Heroin Usage Among Teens Is UP

Kids these days.

Heroin use is a very scary, very stupid thing for anyone to do, and it's alarming to see the number of teens doing it rise and rise.

The weird thing is, it seems to have taken an about-face from before: once plaguing cities, it is now infiltrating suburbs.

In 1999, 198 people between the ages of 15 and 24 died of a heroin overdose. Compare that to 510 deaths in 2009, and you can see that there's a major problem happening.

And that's just deaths. What about those who haven't died?

Well, let's look at treatment: the figure jumped from 4,414 to more than 21,000 (about 80 percent) between 1999 and 2009.

And guess what? Ninety percent of teen heroin addicts are white.

If we're to believe NBC news, then the gateway to this insane drug is prescription painkillers because the same high is in heroin, which is cheaper, more intense and easier to buy.

Even Rafael Lemaitre, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, says:

“It’s hard to talk about the heroin problem without talking about the prescription drug problem."

Why are kids doing drugs? Who does anyone do drugs?

It seems so clear to us that heroin is terrible, and prescription meds used likewise to get high is also terrible — so why can't kids see that?

Is it the education? Is it the parents? The media? The pressure?

Whatever the reason, we need to figure out how to stop this.

[Image via AP Images.]

Tags: addict, death, drug, drugs, education, kid, kids, media, nbc, parents, people, problem, scary, treatment