poledriver
Bluelighter
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America is in the grip of an unprecedented epidemic of drug addiction
New York: The United States of America is in the grip of an unprecedented epidemic of drug addiction. In 2014, more than 47,000 people were killed by an overdose - more than were killed by guns, or died in traffic accidents. Each day, 125 people take their last hit, and millions more are leading diminished lives governed by the need to "get well" before all else.
"This is the worst drug addiction epidemic in United States history," says Andrew Kolodny, the chief medical officer of Phoenix House in New York. Phoenix House was founded in 1967 by six heroin addicts who resolved to kick the habit together and has grown to become the nation's leading provider of drug abuse treatment.
It has seen heroin, crack cocaine, methamphetamine and PCP plagues come and go, but nothing compared to the current wave of opiate addiction.
For the first time since the Vietnam War, life expectancy is falling for whites. Drug use is among the primary factors. Five times as many whites aged 25 to 34 were killed by an overdose in 2014 as in 1999. A quiet epidemic, spreading behind suburban curtains and in struggling rural towns, has become impossible to ignore.
"Now that an epidemic is affecting mainstream white America, we're seeing attitudes change," says Dr Kolodny.
Republicans Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina have spoken of the destructive impact of addiction on their own families. In March, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act passed in the Senate with rare bipartisan support.
At a recent drug abuse summit in Atlanta, US President Barack Obama called for $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) in additional funding to combat the epidemic. In doing so, he acknowledged that the shift towards treating rather than jailing addicts would be a bitter pill to swallow for African-American and Latino communities decimated by the "war on drugs".
"What has made it previously difficult to emphasise treatment over criminal justice is that the problem was identified as poor, minority, and as a consequence the thinking was 'it's often a character flaw in those individuals who live in those communities, and it's not our problem they're just being locked up'," he said.
Addiction was seen as a moral failing
In short, when the addicts were black and brown, addiction was a moral failing. Now that they are white - like 90 per cent of new heroin users in the last decade - it is a disease.
"The language is very different, because this epidemic is affecting the communities where politicians live," Dr Kolodny says.
"Pharmaceutical companies have created a market for the illegal drug cartels by increasing the number of Americans who are opioid addicted," he continues. "You now have markets for heroin where previously, nobody wanted heroin."
Lindenhurst, a beachfront commuter town on Long Island, an hour from New York, is one such community. The streets are deserted, the houses detached, with space for two cars in every driveway. As we pull up outside Teri Kroll's house on Walnut Street, two young men sitting in an idling car assess us with a look and slowly drive away.
Teri lost her son Tim to an overdose seven years ago. On her left wrist, she wears a green plastic bracelet bearing his name and another, in gold, with a mark for each of his 23 years. A "Timmy Blanket" made from scraps of his clothes is draped over a chair in her living room.
"This generation is really sick," she says. "It's sad when you talk to somebody in their late 20s. They know so many people who have this disease."
Three in four new heroin users graduate to the drug from painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet. Tim was prescribed them to treat migraine headaches when he was 18. A "straight edge" kid who surfed and snowboarded, he had never taken drugs until an unscrupulous doctor (later jailed for selling painkiller prescriptions) promised: "I can help you."
In four months, Tim tried seven different drugs before arriving at the strongest prescription opioid, OxyContin 80. He became moody and withdrawn. When his worried parents took him to their GP, the doctor told Tim to stop taking the pills immediately. Instead, addicted, he began to buy them on the black market. Eventually, he turned to heroin.
Addiction stories are rarely linear. Tim tried to quit, then relapsed. He tried to kill himself several times.
CONT - http://www.smh.com.au/world/america...-addiction-20160414-go6fmd.html#ixzz47uSviwX0
New York: The United States of America is in the grip of an unprecedented epidemic of drug addiction. In 2014, more than 47,000 people were killed by an overdose - more than were killed by guns, or died in traffic accidents. Each day, 125 people take their last hit, and millions more are leading diminished lives governed by the need to "get well" before all else.
"This is the worst drug addiction epidemic in United States history," says Andrew Kolodny, the chief medical officer of Phoenix House in New York. Phoenix House was founded in 1967 by six heroin addicts who resolved to kick the habit together and has grown to become the nation's leading provider of drug abuse treatment.
It has seen heroin, crack cocaine, methamphetamine and PCP plagues come and go, but nothing compared to the current wave of opiate addiction.
For the first time since the Vietnam War, life expectancy is falling for whites. Drug use is among the primary factors. Five times as many whites aged 25 to 34 were killed by an overdose in 2014 as in 1999. A quiet epidemic, spreading behind suburban curtains and in struggling rural towns, has become impossible to ignore.
"Now that an epidemic is affecting mainstream white America, we're seeing attitudes change," says Dr Kolodny.
Republicans Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina have spoken of the destructive impact of addiction on their own families. In March, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act passed in the Senate with rare bipartisan support.
At a recent drug abuse summit in Atlanta, US President Barack Obama called for $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) in additional funding to combat the epidemic. In doing so, he acknowledged that the shift towards treating rather than jailing addicts would be a bitter pill to swallow for African-American and Latino communities decimated by the "war on drugs".
"What has made it previously difficult to emphasise treatment over criminal justice is that the problem was identified as poor, minority, and as a consequence the thinking was 'it's often a character flaw in those individuals who live in those communities, and it's not our problem they're just being locked up'," he said.
Addiction was seen as a moral failing
In short, when the addicts were black and brown, addiction was a moral failing. Now that they are white - like 90 per cent of new heroin users in the last decade - it is a disease.
"The language is very different, because this epidemic is affecting the communities where politicians live," Dr Kolodny says.
"Pharmaceutical companies have created a market for the illegal drug cartels by increasing the number of Americans who are opioid addicted," he continues. "You now have markets for heroin where previously, nobody wanted heroin."
Lindenhurst, a beachfront commuter town on Long Island, an hour from New York, is one such community. The streets are deserted, the houses detached, with space for two cars in every driveway. As we pull up outside Teri Kroll's house on Walnut Street, two young men sitting in an idling car assess us with a look and slowly drive away.
Teri lost her son Tim to an overdose seven years ago. On her left wrist, she wears a green plastic bracelet bearing his name and another, in gold, with a mark for each of his 23 years. A "Timmy Blanket" made from scraps of his clothes is draped over a chair in her living room.
"This generation is really sick," she says. "It's sad when you talk to somebody in their late 20s. They know so many people who have this disease."
Three in four new heroin users graduate to the drug from painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet. Tim was prescribed them to treat migraine headaches when he was 18. A "straight edge" kid who surfed and snowboarded, he had never taken drugs until an unscrupulous doctor (later jailed for selling painkiller prescriptions) promised: "I can help you."
In four months, Tim tried seven different drugs before arriving at the strongest prescription opioid, OxyContin 80. He became moody and withdrawn. When his worried parents took him to their GP, the doctor told Tim to stop taking the pills immediately. Instead, addicted, he began to buy them on the black market. Eventually, he turned to heroin.
Addiction stories are rarely linear. Tim tried to quit, then relapsed. He tried to kill himself several times.
CONT - http://www.smh.com.au/world/america...-addiction-20160414-go6fmd.html#ixzz47uSviwX0
