Heroin use is increasing rapidly across the United States among all age, race, income and ethnic groups, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday. And the increase comes with a devastating price: Deaths from heroin-related overdoses nearly quadrupled between 2002 and 2013.
Heroin use doubled among women and young adults ages 18 to 25, and more than doubled among non-Hispanic whites. Some of the highest increases were in groups with historically low rates of abuse: women, people with higher incomes and people who are privately insured.
In other words, as we lose our nerve in the war against drugs -- to the point that Congress is (apparently) thinking breezily about lowering penalties for illicit drugs of every sort -- the human toll is exploding, and reaching into groups where it was little known before.
Indeed, DrugWarFacts.org, a pro-legalization group, acknowledges in this chart that there were 17,000 deaths per year from illicit drugs (and that's using 2002 data), Moreover, in 2013, before this year's spike, there were 8,257 heroin overdose deaths alone.
It's not the drug war that kills. It's drugs that kill.
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