Heroin is a well-known opioid narcotic substance noted for its ability to trigger drug abuse, drug addiction and fatal drug overdoses. In recent months, this substance has reentered the public consciousness as a highly visible personal and public health danger. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration tracks heroin-related statistics for all U.S. teenagers and adults through an annual venture called the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. These statistics include such things as the overall number of people who use the drug and the number of people who use it for the first time in any given year.
The Basics
Heroin is produced illegally from another powerful opioid substance called morphine, which has restricted but legitimate usefulness as a treatment for severe pain. When it enters the human body, heroin converts back into morphine and travels to cell locations called opioid receptors, which are found in the brain and in several other locations in the rest of the body. Activation of the opioid receptors in the brain leads to the onset of a highly pleasurable sensation called euphoria.
As a rule, the path to addiction begins when a heroin user attempts to recreate this euphoric feeling repeatedly and inadvertently triggers a physical dependence on the drug in his or her brain. In the vast majority of cases, physically dependent heroin users become heroin addicts affected by symptoms such as intense heroin cravings, uncontrolled heroin intake, increasing tolerance to heroin’s effects and withdrawal symptoms when heroin intake falls below the brain’s established requirements. Heroin overdoses occur when a user takes too much of the drug or an unusually potent form of the drug and experiences disruptions in breathing and other critical body functions.
How Many Users?
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health is conducted by a federal agency called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The most recently reported version of the survey was released in late 2013 and contains figures gathered from most of the 2012 calendar year, as well as a small portion of the 2011 calendar year. (SAMHSA officially refers to these findings as the 2012 results.) The available figures show that roughly 335,000 Americans age 12 or older used heroin in the average month during the survey period. A total of roughly 669,000 Americans in this age range used the drug at least once during the entire yearlong survey period.
How Many New Users?
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health also tracks the number of people who use heroin for the first time in any given year. In addition, the survey tracks the average age of new heroin users. The most recent survey figures show that approximately 156,000 U.S. teenagers and adults used the drug for the first time at some point during the overlapping 12-month period in 2011 and 2012. These figures also show that the average new user initiated heroin intake at the age of 23.
Comparison to Previous Totals
Since the National Survey on Drug Use and Health is conducted every year, researchers and public health officials can use information from the survey to track ongoing trends in the use of heroin and the full spectrum of all other legal and illegal substances of abuse. With the exception of a single year (2008), monthly involvement in heroin use has been increasing steadily in the U.S. since 2007. In that year, roughly 161,000 teens and adults used the drug on a monthly basis; this total is dramatically lower than the 335,000 monthly users reported for 2012. Annual involvement in heroin use has also risen steadily since 2007. In that year, approximately 373,000 people used the drug at least once; again, this total falls far below the number of annual users (669,000) reported in the latest completed version of the survey. Approximately 106,000 people tried heroin for the first time in 2007; this represents only two-thirds of the total for 2012 (although 2012 numbers for new users were down compared to 2011).
Considerations
The National Institute on Drug Abuse and several other prominent organizations link the rise in heroin use to a number of underlying factors. These factors include the widespread phenomenon of prescription opioid abuse and the relatively low cost of much of the heroin now available in the U.S. Current estimates indicate that close to 50 percent of all teen and young adult IV (intravenous) heroin users start out as opioid medication abusers. Many of these people transition into heroin use because the drug commonly costs substantially less than illicitly obtained prescription opioids.