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Why do you think the heroin epidemic started?

A

angieaje

Greenlighter
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Feb 12, 2014
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Please answer only based on personal experience or from a friends personal experience.
 
Personally, I think it's two big things: the dark net and the war on drugs.

Tightening regulations on prescription opioids (rescheduling vicodin was a biggie) forced some people to fall back on getting well from what they could find on the street.

Now you can buy drugs on the internet! I think the influx of designer drugs has created a lot or problems with the skyrocketing OD numbers. People will buy an analogue off the Dark net and sell it as "Percocet" or "shroom extract" or whatever the fuck they want to call it to get people to buy it. Big problem. Not to mention anyone can buy these, so now people who might not have connects can get whatever they want after doing some basic internet researching.
 
I don't think there's such thing as a "heroin epidemic". If you look at the percentage of people in the USA using heroin, it's quite small...smaller than, say, the amount of people in the USA using cocaine at the height of that drug's popularity. Nowadays the media coverage on the subject of cocaine during the late 70's/early 80's (and onward into the crack era) is commonly seen as being grossly sensationalized, to put it mildly...I imagine that one day today's "heroin epidemic" will be looked at in much the same light.

As a child of the 90's and early 2000's I also remember the rural American "meth epidemic". 8)

There's been a demographic shift in users of heroin and maybe a marginal increase in the popularity of the drug, but besides that...
 
I agree to some extent with both the posts before mine. Although I think a great deal of the "heroin epidemic" has been sensationalized, I also see first-hand the effects of the War on Drugs and DEA crackdowns on liberally prescribing doctors causing people to have to rely on the black market for pain relief.

Just like anything, it's probably a convergence of numerous factors rather than any single thing, but the above two points are probably the most poignant.
 
Burnt Offerings said:
I don't think there's such thing as a "heroin epidemic". If you look at the percentage of people in the USA using heroin, it's quite small...smaller than, say, the amount of people in the USA using cocaine at the height of that drug's popularity. Nowadays the media coverage on the subject of cocaine during the late 70's/early 80's (and onward into the crack era) is commonly seen as being grossly sensationalized, to put it mildly...I imagine that one day today's "heroin epidemic" will be looked at in much the same light.

As a child of the 90's and early 2000's I also remember the rural American "meth epidemic". 8)

There's been a demographic shift in users of heroin and maybe a marginal increase in the popularity of the drug, but besides that...
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Good points. I would agree that heroin use isn't really an epidemic. The number of ODs has grown significantly though
 
it's not a new thing. opiates have been the most continuously abused drug (aside from alcohol) throughout humanity's history.
yeah it's been eclipsed in the media by some other "drug epidemics" -- ie "the crack epidemic." but eventually crack gets boring and humankind goes back to it's one true love, heroin.

and it's still damn hard to find heroin in my town and if you can it's absolute shit and costs $30 a bag. a dilaudid is more bang for your buck here ...barely.

the folks who study this claim it started w/ the "pill epidemic." and when pills were cracked down on, people lost their scrips, on the streets became harder to find and more expensive, lots of people switched to heroin because it's supposedly cheaper and easier to find. like I said not in my hometown though unfortunately. =/
 
The biggest cause of what can be considered the heroin epidemic (the movement of heroin use from innercity black and latino communities to young suburban white communities): The existential nightmare that is living in the united states anymore.
 
I grew up during the late 80s, and all through the 90s, and early 00s and heroin and opiate pills were extremely popular then and it's nothing new.

There's been a "heroin epidemic" in the United States for 50 years.

I know people who are older who told me all about how in the early and mid 60s in most large cities here in the United States that heroin was easily available, and that it was also available outside of cities as well in suburbs and rural areas outside of large cities.

These older people did not use heroin or other drugs, they knew people who did, and that most of these people are either sober, or died from heroin or other drugs decades ago.
 
PriestTheyCalledHim said:
I grew up during the late 80s, and all through the 90s, and early 00s and heroin and opiate pills were extremely popular then and it's nothing new.

There's been a "heroin epidemic" in the United States for 50 years.

I know people who are older who told me all about how in the early and mid 60s in most large cities here in the United States that heroin was easily available, and that it was also available outside of cities as well in suburbs and rural areas outside of large cities.

These older people did not use heroin or other drugs, they knew people who did, and that most of these people are either sober, or died from heroin or other drugs decades ago.
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Na this is a different level than the ones you mentioned about 4-5 times worse in numbers and deaths.

I think it's related to Mexican cartels taking the steps to cut everyone out and grow their own poppies , had Colombian chemists teach them how to process into H and that's why the last 10 years it's boomed and if you follow the dope up the chain you'll find Mexicans always at the head of the snake .
Also this generation having a lot of trauma from the 70s generation raising them , as well as wanting instant gratification and everything is instant now I wanna feel good now opiates fit perfect my theory idk
 
I have to agree with the priest there was a large epidemic back in the 70s but the resurgence of the H epidemic started after all the pill mills got shut down and everybody turned heroin.
 
Yeah I think it is different this time, for mostly the reasons mentioned by manboychef. The guy who directed both "Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street" and "Heroin: Cape Cod" said in an interview I read that the addicts in both films came from quite different backgrounds. The addicts of BTH: DSOTS (which was set in San Francisco) were street kids who had been enamored by the "glamor" of heroin: Bourrough's "Junkie", musicians they admired who used, the mystique heroin carried of being a "scary drug" that others were afraid of, etc. Whereas the addicts in H: CC had kind of "fallen into" the addiction from abusing painkillers like oxycodone. Heroin seemed much more "subcultural" even as recently as the 1990's.
 
manboychef said:
The biggest cause of what can be considered the heroin epidemic (the movement of heroin use from innercity black and latino communities to young suburban white communities): The existential nightmare that is living in the united states anymore.
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This^
 
This isn't really suited for Basic Drug Discussion OP. I'm going to leave it open and transfer it over to NASADD because it's referring to the United States Heroin Epidemic. In my opinion it's just a natural ebb and flow of the market, supply and demand and all of that shit.

This is not the first Heroin Epidemic and it will not be the last. In fact, if you look closely at the past century, there's a Heroin Epidemic practically every 15 years or so. There's Post World War II - 1965-1975 (The French Connection) - The 1990's - Then finally the one we're in now which started in the 2000's.
 
Painkillers used to be much easier to get from doctors and thus the suburbs were flooded with them, then the DEA intervened making it harder for doctors to prescribe pain medications without risking losing their license. Also it used to be easy to shoot oxycodone with the previous pill formulation, the OC's. Now it's the OP formulation for oxycontin and shooting the pills has become difficult, thus many painkiller addicts have switched over to heroin.

Those are the reasons I believe the heroin epidemic started, I could be wrong.
 
why did it start? dude, if you are asking the question, I am assuming you've heard of it over and over again. how everyone was once addicted to pills, for many reasons, and as the pills slowly disappeared and the Dr's stopped writing those scripts like they once were, everyone decided to make the switch. come on, you asked the question but I know, and YOU KNOW, that you already knew this answer. so many pill mills in FL at one point and now its all under control to a degree. and so many Dr's once able to write and now shut off/shut down to a degree and unable to write like they once did. Dr's who were writing 30/30's a month now will write for 5MG perc's if lucky. time have changed due to the abuse and due to all the exposure, so everything had to shut down to protect America and not make things look so bad but guess what? things are even worse because everyone has moved onto dope and now fent has hit the street and made things even more "crazy" w/ how the game is played.
 
I think it's always been around except where I live live at(still the meth epidemic here) but the most recent one is probly imo the Dea making everything harder to get, and then making even hydrocodone schedule 2, I mean... Dsnt help that the media loves to say heroin in a pill but we all know there is a big difference between an oxy/hydro hAbbit then going to dope..
 
ImSTILLtrying said:
why did it start? dude, if you are asking the question, I am assuming you've heard of it over and over again. how everyone was once addicted to pills, for many reasons, and as the pills slowly disappeared and the Dr's stopped writing those scripts like they once were, everyone decided to make the switch. come on, you asked the question but I know, and YOU KNOW, that you already knew this answer. so many pill mills in FL at one point and now its all under control to a degree. and so many Dr's once able to write and now shut off/shut down to a degree and unable to write like they once did. Dr's who were writing 30/30's a month now will write for 5MG perc's if lucky. time have changed due to the abuse and due to all the exposure, so everything had to shut down to protect America and not make things look so bad but guess what? things are even worse because everyone has moved onto dope and now fent has hit the street and made things even more "crazy" w/ how the game is played.
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Take it easy. I still like to discuss World War II with folks even though we all know the outcome. It's just stimulating discussion on a topic OP was curious about. People seem to be taking this attitude that there would be no current epidemic if it weren't for Oxycontin's release in the 1990's. It's just not the case. Opioids have been popular medicine everywhere they have ever been available, for thousands of years. I didn't get hooked on Opioids through legitimate prescriptions. I pursued them for recreational purposes and so did a lot of other people I know.
 
Damn, better than your kid being born? That's kind of sad actually

I've never understood people who've described the high from opiates in such a way. It's just not that good, IMO, and I'm someone who likes opiates a lot.
 
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