Heroin making ‘roaring comeback’ in New York: DEA agent

[hollowdweller]

22. Here are the reasons I know.

OK so when I first started working at my job giving opiates out was fairly rare. Only for severe, acute pain like cancer or maybe a ruptured disc awaiting surgery.

About the time they started easing up on that and giving it out for less severe conditions we also passed welfare reform. It was much harder to get any assistance, but you COULD still get a Medicaid card. So people would get a prescription for them, or benzo's and sell them.

That pretty much started the problem.

Then start tracking the slide income inequality since the 90's and you have a lot of poor people who either don't have a job or are severely underemployed.

For instance a girl I worked with in the 90's had some female surgery. They gave her a big bottle of lortab. She took maybe 10 while she was recovering and then sold the rest to the people in her trailer park and paid off her deductible.

I was talking to a friend of a friend a few years back. He found out my line of work and was telling me about his recovery from a burst cervical vertebrae while he was a roofer. "Six months ago they cancelled my prescription for Vicodin" he said. "Great" I said. Knowing he meant he had finally improved to the point he no longer needed it. "Well not exactly" he said. " I hadn't been taking it for months before that" When I worked as a roofer I made over 20 dollars an hour. Now I can't do that work and I make 12 dollars an hour at Olive Garden. So the Vicodin had been paying my truck payment and child support"

So far as pills, around here it's not exactly bogus prescriptions, it's more people who have a legitimate reason for it but would rather feel a little pain and make ends meet. Also doctors often prescribe way more than are needed to get over surgery or whatever so there's extra.

Of course now we have lots of people OD'ing. Leading cause of death for people under 45 in my state. Also you have a lot of other problems. Robbery, Hepatitis C is epidemic here. Liver cancer. I've had a number of clients that had to have IV antibiotics and joint replacement due to infections from needles. Had one girl had both arms amputated due to shooting Xanax in her arms!

So make them harder to get. OK so then to fill the void all the places we have troops in now start sending us Heroin. Great.


OK now let's go BACK TO THE FUTURE


1980's. Under Reagan we suffer a severe recession that hits urban areas especially hard. We see the breaking of unions and free trade cut salaries. Reagan leads the way on drug testing and companies follow. Columbian weed becomes hard to find due to drug interception.

The US is militarily involved in Central America. Suddenly we have a cocaine epidemic, then a CRACK epidemic! Much easier to smuggle in than weed. Best way to make money in the depressed urban areas that are suffering from the recession.


So I think that there is an economic aspect of drug problems, there is a recreational aspect where poor urban or rural people don't have the opportunity or money and drugs are cheap entertainment. Then there is a foreign policy aspect where it seems like that somehow by having the CIA or army in an area makes the drugs of that region flow into the US. Also might add during the US/Israel involvement in Lebanon in the 80's HASH became much more plentiful.