poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Drug more deadly than meth is the scourge of the suburbs
IT’S the drug of choice in the suburbs. It’s likely you or someone close to you has taken it.
We’re heedlessly popping the very pills that have torn apart tight-knit communities with their malevolent effects.
Painkiller abuse has reached epidemic proportions across the world, turning casual users into opioid addicts who care about nothing but their next hit.
And with the pills prescribed by trusted doctors, most don’t notice their slide into dependency until it’s too late.
New York’s Staten Island is the archetype. One of America’s first modern suburbs, the vibrant neighbourhood now has one of the worst prescription drug problems in the US.
“It’s had a profound effect,” Aaron Lewis, whose documentary on painkillers airs on SBS One’s Dateline at 9.30pm tonight, told news.com.au.
“Staten Island’s beating spirit has been taken. Everyone knows someone who’s overdosed recently, across all ages, demographics and classes. Dark clouds hang over the place.”
Opioids (pain medications such as codeine, morphine, methadone and oxycodone) now cause more deaths than any other drug in the United States, more than 16,000 in 2010. Overdoses have quadrupled over the past ten years.
Australia isn’t far behind — the United Nations 2014 World Drug Report ranked Aussies second for use of opioids after the US. It also showed that unlike with other illicit drugs, opioid use is more common among women than men.
Professor Louisa Degenhardt, from UNSW’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, told news.com.au that a recent study on Australians taking painkillers showed that the median time they had been on them was four years, “some a lot longer.”
“A lot of these people have very complicated health problems,” she said. “If you’re on a lot of drugs, there are a lot of risks inherent to that.
“For people in chronic pain, the levels of mental health problems are very high — 40 per cent of the cohort were depressed.
“We found one in ten had been been dependent at some point.”
What many people don’t realise is that painkillers are very similar to heroin. Once the supply dries up, desperate users who would never have touched illegal drugs before are turning to the streets to feed their addiction.
Opioid abuse can cause complications including respiratory and heart problems and, in severe cases, coma or death. Between 2010 and 2012, heroin deaths in New York City increased 84 per cent.
Aaron found that getting heroin in Staten Island was as quick and easy as ordering a pizza, as well as far cheaper than sourcing opiate-based painkillers.
Every addict he spoke to for the documentary said that, at some point, they had done things they would never have otherwise considered. They would lie or steal, and became incapable of making moral choices.
“Finding drugs, gettings drugs and getting high,” former addict Danny Haley tells Aaron in the program. “That was the main goal of the day, every day.”
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...e-of-the-suburbs/story-e6frfmyi-1227303595468
See the full story on Dateline tonight at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.
IT’S the drug of choice in the suburbs. It’s likely you or someone close to you has taken it.
We’re heedlessly popping the very pills that have torn apart tight-knit communities with their malevolent effects.
Painkiller abuse has reached epidemic proportions across the world, turning casual users into opioid addicts who care about nothing but their next hit.
And with the pills prescribed by trusted doctors, most don’t notice their slide into dependency until it’s too late.
New York’s Staten Island is the archetype. One of America’s first modern suburbs, the vibrant neighbourhood now has one of the worst prescription drug problems in the US.
“It’s had a profound effect,” Aaron Lewis, whose documentary on painkillers airs on SBS One’s Dateline at 9.30pm tonight, told news.com.au.
“Staten Island’s beating spirit has been taken. Everyone knows someone who’s overdosed recently, across all ages, demographics and classes. Dark clouds hang over the place.”
Opioids (pain medications such as codeine, morphine, methadone and oxycodone) now cause more deaths than any other drug in the United States, more than 16,000 in 2010. Overdoses have quadrupled over the past ten years.
Australia isn’t far behind — the United Nations 2014 World Drug Report ranked Aussies second for use of opioids after the US. It also showed that unlike with other illicit drugs, opioid use is more common among women than men.
Professor Louisa Degenhardt, from UNSW’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, told news.com.au that a recent study on Australians taking painkillers showed that the median time they had been on them was four years, “some a lot longer.”
“A lot of these people have very complicated health problems,” she said. “If you’re on a lot of drugs, there are a lot of risks inherent to that.
“For people in chronic pain, the levels of mental health problems are very high — 40 per cent of the cohort were depressed.
“We found one in ten had been been dependent at some point.”
What many people don’t realise is that painkillers are very similar to heroin. Once the supply dries up, desperate users who would never have touched illegal drugs before are turning to the streets to feed their addiction.
Opioid abuse can cause complications including respiratory and heart problems and, in severe cases, coma or death. Between 2010 and 2012, heroin deaths in New York City increased 84 per cent.
Aaron found that getting heroin in Staten Island was as quick and easy as ordering a pizza, as well as far cheaper than sourcing opiate-based painkillers.
Every addict he spoke to for the documentary said that, at some point, they had done things they would never have otherwise considered. They would lie or steal, and became incapable of making moral choices.
“Finding drugs, gettings drugs and getting high,” former addict Danny Haley tells Aaron in the program. “That was the main goal of the day, every day.”
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...e-of-the-suburbs/story-e6frfmyi-1227303595468
See the full story on Dateline tonight at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
