Heroin use in the U.S. is soaring, especially in rural areas, amid ample supply and a shift away from costlier prescription narcotics that are becoming tougher to acquire. The number of people who say they have used heroin in the past year jumped 53.5% to 620,000 between 2002 to 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. There were 3,094 overdose deaths in 2010, a 55% increase from 2000, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Much of the heroin that reaches smaller towns such as Ellensburg, [Washington,] comes from Mexico, where producers have ramped up production in recent years, drug officials say. Heroin seizures at the Southwest border, from Texas to California, ballooned to 1,989 kilograms in fiscal 2012 from 487 kilograms in 2008, according to figures from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The heroin scourge has been driven largely by a law-enforcement crackdown on illicit use of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and drug-company reformulations that make the pills harder to crush and snort, drug officials say.
Read it all (or if necessary another link is there).
This is insane. When are we going to wake up and realize what a catastrophe we have inflicted on ourselves with this idiotic war on drugs. If the government wants to do some good by proscription, it should outlaw toothpaste. Every kid in the country would be sneaking up onto their roof to brush their teeth. You’d have college frat parties revolving around dental care.
In a generation dentists would be out of business. You would have to go to the Museum of Natural History to find one, sandwiched between the Wooly Mammoth and the T Rex.