A staggering increase in U.S. heroin use has hit young, white men the hardest

Heroin use — which has been at the epicenter of a ruthless and relentless opioid epidemic sweeping the country — has increased fivefold over a decade, and dependence on the drug has tripled, researchers say.

A major study released Wednesday found that the sharpest increase in heroin use and addiction was among young, white men with lower education and income levels.


The findings come as much of the focus surrounding the opioid crisis has been on the mortality rates among middle-aged white women since the turn of this century.

But researchers now say younger white men are being hit even harder — at least by heroin.

In fact, men ages 25 to 44 accounted for the highest heroin-related death rate (13.2 per 100,000) in 2015 — a 22 percent rise from the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Silvia Martins, the lead author of the new study, said increases in heroin use and addiction may be related to several factors, including prescription opioid abuse and market forces that favor cheaper alternatives to pills — such as heroin.


“We saw that most of them had already used prescription opioids,” Martins, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, said in a phone interview. “We saw that in 2001-2002, only 36 percent of white heroin users reported they had already used prescription opioids before. Now, more than half of them — 53 percent of them — said they had used prescription opioids before. So we believe there is a link to the prescription opioid epidemic.

“Other potential reasons for that are the fact that heroin has become cheaper in recent years in the U.S.”

Or, as Drug ­Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne said, “The world is filled with addicts who got a legitimate prescription for an opioid and then became dependent on that and continued long after their recovery. Pill addiction is extremely expensive, so they move to heroin because it's cheaper and easier to get.”

Payne added that the DEA is “seeing a lot of the traffickers who have substituted fentanyl for heroin, and so it's just a vicious cycle of addiction we've seen with a lot of people.”

[Surgeons were told to stop prescribing so many painkillers. The results were remarkable.]
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