Heroin Sweeping Across Suburban America And College Campuses

[N'Zinga Shani]

Your Attention PLEASE! We Might Not Know Our Children As Well As We Think We Do

We invite you to read the complete article linked below in the New York Times:

"Serving All your Heroin Needs." By SAM QUINONES, APRIL 17, 2015

The corpses are piling up in America's suburbs and affluent communities.

Why is there no public outrage? There is no visible street crime attached to this epidemic.  There are hardly any news reports; no blazing headlines on the evening news; most of the victims are suburban dwellers from affluent families; the deaths are often spoken of only in whispered tones.  Why is this so? Where are the screaming media headlines?

Let’s NOT Focus on Saving Face Among Friends.  Focus On Saving the Lives Of Young People.  This is not true for only college students, but also young mothers and executives.

Let's talk to our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Talk to the young mother who is juggling work and family responsibilities. Ask questions; share information; express our concerns.  The bottom line here is saving the lives of our young people. There is no embarrassment to be covered up. Many of the college students using Heroin are now addicts who need immediate intervention.  We used to call it tough love.  Many first got involved through legitimate prescriptions to relieve pain; others just wanted to 'try' something they have never tried before.  Some just wanted to fit in with 'friends.'  The author of the Times article says: “Too often, opioid painkillers were prescribed to excess; after I had my appendix removed a few years back, I received 60 Vicodin, when four might have been enough.”  

"FATAL heroin overdoses in America have almost tripled in three years. More than 8,250 people a year now die from heroin. At the same time, roughly double that number are dying from prescription opioid painkillers, which are molecularly similar. Heroin has become the fallback dope when an addict can’t afford, or find, pills. Total overdose deaths, most often from pills and heroin, now surpass traffic fatalities.

If these deaths are the measure, we are arguably in the middle of our worst drug plague ever, apart from cigarettes and alcohol.

And yet this is also our quietest drug plague. Strikingly little public violence accompanies it. This has muted public outrage. Meanwhile, the victims — mostly white, well-off and often young — are mourned in silence, because their parents are loath to talk publicly about how a cheerleader daughter hooked for dope, or their once-star athlete son overdosed in a fast-food restaurant bathroom.

 “The problem “is worse than it’s ever been, and young people are dying,” an addiction doctor in Columbus, Ohio — one of our many new heroin hot spots — wrote me last month. “This past Friday I saw 23 patients, all heroin addicts recently diagnosed.”

So we are at a strange new place. We enjoy blissfully low crime rates, yet every year the drug-overdose toll grows. People from the most privileged groups in one of the wealthiest countries in the world have been getting hooked and dying in almost epidemic numbers from substances meant to numb pain.  Street crime is no longer the clearest barometer of our drug problem; corpses are.” Please read the complete article linked below and share this blog link.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opinion/sunday/serving-all-your-heroin-needs.html?

We encourage you to read this Obituary Post in the Tribune Media dated April 23, 2015.  This family lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here is the core of the article written by the father   Parks’ daughter, 24-year-old Molly Parks, was found in the restroom at her job with a needle stuck in her arm.

Tom Parks says he hopes his daughter’s obituary highlights the dangers of drug addiction and encourages others who are fighting similar battles to find help. “I’m not looking for sympathy but I want people to know that our lives are made up of the choices we make and for some death is a matter of choice too. My daughter Molly Parks made many good choices in her too short life and she made some bad choices. She tried to fight addiction in her own way and last night her fight came to an end in a bathroom of a restaurant with a needle of heroin. Her whole family tried to help her win the battle but we couldn’t show her a way that could cure her addiction."Read more here: http://goo.gl/KuRvxt:

Grieving father writes honest obituary after daughter’s heroin overdose Posted 4:13 PM, April 23, 2015, by Tribune Media Wire

[N'Zinga Shani]

The corpses are piling up in America's suburbs and affluent communities.

Why is there no public outrage? There is no visible street crime attached to this epidemic.  There are hardly any news reports; no blazing headlines on the evening news; most of the victims are suburban dwellers from affluent families; the deaths are often spoken of only in whispered tones.  Why is this so?  Now that they are needed, where are the screaming media headlines?  Is it possible that this story will not make good media copy?