Heroin use, by snorting, is found to rise in youth

Associated Press. (1998, December 7). Heroin use, by snorting, is found to rise in youth.

OVERVIEW

Of the major illegal drugs in the U.S., heroin is least used among high school students. Accodring to a 1993 University of Michigan study, marijuana is most used (9.2% of 8th graders and 26% of 12th graders use the drug), stimulants next, then LSD, cocaine, crack, and, finally, heroin. In the general population, (measured by hospital emergencies), heroin use subsided slightly from 1989 to 1990, then began a gradual rise.

This rise can be noticed particularly among middle class teenagers, who are taking the drug by snorting it through the nose, under the false assumption passed on by pushers and peers that snorting is less addictive than injection.

Dr. Richard H. Schwartz of Inova Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, led a study reported in the December, 1998 issue of the Journal of Pediatrics. It showed that heroin use among high school seniors doubled between 1990 to 1996, and continued its rise in 1997.

Heroin use among high school seniors:

Dr. Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, comments on the concern experts have regarding this trend:

There’s been an increase in purity of heroin on the street, and that increase in purity is drawing a generation of heroin sniffers, snorters, intranasal users, rather than injectors. They foolishly think if you don’t inject it, it’s not addicting, which is incredibly wrong. And so you’re seeing middle-class, upper middle-class yuppies using heroin, where five years ago, they wouldn’t go near it.

Dr. Swartz also notes that the average street price of heroin has dropped by nearly two-thirds, while the purity has gone from 10% to 50% (a very troubling and lethal combination). He is also concerned that while the heroin use among teenagers remains relatively low, the highly addictive traits of heroin and the impact it makes on one’s life presents an insidious situation.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How do the comparative use of drugs in your town or school compare with those cited above? How do you explain the level of use of various drugs?
2. What is heroin called on the streets near you? Do you know anyone using heroin? Have you ever known a real heroin addict or "junkie?" What is life like for them?
3. While working in a drug-infested neighborhood, I used to call marijuana a "short-cut" drug and heroin, a "dead-end" drug. Do you understand the difference?
4. Have you ever known anyone who used heroin recreationally for a year or so and didn’t get hooked?
5. What does it take to get a heroin addict permanently clean?
6. How would you combat a rise in heroin snorting in your school, town or neighborhood?

IMPLICATIONS

1. Declines in youthful drug use often reflects effective drug education and prevention programs. When we let up efforts to educate pre-teens about the negative effects of illegal drugs, their use will begin to rise again.
2. Effective drug education also promotes healthy values, growth, and choices in the whole of one’s life.