What
is heroin?
Heroin is
an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the
most abused and the most rapidly acting of the
opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a
naturally occurring substance extracted from the
seed pod of certain varieties of poppy
plants. It
is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or
as the black sticky substance known on the streets
as "black tar heroin."
Although
purer heroin is becoming more common, most street
heroin is "cut" with other drugs or with
substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk,
or quinine. Street heroin also can be cut with
strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin
abusers do not know the actual strength of the
drug or its true contents, they are at risk of
overdose or death. Heroin also poses special
problems because of the transmission of HIV and
other diseases that can occur from sharing needles
or other injection equipment.
What is the scope of heroin use in the United
States?
According to
the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health,
which may actually underestimate illicit opiate
(heroin) use, an estimated 3.7 million people had
used heroin at some time in their lives, and over
119,000 of them reported using it within the month
preceding the survey. An estimated 314,000
Americans used heroin in the past year, and the
group that represented the highest number of those
users were 26 or older. The survey reported that,
from 1995 through 2002, the annual number of new
heroin users ranged from 121,000 to 164,000.
During this period, most new users were age 18 or
older (on average, 75 percent) and most were male.
In 2003, 57.4 percent of past year heroin users
were classified with dependence on or abuse of
heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received
treatment for heroin abuse.
According to the Monitoring
the Future survey, NIDA's nationwide annual survey
of drug use among the Nation's 8th-, 10th-, and
12th-graders, heroin use remained stable from 2003
to 2004. Lifetime heroin use measured 1.6 percent
among 8th-graders and 1.5 percent among 10th- and
12th-graders.
The 2002 Drug Abuse Warning
Network (DAWN), which collects data on
drug-related hospital emergency department (ED)
episodes from 21 metropolitan areas, reported that
in 2002, heroin-related ED episodes numbered
93,519.
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Courtesy of :
National Institute
on Drug Abuse
