Heroin
In the 1990s, potent and inexpensive heroin became widely available in Portland; heroin use in Multnomah County rose 600% during that decade.
According to police, in 2008, heroin became more plentiful in Oregon in response to a crackdown on methamphetamine. In 2007, 115 heroin overdoses resulted in death, up 29% from 2006. In 2008, 100 deaths are projected. The number of deaths is far below the highs of the late 1990s. Most deaths are a result of the user misgauging their tolerance. Heroin is especially lethal because it depresses the central nervous system, unlike cocaine and meth which are stimulants.
In Oregon, black tar heroin comes from Mexico up the Interstate 5 corridor. In 2007, 19 pounds of heroin were seized by federal authorities, more than double the amount in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Controlled Substances In Oregon, Specific Drugs
Famous quotes containing the word heroin:
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country—it had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)