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OxyContin is the gateway drug to heroin addiction south of Boston
Boston Herald
March 25. 2007
BROCKTON, Mass. -- A growing number of young adults experimenting with the powerful painkiller OxyContin are getting hooked on heroin, triggering a spike in drug overdoses, broken lives and pressure on emergency services south of Boston.
”It is alarming,” Abington Police Chief David Majenski told The Enterprise newspaper. ”We have made a tremendous amount of heroin arrests and it is not slowing down at all.”
The link between OxyContin abuse by teens and addiction to heroin is tenacious. Several recovering addicts said they got ”high” on OxyContin while in high school, got hooked, then turned to heroin when buying the painkiller on the street got too expensive, the newspaper reported Sunday.
At least 2,682 people were treated in emergency rooms for opioid-related abuse, dependency or poisoning between 2003 and 2005 in the region, according to the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy.
An examination of death certificates filed in 28 communities shows that 74 people have died of opiate-related overdoses, including heroin, between Jan. 1, 2004 and Aug. 31, 2006, the newspaper said, citing its examination of death certificates filed in 28 local communities.
Those numbers translate to devastating tragedies to relatives of the victims.
”These people are not dirt bags,” said Hanover’s Theresa Cairo, whose daughter, Jill, died of an overdose at age 24. ”They are intelligent, beautiful people. It is someone who looks like your daughter. It is someone who could be your daughter.”
The problem adds a burden to taxpayers and saps resources from emergency services.
In Whitman, fire department emergency medical technicians responded to 20 overdoses from September to November. One person died.
The narcotic-antidote Narcan was administered in nearly half of the overdose calls attended to by fire department’s emergency medical staff last year in Easton, fire chief Thomas F. Stone said.
As heroin -- once considered as a problem of the urban streets -- moves up and out, desperate families are turning to the courts, pleading with judges to order the arrest and committal of their children to treatment programs for up to 30 days.
The problem ”has no psychological profile, it has no socio-economic profile,” said Dr. Michael L. Dern, a Brockton physician who has treated young heroin addicts.
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Boston Herald
March 25. 2007
BROCKTON, Mass. -- A growing number of young adults experimenting with the powerful painkiller OxyContin are getting hooked on heroin, triggering a spike in drug overdoses, broken lives and pressure on emergency services south of Boston.
”It is alarming,” Abington Police Chief David Majenski told The Enterprise newspaper. ”We have made a tremendous amount of heroin arrests and it is not slowing down at all.”
The link between OxyContin abuse by teens and addiction to heroin is tenacious. Several recovering addicts said they got ”high” on OxyContin while in high school, got hooked, then turned to heroin when buying the painkiller on the street got too expensive, the newspaper reported Sunday.
At least 2,682 people were treated in emergency rooms for opioid-related abuse, dependency or poisoning between 2003 and 2005 in the region, according to the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy.
An examination of death certificates filed in 28 communities shows that 74 people have died of opiate-related overdoses, including heroin, between Jan. 1, 2004 and Aug. 31, 2006, the newspaper said, citing its examination of death certificates filed in 28 local communities.
Those numbers translate to devastating tragedies to relatives of the victims.
”These people are not dirt bags,” said Hanover’s Theresa Cairo, whose daughter, Jill, died of an overdose at age 24. ”They are intelligent, beautiful people. It is someone who looks like your daughter. It is someone who could be your daughter.”
The problem adds a burden to taxpayers and saps resources from emergency services.
In Whitman, fire department emergency medical technicians responded to 20 overdoses from September to November. One person died.
The narcotic-antidote Narcan was administered in nearly half of the overdose calls attended to by fire department’s emergency medical staff last year in Easton, fire chief Thomas F. Stone said.
As heroin -- once considered as a problem of the urban streets -- moves up and out, desperate families are turning to the courts, pleading with judges to order the arrest and committal of their children to treatment programs for up to 30 days.
The problem ”has no psychological profile, it has no socio-economic profile,” said Dr. Michael L. Dern, a Brockton physician who has treated young heroin addicts.
Link