What do you believe is the driver behind the resurgence of heroin use?
Knowledge Library published on June 7, 2013 in Misuse
Hello, I am Dr. John J. Coleman and a retired official of the Drug Enforcement Administration. I am also president of Drug Watch International. The use and abuse of drugs, both the illicit drugs as well as the licit pharmaceutical products, follow economic principles very closely, and in economics, price and availability are very important considerations. And so as the price of one particular drug, let us say pharmaceutical drugs, as the price on the street for those drugs increases, perhaps as a result of regulations or crackdowns by the police and regulatory folks, it is going to make the price of, say, heroin a little bit more attractive to abusers. And so we do see transference from the pharmaceutical opioids back to the heroin or the illicit opioid which then presents this resurgence of heroin use which is a troubling problem right now in the United States.
Last modified: May 31, 2013