A Very Slippery Slope
Teens often begin with substances like cigarettes or alcohol. By high school graduation, nearly half of all teens will have tried marijuana, once mistakenly thought to be nonaddictive. For some, this leads to experimenting with stronger, more addictive drugs like heroin.1
All teens who smoke marijuana today will not become heroin addicts tomorrow. But the danger does exist. And long-term studies of high school students show that few young people use other drugs without first having tried marijuana. Once a person builds up a tolerance and can no longer get the initial rush he seeks, he can begin increasing drug consumption or looking for something stronger.2
Let’s face reality
Young people today have a great likelihood of coming into contact with illegal drugs.
The Monitoring the Future survey found that around 27 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 in the US had used an illegal drug in the past year. Marijuana use among college-aged young adults is at an all-time high, with almost half having used it in the past year. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2019 an estimated 31 million people worldwide used opiates, opium and heroin in the prior year.43
The New Face of Heroin
The stereotypical image of a listless young heroin addict collapsed in a filthy, dark inner-city alley is obsolete. Today, many heroin addicts are in their late 20s living outside large urban areas and initially abused prescription painkillers. Studies consistently show a link between abuse of prescription painkillers (such as OxyContin) and the use of heroin.5
In the early 2000s, higher purity heroin became available on the streets. Because the heroin was cheaper than buying opioid pills, many painkiller addicts switched to heroin. At which point, another deadly trend emerged: to increase the potency of heroin, dealers started adding fentanyl—a deadly mix which resulted in an unprecedented increase in overdose deaths.666
From the day I started using, I never stopped. Within one week, I had gone from snorting heroin to shooting it. Within one month, I was addicted and going through all my money. I sold everything of value that I owned and eventually everything that my mother owned. Within one year, I had lost everything.
“I sold my car, lost my job, was kicked out of my mother’s house, was $25,000 in credit card debt and living on the streets of Camden, New Jersey. I lied, I stole, I cheated.
“I was raped, beaten, mugged, robbed, arrested, homeless, sick and desperate. I knew that nobody could have a lifestyle like that very long, and I knew that death was imminent. If anything, death was better than a life as a junkie.” —Alison
REFERENCES
- Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2019: Overview (Table 5, Trends in Lifetime Prevalence of Use), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) / University of Michigan Monitoring the Future study
- Marijuana Research Report, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH (report last updated June 2018, current live download from nida.nih.gov)
- Monitoring the Future | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH
- Table 7.5B -- Types of Illicit Drug Use in the Past Year among Persons Aged 12 to 17: Percentages, 2002-2013 (NSDUH Detailed Tables), SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
- The Changing Face of Heroin Use in the United States: A Retrospective Analysis of the Past 50 Years, JAMA Psychiatry (Cicero, Ellis, Surratt, Kurtz, 2014), hosted via Nova Southeastern University faculty repository (NSUWorks)
- Prepared testimony on the opioid crisis (heroin/prescription-opioid supply trends), citing Congressional Research Service analysis, U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee (CRS analysis by L. Sacco)
How much do you really know about heroin?
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