Addiction has reached epidemic levels in Kentucky, where painkiller and heroin abuse are rampant. Kentucky is all to familiar with heroin overdoses. Especially hit hard have been Northern Kentucky, Louisville, and Lexington raising fears that the heroin scrouge will soon ravage the entire Commonwealth.
Heroin – known by the nicknames such as Black Tar, Big H. Dog, Horse, and Puppy Chow, is a highly addictive drug derived from morphine, which is obtained from the opium poppy. Heroin can be injected, smoked in a water pipe, inhaled as smoke through a straw, or snorted as powder through the nose.
Heroin is especially deadly because it is both highly addictive and unpredictable. It is also dangerous because there is no way to know exactly what you’re buying.
A key driver behind the uptick in heroin abuse was the reformulation of two widely abused prescription pain drugs, making them harder to crush and snort. Drug manufacturers reformulated OxyContin in 2010 and Opana in 2011.
The growing number of people who began abusing expensive prescription drugs are switching to heroin, which is cheaper and easier to buy. The reason may come down to basic economics: illegally obtained prescription pain killers have become more expensive and harder to get, while the price and difficulty in obtaining heroin have decreased. An 80 mg OxyContin pill runs between $60 to $100 on the street. Heroin costs about $9 a dose. Even among heavy heroin abusers, a day’s worth of the drug is cheaper than a couple hits of Oxycontin.
Increasingly, heroin is being laced with fentanyl, a deadly and powerful synthetic drug.
To impact the problem, the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy will continue to work towards increased public education, increased access to treatment, enhanced penalties for major traffickers, and greater access to Narcan (also referred to as Naloxone).
