Drug Abuse Has Become A Real Problem - 1235 Words

Heroin In the world today, drug abuse has become a real problem. In the 1800s there was a drug called opium that was commonly used. Opium came from the poppy seed plant and became very popular here in America, starting in the west. There used to be opium dens where cowhands would stop and stay and smoke opium. From opium, along came the drug morphine. Morphine was derived from the drug opium and was also introduced in America in the 1800s. Morphine became a very popular pain killer in America during that time, and it still is today. During the Civil War is when people started to realize how addictive the morphine was. There was a huge morphine epidemic in America after the Civil War and doctors did not know how to treat it. In 1874,†¦show more content†¦Although heroin is illegal in the United States, the number of heroin addicts in the US is increasing. â€Å"According to the 2011 Survey on Drug Use and Health by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, it is estimated that 607,000 persons per year used heroin in the years 2009-2011† (Anderson). A lot of people who try heroin for the first time have no idea what they are dealing with. The drug is so strong that if someone takes too much then they could easily overdose or even die on just the first time trying it. The age group that has increased the most on heroin abuse is young adults from the ages of nineteen to twenty-eight (Anderson). Although that is the age group affected most, there are still younger teenagers and older adults who have used heroin. Heroin can be taken many different ways. It can be injected, smoked, snorted, or just ingested like food. Many heroin users start off by either smoking or snorting it, but they begin to become tolerant to the high that it produces. The most common way of using heroin is by injecting it with a needle into your bloodstream. Out of all the ways to take heroin, injecting it has to greatest risk of lethal overdose. This is because of the large amounts of heroin that is going directly into the bloodstream (Nadelmann). There are a lot of different spots on the body that people can use to inject heroin. Some of the more common places are on the arms and legs. People can