Interesting Heroin Issues

Interesting Heroin Issues

Reason: H: The surprising truth about heroin and addiction

The fact that heroin use is so rare -- involving, according to the government’s data, something like 0.2 percent of the U.S. population in 2001 -- suggests that its appeal is much more limited than we’ve been led to believe. If heroin really is "so good," why does it have such a tiny share of the illegal drug market? Marijuana is more than 45 times as popular. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicates that about 3 million Americans have used heroin in their lifetimes; of them, 15 percent had used it in the last year, 4 percent in the last month. These numbers suggest that the vast majority of heroin users either never become addicted or, if they do, manage to give the drug up. A survey of high school seniors found that 1 percent had used heroin in the previous year, while 0.1 percent had used it on 20 or more days in the previous month. Assuming that daily use is a reasonable proxy for opiate addiction, one in 10 of the students who had taken heroin in the last year might have qualified as addicts. These are not the sort of numbers you’d expect for a drug that’s irresistible.

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