America’s Heroin Epidemic.
In recent weeks, I have found myself and the people I work with investigating an enormous amount of heroin trafficking cases. We have been chasing bad guy’s, chasing cars, executing search warrants, making numerous arrests and seizing lots of heroin. It seems as if all of a sudden we have been hit by a wave of heroin, with criminal opportunists looking to capitalize at every angle.
Some of what we come across is what I would call routine: Follow some bad guys, watch them, trail them and move in for the arrest. As soon as I returned home from the National Capitol Region campus of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Charles Town, West Virginia, I began to switch hats and return to the job which pays my salary. The emails were coming in, text messages, phone calls, you name it, all indicators that things were busier than usual.
Just recently, we had set up an operation to go after a target who was on our radar from prior incidents. After the arrest and seizure (1/2 kilo of heroin), we traveled back to the targets apartment to secure it and execute an emergency search warrant. Inside the apartment was the targets wife and five (5) young children, all under the age of seven (7), three (3) of which were foster children. The kids were watching SpongeBob Square Pants and singing the theme song “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea.”
I was familiar with heroin being on the rise but this incident caused me to pause and really look at the broader picture. We have a growing epidemic of heroin in this country. Wives, children, foster children, moms, dads, brothers and sisters are getting caught up in the middle of all this. Our target is the breadwinner of the family. His wife was bringing in foster kids to generate some money for the family. She knew what was going on and allowed it to happen but I suppose she was also a victim caught in this web. I could take a more cynical view on this but something about this was different. Now what does she do? No money coming in, foster kids have been removed, her own kids may be relocated? The trickle down effect of this epidemic is catastrophic. What chance do these kids have being behind the eight ball like this? And this is just one family in New York City.
The problem is multi-faceted. With law enforcement cracking down on pharmacies and prescription medications, pill addicts are switching gears to heroin use. I was stunned to learn 80% of the world’s pain pills are consumed in the United States, which has just 5% of the world’s population. As a result, accidental prescription drug overdose is now the leading cause of acute preventable death for Americans. Someone dies in this manner every 19 minutes. Pill manufacturers are making an effort to address the problem by making it harder to grind down pills. If a certain pill is grinded down, it will loose its effect. Enforcement of prescription abuse have caused the price of pills to skyrocket. Heroin is significantly cheaper than prescription drugs. Opiate pain medications cost the uninsured about $1 per milligram; so a 60-milligram pill will cost $60. You can obtain the equivalent amount of heroin for about one-tenth the price.
We also have mass heroin production coming from Mexico, where production has risen more than 600% in the last 10 years. Dealers and other criminal opportunists are pushing heroin harder than ever before. They have branched out to the suburbs. They will use many sales pitches, one of which is giving away free samples at parties and sports events, getting new customers by the minute. Once your hooked, you come back with cash. It is cheaper and easier to get than prescription pills. Heroin is a painkiller, just like prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and codeine. It’s actually the strongest pain reliever that’s out there, and it relieves emotional pain as much as physical pain. Heroin is not necessarily like what we see in the movies, junkies shooting up with needles. Today, you can shoot it and snort it. Snorting it is a preferred method because the addiction can potentially go undetected longer, not leaving any needle marks.
“Heroin addiction is probably at its all-time high,” says Special Agent Jack Riley, the DEA’s regional head in Chicago. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years in virtually every corner of this country and if anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction on a family, on a community, on society, it’s heroin. “I just don’t understand why people across the board don’t see its danger. Social services are overwhelmed, our healthcare services are overwhelmed, yet Mexican organized crime and street gangs make billions from it.” Research suggests that nearly 34,000 12-17 year olds are now trying heroin for the first time each year, as the drug becomes cheaper and more readily available than ever. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that America had 373,000 users in 2007 and 669,000 in 2012. The Drug Enforcement Administration seized four times the amount of heroin along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2012 as it did in 2008.
The U.S. Government is not sure on how to handle the crisis. Some local communities are calling for an increase in the number of treatment centers and work on preventing addiction. Some law enforcement communities have decided not to press charges against those whom they come across in overdose situations. They realize that arrests are not always the answer. Many Police Departments have equipped their officers with the anti-overdose nasal spray naloxone. These are just a few responses to a growing trend.
For me, every time I hear that SpongeBob song I will always think of those cute kids and how they’re doing. Innocent kids caught in a terrible problem.
