Hopefully, the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman will help wake a lot of people up about what is happening in this country with heroin overdoses.
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, who died of an apparent heroin overdose on Sunday, was just one of hundreds of New Yorkers who fall victim to this drug each year. Heroin-related deaths increased 84 percent from 2010 to 2012 in New York City and occur at a higher rate — 52 percent — than overdose deaths involving any other substance…
…According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdose is now the leading cause of injury-related fatalities in the United States, ahead of motor-vehicle collisions and firearms accidents.
Thankfully, Russell Brand is doing his part. Fentanyl-laced heroin is killing people by the dozens. Ironically, a crackdown on the abuse of prescription painkillers is leading kids to move to heroin and to move to it quicker than they otherwise would. That’s because an opiate addict will take whatever they can get, and heroin happens to be cheaper than most prescription opiates. Yet, it is precisely because people get hooked on the prescription drugs that there is such a spike in heroin overdoses. There is no easy solution to the problem, but kids need to be better educated about how playing around with painkillers can lead directly to intravenous heroin use, addiction, and premature death.
Hoffman’s death was certainly premature, but it wasn’t remotely unusual.
