Many middle-class parents were appropriately rattled by Ben Cimons’ powerful account in Washington Post of being a “nice suburban kid” who became addicted to opiods and ultimately almost died of a heroin overdose. The desire of people from “good families” to believe that drug problems are confined to low-income urban communities is understandable, but also false — indeed perniciously so.
Ben and I, along with Wall Street Journal reporter Zusha Elinson and Stanford visiting fellow Markos Kounalakis were on Warren Olney’s To the Point radio program last week to discuss how heroin is making a comeback. Among the key themes of the discussion was that the origins of the recent rise of heroin can be traced directly to the recent and continuing extensive availability of prescription opioids.
p.s. I had a brain freeze when Warren asked me for the common trade names of hydrocodone-containing pain medications; I said Lortab but forgot to mention Vicodin.
[Cross-posted at The Reality-Based Community]
