Heroin Facts

Heroin is an extremely potent and addictive opiate drug that is highly addictive. The drug can be readily found in just about any area in the nation and around the world, and the facts show that use of heroin causes devastating social and economic consequences and puts its users at risk for serious health issues and even death. The following facts highlight how addictive heroin is and some of the consequences that can result from its use.

• Young heroin users sometimes mistakenly think that snorting or smoking heroin will not lead to addiction.
• Heroin users who snort or smoke the drug sometimes graduate to injection because their bodies become conditioned to the drug and its effects become less intense. Heroin injection is a more efficient means of administering the drug allowing for more intense effects.
• Both new and experienced heroin users risk overdosing on heroin because it is quite impossible for them to know the purity of the heroin they are using.
• Heroin overdose whether the drug is snorted, smoked, or injected, can cause slow and shallow breathing, convulsions, coma, and even death.
• Heroin users develop a tolerance for the drug and find themselves needing increasingly larger doses of the drug to achieve the same intensity or effect they experienced when they first began using heroin.
• Heroin users who inject the drug put themselves at risk of contracting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B and C, and other blood-borne viruses.
• The availability of high-purity heroin and the fear of infection due to dirty needles have made snorting and smoking the drug more common.
• As of 2008 an estimated 3.8 million Americans aged 12 or older report having tried heroin at least once during their lifetimes.
• According to a 2008 survey, an estimated 453,000 Americans reported past year heroin use and 213,000 reported past month heroin use.
• As of 2008, there were 114,000 persons aged 12 or older who had used heroin for the first time within the past 12 months.
• As of 2008 the median age of someone trying heroin for the first time was 23.4 years.
• Among students surveyed as part of a 2008 study, 1.4% of eighth graders, 1.2% of tenth graders, and 1.3% of twelfth graders reported lifetime use of heroin
• In 2008, 13.3% of eighth graders, 17.2% of tenth graders, and 25.4% of twelfth graders said that heroin was "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain.
• Due to the depression of the central nervous system that results from heroin use, mental functioning becomes clouded.
• After using heroin, breathing may be slowed to the point of respiratory failure.
• Acute side effects of heroin use includes slowed and slurred speech, slow gait, constricted pupils, droopy eyelids, impaired night vision, vomiting and constipation.
• Long time heroin users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, and liver disease. In addition, pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may also result in a heroin user.
• As higher doses of heroin are taken long term, physical dependence and addiction to the drug develop.
• Within a few hours after the last administration of heroin, withdrawal may occur.
• Acute heroin withdrawal symptoms peak between 48 and 72 hours after the last heroin dose and subside after about a week.
• Because individuals who use heroin do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at a great risk of overdose or death.
• The number of admissions to drug treatment in which heroin was the primary drug of abuse increased from 235,143 in 1997 to 246,871 in 2007.