of $14 billion, almost exclusively based on domestic and foreign sales of the opioid.