Study: Chicago Has Worst Heroin Problem in U.S.

Heroin use and its associated problems are worse in the Chicago metropolitan region than in any other metro area in the nation, a new study shows.

The report by researchers at Roosevelt University's Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy reveals that in Chicago and its suburbs, more people visit hospital emergency rooms with problems related to heroin than in any other major metropolitan area in the U.S.

The 23,000 mentions of heroin in emergency room records were nearly 50 percent higher in New York City, the second-ranking metropolitan area. [Chicago's rate of heroin admissions as a percentage of emergency admissions was just slightly below Boston's - 250 per 100,000 vs. 259.]

Chicago also ranked first in the number of emergency room admittances for heroin among females, males, individuals 21 and older, and African Americans.

Cook County Jail also ranked first in the percentage of arrestees testing positive for heroin (29 percent). Arrestees testing positive for heroin were also more likely to be white (41 percent), compared to African American (25.3 percent) or Latino (24.3 percent).

"Chicago has one of the worst - if not the worst - heroin problems in the nation," said Kane-Willis, one of the authors of the new report.

Deaths from heroin overdoses increased in Lake County by 130 percent from 2000 to 2009. McHenry County saw an increase of 150 percent in three years, and in Will County, heroin deaths doubled in just two years. And while heroin deaths in Cook County have decreased 16 percent over the period 1998 to 2008, heroin- related deaths increased 40 percent among one demographic: white women.

Kane-Willis told CBS Station WBBM that heroin users are more white, more female, and much younger than is the common perception.

Heroin is also the most common illegal substance for which Illinoisans seek public treatment - more prevalent than cocaine and marijuana - and is second only to alcohol.

African Americans accounted for 74 percent of those aged 40 to 49 discharged from hospitals for heroin. However, a growing number of users are white suburban teens.

Of those in publicly funded treatment for heroin in 2008, nearly 70 percent under age 18 were white.

Those who treat them say it's a disturbing trend.

"It's cheaper to buy heroin than to go to the movies, to buy a movie ticket. That's really frightening," Kate Mahoney, executive director of PEER Services, told WBBM.

To combat these problems, the report's authors make several policy recommendations, including:

• Comprehensive drug education for young people;
• Increased funding for treatment (there have been service cuts in all types of alcohol and drug treatment);
• Increased availability of syringes and syringe exchange programs, to prevent the spread of blood-borne pathogens, such as hepatitis or HIV;
• Support overdose prevention and Naloxone administration efforts; and
• Provide limited protection for 911 callers reporting a drug overdose and requesting emergency assistance.


For more info:
"Heroin Use in Illinois: A Ten-Year Multiple Indicator Analysis, 1998 to 2008" - Executive Summary | Full Report

[malcolmkyle]

If you want to know the truth about the Netherlands, then what better people to ask than The World Health Organization.

The WHO survey of 17 countries finds that the United States has the highest usage rates for nearly all illegal substances.

In the U.S. 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent. No one else was even close. The results for cocaine use were similar, with the U.S. again leading the world by a large margin.

In the Netherlands, where adults are permitted to possess a small of marijuana and purchase it from regulated businesses, only 19.8 percent have used marijuana, less than half the U.S. figure.

Even more striking is what the researchers found when they asked young adults when they had started using marijuana. Again, the U.S. led the world, with 20.2 percent trying marijuana by age 15. No other country was even close, and in the Netherlands, just 7 percent used marijuana by 15 -- roughly one-third of the U.S. figure.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/90295/

[malcolmkyle]

Why would any one person believe they have the right to dictate to another person what they may or may not do with their own lives and bodies? Why waste so much time and energy on all the wrong issues? We are surrounded by serious, very real dangers. The next huge economic meltdown is approaching which will be far worse than the last one. While all this and more is going down, the busy bodies are worried about whether or not someone is smoking a bowl of flowers or snorting and injecting various powders. Drug use is not going away and the millions of people involved on a regular basis are your neighbors, business associates, co-workers, PTA members, little league coaches, cops, firefighters, nurses, doctors, and even politicians. We need to prioritize our agenda and spend our energies protecting and loving our children and each other.

Prohibition isn't like a disease where we're still waiting for the cure to be discovered - we know the cure for this. This isn't like putting a man on the moon or inventing the Internet - it doesn't take some stroke of genius or feat of technology. We have everything we need, right now, to end this moronothon. Rarely in the history of mankind have we encountered a problem of such magnitude and consequence that is so eminently solvable.

The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order. That is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means, and sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.

What a lost and futile cause Prohibition is! The country is flat busted. It?s 'Weimar Republic' here we come. It would make more sense, and cost a hell of a lot less, if the Feds created an agency to count grains of sand on all of the US beaches. Why in Sam Hill would such a great nation purposely shoot itself in the foot? There is absolutely no justification for prohibition; even Aspirin and Tylenol directly kill more people than all illegal drugs combined!

[berlinfoto-2009]

I read your two most recent post, I agree with most of what you say, I appreciate your effort.
I will add that when taken in a clinical setting pharmaceutical grade heroin causes absolutely no harmful health problems, other than addiction. Pharmaceutical grade heroin taken in a proper environment does not shorten the life of a human.

[malcolmkyle]

Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless.

Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us.

Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.

By its very nature, prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous and ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved. Thus, the allure of this reliably and lucrative industry, with it's enormous income potential that consistently outweighs the risks associated with the illegal operations that such a trade entails, will remain with us until we are collectively forced to admit the obvious.

A great many of us are slowly but surely wising up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco, clearly two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to your absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society.

There is therefore an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. Anybody 'halfway bright', and who's not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem, it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand. If you are not capable of understanding this connection then maybe you're using something far stronger than the rest of us. So put away your pipe, lock yourself away in a small room with some tinned soup and water, and try to crawl back into reality A.S.A.P.

Because Drug cartels will always have an endless supply of ready cash for wages, bribery and equipment, no amount of tax money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safe again. Only an end to prohibition can do that! How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?

If you support the Kool-Aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, tortured corpses, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, economic tribulation, unemployment and the complete loss of the rule of law.

"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln

The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!

[YourRearViewMirror1]

by WEEZEROFOZ June 29, 2010 4:59 PM EDT
How about we start making them take and PASS a drug test to get welfare checks!
This is how they finance drug habits...OUR TAX DOLLARS!

*********************************************

During Spring Break in Cancun, Mexico, all the Drug, Alcohol and Six Addicts are Whites with the Support of their Educated Middle and High class parents.

Watch the movie 'Woodstock'. All the Drug, Alcohol and Six Addicts are Whites with the Support of their highly Educated Middle and High class parents.

Ooops, maybe you are color blind. Sorry.

[edixope4842]

"Ooops, maybe you are color blind. Sorry."


Or just maybe you're an honor graduate of the Sharpton/Jackson school of

IMA Victim U.

[malcolmkyle]

Have you ever watched the drug clock as it ticks away all our hard earned tax dollars? http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm Maybe YOU'RE still flush enough to continue throwing money at this moronathon, but the rest of us mere mortals have definitely had more than enough of this idiotic farce.

[YourRearViewMirror1]

ECONOMIC 101:
Eliminate the Powerful Demand for Narcotic Drugs such as Cocaine, Heroin and Marijuana and you eliminate all the Drug Cartels and Drug Production in this world.

The Millions and Millions of poor American Addicts take Narcotic Drugs for a little High and Excitement since their life is so Sick and Boring.

Keep on interrupting the source of Supply instead of the source of Demand and maybe Americans will win this War on Drugs in about 2000 years.

[lilbear925]

Isn't Obama from Chicago? No wonder he doesn't want to eradicate the opium crop in Afghanistan!

[pasioannina]

reminds me of the late 50 s coming to America as a immigrant to another strong democratic state, mass, as a child the bathroom of the dinner i would eat breakfast the bathroom was a shooting in the arms, leg, neck and some poor soul only had eyes and privet parts with veins remaining real worthless and useless politicians in all parties

[pragmatist1]

I live in the area. Drugs are a part of the problem. Other problems include a lack of moral upbringing, ethics and integrity; add to this the code of silence and a predominance of urban terrorists, corrupt politicians and people who just don't care...the perfect storm.

[malcolmkyle]

The damage done by prohibition is far worse than all the damage caused by all of the illegal drugs combined.

The U.S. comprises 5 percent of the world's population yet uses 60 percent of the world's drugs. The prohibition on these drugs has been waged for 70 years and has cost $1.5 trillion.

The drug war encompasses everyone of us. The prohibited Drugs kill far less people than the drug war.

The prison system under prohibition worsens both the drug epidemic and the AIDS epidemic.

A potential tax payer is turned into a tax burden every time prison is used to enforce prohibition.

87 percent of drug users are white yet 74 percent of people sentenced for drug possession are black. Whites do most of the 'crime' but blacks do most of the time.

Teachers with a college degree start at around $32,000 annually and a university professor with a Ph.D. starts at around $47,000 annually, but prison guards with a GED or high school diploma earn $50,000 plus overtime pay annually to guard non-violent pot smokers and drug offenders.

Everything you have been told by the government about drugs is a lie; the two proven gateway drugs are already legal: alcohol and nicotine.

The only thing that has proven to reduce use and demand is legalized regulation combined with treatment and education.

[vietnamwar]

Who was incharge in CHICAGO before ???

[Archie_Clement]

I think the United States should completely withdraw from Chicago. We have no pressing national interests there, democratic elections are virtually impossible, the government is nepotistic and corrupt, and the ethnic fighting in that area kills more people every year than we lose in Afghanistan.