Heroin use on the increase

It’s always been a dangerous drug, but heroin use is moving beyond its usual demographic. Dennis Long, Executive Director of Breakaway Addiction Services in Toronto, says it’s now a problem for “an increased number of young people and an increased number of older people.”  They’re turning to heroin, and they come from a higher socio-economic status than is usually associated with the drug.

Relatively cheap and quite accessible

In an interview with CBC, Connie Thompson, a former heroin addict turned addictions counsellor, said, ‘There’s 17 and 18-year-olds that are getting onto this stuff because $10 you get a bundle, that’ll get you going for a few hours.’

According to Dennis Long the reasons are two-fold: one is the low price of heroin in Canada. Long says ‘it’s relatively cheap and quite accessible’.  And the other reason, particularly for older people, is the search for something to replace OxyContin.

Long says that since the reformulation of Oxy Contin, in response to the huge habits that developed with the pill form, people who got addicted, often through legitimate means originally, were finding it difficult to obtain and more expensive.  So they’re replacing the Oxy Contin opiate with heroin.

But Long says, ‘moving from one drug to another is dangerous, they don’t know how to use it.’  And overdosing, particularly if a person uses alone, is a big risk.

Dennis Long would like to see more treatment clinics available and more support for people trying to get over the addiction.  And he’d also like to see more awareness of what an overdose looks like so people would be able to identify the danger.  In tandem with this he says it is time for a Good Samaritan Law that would protect those who report an overdose, so they won’t be charged with possession for helping out someone who gets into distress. But he cautions, an overdose doesn’t appear dramatic, it looks like someone going to sleep.

http://www.breakawayaddictions.ca/