A couple years ago, there was a special on MSNBC concerning Heroin and how it hit small rural communities. One segment focused on how it hit Lewistown. Two years later, it is hitting Tyrone hard.
Thursday’s bust by the Blair County Drug Task Force netted a number arrests of small time dealers.
According to Special Agent Randy Feathers, most of the dealers arrested were dealing to support their habits.
Heroin
Heroin is a highly addictive drug, and its use is a serious problem in America. Recent studies suggest a shift from injecting heroin to snorting or smoking because of increased purity and the misconception that these forms of use will not lead to addiction.
Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seedpod of the Asian poppy plant. Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder. Street names for heroin include “smack,” “H,” “skag,” and “junk.” Other names may refer to types of heroin produced in a specific geographical area, such as “Mexican black tar.”
Health Hazards
Heroin abuse is associated with serious health conditions, including fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, collapsed veins, and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.
The short-term effects of heroin abuse appear soon after a single dose and disappear in a few hours. After an injection of heroin, the user reports feeling a surge of euphoria (“rush”) accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, a dry mouth, and heavy extremities. Following this initial euphoria, the user goes “on the nod,” an alternately wakeful and drowsy state. Mental functioning becomes clouded due to the depression of the central nervous system. Long-term effects of heroin appear after repeated use for some period of time. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulitis, and liver disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health condition of the abuser, as well as from heroin’s depressing effects on respiration.
In addition to the effects of the drug itself, street heroin may have additives that do not readily dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs.
Reports from SAMHSA’s 1995 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), which collects data on drug-related hospital emergency room episodes and drug-related deaths from 21 metropolitan areas, rank heroin second as the most frequently mentioned drug in overall drug-related deaths. From 1990 through 1995, the number of heroin-related episodes doubled. Between 1994 and 1995, there was a 19 percent increase in heroin-related emergency department episodes.
According to the Blair County Drug and Alcohol Program 2001-02 executive summary, over the last four fiscal years, there has been a significant rise in the availability and use of heroin in our community and communities like ours in Pennsylvania. The heroin/opiate epidemic in Pennsylvania and Blair County is not media hype or public hysteria. Data, collected through the Department of Health Client Information System, confirms in admission across the state and within the Blair County community. Admissions in Blair County have increased from 56 admissions in the fiscal year 1996-97 to 571 admissions in fiscal year 2001-02. The most significant increase has been among our youth. Admissions between the age of 18-24 have increased from three in 1996-97 to 273 in 2001-02.
Tolerance, Addiction, and Withdrawal
With regular heroin use, tolerance develops. This means the abuser must use more heroin to achieve the same intensity or effect. As higher doses are used over time, physical dependence and addiction develop. With physical dependence, the body has adapted to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms may occur if use is reduced or stopped.
Withdrawal, which in regular abusers may occur as early as a few hours after the last administration, produces drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (“cold turkey”), kicking movements (“kicking the habit”), and other symptoms. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 48 and 72 hours after the last dose and subside after about a week. Sudden withdrawal by heavily dependent users who are in poor health is occasionally fatal, although heroin withdrawal is considered much less dangerous than alcohol or barbiturate withdrawal.
Treatment
There is a broad range of treatment options for heroin addiction, including medications as well as behavioral therapies.
Science has taught that when medication treatment is integrated with other supportive services, patients are often able to stop heroin, or other opiate, use and return to more stable and productive lives.
In November 1997, the National Institutes of Health convened a Consensus Panel on Effective Medical Treatment of Heroin Addiction. The panel of national experts concluded that opiate drug addictions are diseases of the brain and medical disorders that indeed can be treated effectively. The panel strongly recommended (1) broader access to methadone maintenance treatment programs for people who are addicted to heroin or other opiate drugs; and (2) the federal and state regulations and other barriers impeding this access be eliminated. This panel also stressed the importance of providing substance abuse counseling, psychosocial therapies, and other supportive services to enhance retention and successful outcomes in methadone maintenance treatment programs.
“Heroin is a quickly physically addictive drug,” said Deb Mackovyak, clinical supervisor of Drug and Alcohol Services at Altoona Hospital. “It takes two to three weeks of regular use for the body to get addicted.”
Heroin presents a problem because of the mental and physical addiction.
“Heroin produces a mental and physical high,” said Mackovyak. “There are a variety of treatment levels, from abstinance to the methadone maintenance treatment.”
Getting off heroin is a major problem for those who use the drug. The physical withdrawl is extremely uncomfortable.
“It is like the entire body is in agony,” said Mackovyak. “It is very frightening for the user to endure withdrawl. Many of the users are afraid of the withdrawl or in the middle will go back to using to avoid the pain of withdrawl.”
As with any addiction, it is an individual’s process.
“It has to happen from within,” said Mackovyak. “Addiction is a terminal illness if left untreated.”
At Tyrone Hospital, emergency room personnel report that in recent years,they have seen an increased number of patients visiting the emergency room due to drug related overdoses as often as every few weeks.
“The Tyrone Hospital Emergency Room tends to see an increased number of individuals visiting the emergency room seeking treatment for pain following major drug arrests,” sid Linda Morrison, head nurse at the Tyrone Hospital Emergency Room. “There is a definate pattern of activity in the emergency room when the street level supply of drugs is interrupted.”
That is where the physicians step up.
“Emergency personnel must distinguish those patients who are seeking treatment for legitimate pain from those who are drug seeking,” said Dr. David Lindsey, Tyrone Hospital Emergency Room physician.
During the summer of 2002, the Tyrone community started a drug task force, but activity has been limited since the inception.
