Amid Heroin Crisis, GOP Contenders Reframe Addiction as a Health Crisis

[Several Republican candidates have responded to the crisis with an about-face rarely seen since Richard Nixon launched the so-called war on drugs 45 years ago: a mainstream conservative movement calling for treating low-level drug use with health services instead of prison time. Last month in New Hampshire, GOP contenders unveiled several ideas — although few with detailed plans — to treat heroin addiction via rehabilitation, from placing more emphasis on drug prevention and targeting drug dealers instead of users to expanding recovery programs.]

Read the full article | Infographics | AL JAZEERA

Also, Drug Poisoning Mortality: USA 2002-2014 | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across America

Deaths from overdoses are
reaching levels similar to the
H.I.V. epidemic at its peak

[Deaths from drug overdoses have jumped in nearly every county across the United States, driven largely by an explosion in addiction to prescription painkillers and heroin.

Some of the largest concentrations of overdose deaths were in Appalachia and the Southwest, according to newcounty-level estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of these deaths reached a new peak in 2014:47,055 people, or the equivalent of about 125 Americans every day.]  Read the full article here | THE NEW YORK TIMES

While Mexican Cannabis Output Falls, US Surge in Heroin Consumption

Washington Post

The surge of cheap heroin spreading in $4 hits across rural America can be traced back to the remote valleys of the northern Sierra Madre.

With the wholesale price of marijuana falling — driven in part by decriminalization in sections of the United States — Mexican drug farmers are turning away from cannabis and filling their fields with opium poppies.

Mexican heroin is flooding north as U.S. authorities trying to contain an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse have tightened controls on synthetic opiates such as hydrocodone and OxyContin. As the pills become more costly and difficult to obtain, Mexican trafficking organizations have found new markets for heroin in places such as Winchester, Va., and Brattleboro, Vt., where, until recently, needle use for narcotics was rare or unknown.

Read the article from Washington Post…

The Fraught History of Heroin Addiction | Nash Jenkins for The Atlantic

Read the entire article from The Atlantic

[…. In the frankest and arguably finest epitaph for Hoffman I’ve read, the writer known online as General Gandhi encourages us to avoid the ritual of narration altogether. It is a habit, he writes, of masturbatory sensationalism, an example of the crude and self-contradictory lens of detached idolization and quietly zealous schadenfreude through which the American public watches its stars.]