CA Facing The Heroin Epidemic

In the past five years, the number of millennials using heroin has risen to great amounts. Since oxycodone is now too expensive at $80 a pill, individuals addicted to it are looking for their next cheapest high. In Southern California, especially near beach cities, drug dealers will now go up to teenagers and offer them a bag of heroin for only $5. It is no longer the criminals or troubled youths using this drug. It can be the boy-next-door or the student athlete. Heroin is affecting all members of the young adult community.
            “Overall, emergency department visits among heroin users of all ages increased, but the sharpest was among the state’s young adults. About 1,500 emergency department visits by California’s millennials poisoned by heroin were logged in 2015 compared with fewer than 1,000 in 2012” (Abram, 2017). How do we make this problem go away? The rate at which teenagers and young adults are overdosing from heroin is unacceptable. The solution can be awareness, advocacy and education. Informing parents to pay more attention to their children’s lives by knowing who they are hanging out with outside of the home. Teaching millennial about the severity of the drug and awareness so it is not used as an escape from their problems. Ridding the stigma to get appropriate treatment for the problem.
            If you are addicted to heroin and would like to get treatment, call Helix at (949) 214-4018. You have the option to change the course of your life for the better. It is never too late.
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 Mercury News "Use Fuels Surge of ER Visits Among California Millennials"