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> of both illegal drugs like heroin and prescription painkillers I was a teenager in the early 90's and i'm horrified with that heroin come-back. I don't under

• kasey_junk 11y ago
  Prescription opioids were over prescribed & being abused. A crack down on those made heroin actually easier & cheaper to get in many places. There are some macro economic aspects as well making heroin cheap & powerful & readily available.
• stinos 11y ago
  > I thought we dealt with that sh. long ago? In what way do you think it was dealt with? As far as I know for actions like 'The War on Drugs' it's at least debatble whether they actually did reduce the amount of use of illigeal substances (let alone amount of related crime etc)?
  • aikah 11y ago
    I was thinking about pop culture + education more than "war on drugs", since I live in Europe. I mean since when taking heroin is cool again ? it destroyed or killed so many people i knew 20 years ago ...
    • DanBC 11y ago
      The article is mostly talking about people who are wrongly prescribed opioid meds for long term pain. They don't start taking those meds because it's cool. They start taking those meds because they don't have access to pain clinics; they don't understand that exercise is effective for many forms of pain (especially musculo-skeletal); that opioids should not be used for long term pain, etc. The meds become less effective if they're used for a long time, so people increase their dose. They become addicted to the meds, and need higher doses. A couple of things happen here. 1) Doctors restrict the meds. People then either buy illicit meds, which are stronger than they're expecting; or they buy heroin because it's easy enough to get. 2) People die from liver damage caused by the paracetamol that these pain meds are often mixed with. Partly we used to think that combining paracetamol and opioids meant we could use less of each (but that turns out to be untrue), and partly some people thought that mixing a poisonous substance in with the opioid would reduce abuse. (It sort of does, by killing the user.)
      • venomsnake 11y ago
        Paracetamol is may "favorite" medical substance. The damaging and helpful dose are absurdly close. And that stuff is sold over the counter.
        • Gibbon1 11y ago
          My grandmother started drinking after my grandfather died. And died herself ten years later of liver failure. I remember emptying out the medicine cabinet and tossing a half empty 500 pill bottle of Tylenol in the trash. And then finding two more unopened in the cabinet under the sink. My thought then was, 'this and the booze is what killed her.' That was 35 years ago.
  • DanBC 11y ago
    Drugs come into and go out of fashion, and there are changes in availability as various precursor chemicals are made harder to get. With things like MDMA this control over precursor chemicals does harm, because people use "research chemicals" or bath-salts instead, and there's not much evidence of safety for those. And there's some environmental impact as illegal loggers cut down trees in rain forest to get safrole oil.
• chillydawg 11y ago
  Increase everyone's rent, reduce everyone's job security, increase everyone's working hours, reduce everyone's access to cheap healthcare and generally let the Trump's of the world run things and you get an underclass of very unhappy people to whom heroin seems like a pretty good idea (at the time).
  • ja30278 11y ago
    I'm sorry, but this is nonsensical. 'Poor' people, on the whole, work less, and have a better standard of living now than for most of recorded history. It's much more likely that over-prescription of oxycontin is the root cause of any increase in heroin use.
• jmspring 11y ago
  I'm not sure if heroin ever left Santa Cruz after the 90s. It took a concerted effort to get a trail into part of a local park that had been dubbed "heroin highway". There was anyone from guys in suits and BMWs to homeless getting their fix in the area. The trail helped mitigate issues for the park quite a bit, but the heroin problem is still huge. In Santa Cruz, I think a lot of it stems from decades of tolerance and looking the other way. Now when people are fed up,a lack of treatment options, ease with which those living on the street can get a meal and access to cheap drugs, as well as a judiciary that is at best revolving door perpetuates the problem.