Heroin Epidemic

Concern for the expanding heroin epidemic grows as more people become addicted and seek treatment. As of now only 11% percent of those in need of treatment seek treatment, yet there are still waiting lists at federally-funded rehab facilities.

According to the article linked above, jails are becoming detox centers. Jail is counter-productive, to say the least. It’s questionable whether government can solve the heroin problem, but politicians are beginning to talk about the problem more and more. Because there’s been such a poor response to addiction in general in the U.S., not many in D.C., if any, have a good answer. There are plenty of symptomatic solutions from government and the healthcare field, such as clean needle programs, Suboxone, and law enforcement to attack the supply, but the fundamental problem is demand caused by addiction, and there’s a shortage of efforts to apply fundamental solutions.

Also, the problem is not isolated to heroin. Heroin is an opiate, and opiates are sold by pharmacies. Too many doctors are too freely prescribing opiates when alternative pain management methods are available. As millions use legally prescribed opiates, some become addicted — then when they ‘re cut off by the doctor, or the pharmacy won’t fill prescriptions that are gathered by doctor shopping and getting prescriptions from more than one doctor, the person goes into withdrawal and seeks opiates wherever they can be found. This is how many get on heroin.

But the addiction problem goes far beyond heroin and prescription opiates. Because heroin is perceived as an evil street drug by so many, when the use of heroin increases it creates a  great deal of concern, but addiction is addiction and a drug and is a drug. The national concern over alcoholism is mild compared to the concern over the heroin epidemic, but there are far more alcoholics and far more deaths caused by alcohol. Alcohol just happens to be legal, but, as a health concern, alcoholism is so much worse than heroin that it’s an act of denial to call one an epidemic and not the other which is a greater problem by far.

Addiction is a huge problem affecting millions of individuals and their families. Perhaps as politicians and healthcare spokespeople sound the alarm about the heroin epidemic, they’ll include the greater problem of addiction in general. Then maybe one day we won’t need specialized solutions in emergency situations to meet an epidemic of drug use — the treatment infrastructure can be in place to deal with the ongoing problem of addiction to a number of drugs. Addiction is a problem that the healthcare field can effectively deal with, once there’s enough societal awareness and enough smart people seeking fundamental solutions.