Published: Friday, August 27, 2010
IN OUR VIEW / DRUG ADDICTION
Painful pattern emerging
The story of 18-year-old Corey Pierce's death due to a heroin overdose, as reported by Diana Hefley on Thursday, sadly illustrates our society's struggle with drugs and addiction.
For many of us, the word "heroin" conjures up images of scabby, scratching, rail-thin urban addicts, bodies tattooed with needle tracks. But nobody starts out like that.
Pierce's path to heroin use follows a fairly new but identifiable pattern: He first became addicted to smoking OxyContin, a powerful prescription pain medication. When he couldn't get that, he smoked heroin, eventually moving to injecting the drug.
Pierce's story is very similar to that of Sean Gahagan, the Mukilteo teenager who died in July 2008 of a heroin overdose, a month after graduating from Kamiak High School. Gahagan struggled with prescription drug addiction through high school and, like Pierce, went through treatment, only to relapse.
After Gahagan's death, his parents, John and Mary Jane Gahagan, became involved with The Science and Management of Addiction Foundation, a group fighting drug addiction in young people.
"There's still such a stigma attached to (addiction). People think it has to do with character or integrity. It doesn't; it's a disease," John Gahagan told The Herald in 2009.
Mr. Gahagan's point is important: Teens of all stripes are vulnerable to addiction, just as adult addicts represent all strata of society.
On Aug. 6, a former Lynnwood attorney was arrested after allegedly trying to smuggle heroin to a Snohomish County Jail inmate. Patrick J. Mullen, 63, reportedly told detectives that he became addicted to prescription pain killers after undergoing hip surgery. Then he became addicted to heroin, according to police, and agreed to smuggle heroin to inmates and, in return, keep some for his own use.
The fact that people will turn to heroin to get their opioid fix testifies to the immensely powerful addictive properties of prescription painkillers.
In 2007 in Snohomish County, unintentional poisonings (specifically prescription drug overdoses) became the leading cause of unintentional injury death, surpassing car crashes.
Police readily attribute the rise in heroin use to the ongoing surge in prescription drug abuse.
It's important to focus on what led these people to use heroin in the first place, or we'll be in danger of repeating the fallacy that helped create the current situation: That "street drugs" are more dangerous than "legal" ones.
All addictive drugs are dangerous; they don't discriminate. But right now, statewide, prescription drugs kill more people than meth, cocaine and heroin combined. (Alcohol, of course, is the drug most widely abused by young people and adults).
For many of us, the word "heroin" conjures up images of scabby, scratching, rail-thin urban addicts, bodies tattooed with needle tracks. But nobody starts out like that.
Pierce's path to heroin use follows a fairly new but identifiable pattern: He first became addicted to smoking OxyContin, a powerful prescription pain medication. When he couldn't get that, he smoked heroin, eventually moving to injecting the drug.
Pierce's story is very similar to that of Sean Gahagan, the Mukilteo teenager who died in July 2008 of a heroin overdose, a month after graduating from Kamiak High School. Gahagan struggled with prescription drug addiction through high school and, like Pierce, went through treatment, only to relapse.
After Gahagan's death, his parents, John and Mary Jane Gahagan, became involved with The Science and Management of Addiction Foundation, a group fighting drug addiction in young people.
"There's still such a stigma attached to (addiction). People think it has to do with character or integrity. It doesn't; it's a disease," John Gahagan told The Herald in 2009.
Mr. Gahagan's point is important: Teens of all stripes are vulnerable to addiction, just as adult addicts represent all strata of society.
On Aug. 6, a former Lynnwood attorney was arrested after allegedly trying to smuggle heroin to a Snohomish County Jail inmate. Patrick J. Mullen, 63, reportedly told detectives that he became addicted to prescription pain killers after undergoing hip surgery. Then he became addicted to heroin, according to police, and agreed to smuggle heroin to inmates and, in return, keep some for his own use.
The fact that people will turn to heroin to get their opioid fix testifies to the immensely powerful addictive properties of prescription painkillers.
In 2007 in Snohomish County, unintentional poisonings (specifically prescription drug overdoses) became the leading cause of unintentional injury death, surpassing car crashes.
Police readily attribute the rise in heroin use to the ongoing surge in prescription drug abuse.
It's important to focus on what led these people to use heroin in the first place, or we'll be in danger of repeating the fallacy that helped create the current situation: That "street drugs" are more dangerous than "legal" ones.
All addictive drugs are dangerous; they don't discriminate. But right now, statewide, prescription drugs kill more people than meth, cocaine and heroin combined. (Alcohol, of course, is the drug most widely abused by young people and adults).
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