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A few big things happened that changed the heroin situation in white communities (also overall availability, but I mention white communities because holy gently caress heroin/opioid abuse have blown up in the last 10-15 years). 1) Stigma against opiate use has almost completely disappeared among youth. Gone are the days of the Requiem for a Dream "if you take opiates you're going to get hosed by a black guy." 2) Heroin got majorly romanticized in the tail end of the 90s and the early 2000s. At first, the stigma still was strong, but by the mid 2000s, the stigma was wearing off, yet the romanticization of heroin use (and the lifestyle associated with it in particular) was growing rapidly. 3) Once the economy imploded and the housing bubble popped, teenagers started working less (16-24 was the hardest hit demographic). Similarly, a statistically significant bunch of kids went through homelife upheaval (either due to family losing work, houses foreclosed, money for college not there, etc.). Kids with stressful home-lives and minimal prospects for the future are always at high risk for drug abuse. Pills generally being cheap or free in the beginning and heroin being extremely cheap (considering how far it goes in opiate-naive users) make for a ready escape. 3a) A lot of those same factors applied to middle/upper-class families as well as a ton of families were living well beyond their means. Even for those with economically stable home-lives, factors 1 and 2 were influential. Especially 2. If you spent time around affluent, alternative communities in New England, there were a lot of people who thought that life was meaningless and they just wanted a short, brief hedonistic experience. Similarly, heroin was perceived as 'real' and 'authentic' and 'edgy.' It definitely became a status symbol and for a lot of people it seemed to be a way that you could buy a sort of authenticity and human connection (cause if you've got H you are playing with fire and you are going to have people around if you want them). Moreover, especially for younger people, shooting up seemed to get weirdly communal and intimate. [I heard this basic account over and over and over again in group therapy sessions with heroin addicted teenagers] 4) After 2001, a lot of federal resources and manpower went from pursuing drug dealing, production, and smuggling into terrorism or fighting the wars in the ME. Since then, drug availability, purity, and cheapness have been on an almost across-the-board rise (this is true of all the most common drugs). Methamphetamine is making a massive comeback that is now beyond where it ever was at the height of the previous meth epidemic in many states. That's not the purview of this thread, but it's going to be in the news a lot more. Actually, where heroin has moved into well-off white communities, meth is now prevalent in minority communities with whom it didn't used to be particularly popular. For whatever reason, since 2010 especially, drug availability and purity are way up while price is way down. 5) There's a worldwide heroin epidemic. Afghanistan is once again producing an absolute mountain of heroin and even though it isn't making its way here, the quantity of heroin flowing in black market channels is the highest it has been in a long time. Also since heroin production exploded in Eurasia (by which I mostly mean Afghanistan), it's safe to assume that smuggling resources that were previously getting heroin and cocaine to European markets from Central/South America aren't bothering to compete with dirt cheap Afghan heroin, freeing up some amount of smuggling/organizational resources to focus specifically on American markets. There are obviously more factors involved, but at the moment we're in a perfect storm situation for a heroin epidemic. Similarly, we're in the buildup to a massive meth epidemic, too, if it isn't already here. A lot of the factors that kickstarted the opioid epidemics (high rates of use of pharmaceutical opioids among teenagers/youngish adults) are equally true of amphetamines. If you spend time around the under 25s, you'll see a pretty astounding rate of amphetamine use and abuse. Meth is still fairly stigmatized, but it's getting more mainstream and is getting a dark sort of glamour to it, as well. Personally, I find the meth epidemic a lot more concerning as meth users are more violent and toxic to whatever community they live within. Heroin addicts are a nuisance, but less of a physical threat (until you start talking about them as an infectious disease vector). Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jan 26, 2016 |
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Jan 26, 2016 07:08
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 11:41 |
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