Opioid Epidemic Greatly Exaggerated?

Last week, when Michael Walker of Beckley, West Virginia, read in his local paper that high-potency heroin--or opioids sold as or cut with heroin--caused an outbreak of 27 overdoses in just four hours in the nearby city of Huntington, he thought of his 19-year-old son, Matthew, who has been off of opiates for three months, the longest he's been without the drug in years."I know it's early for Matthew, and what a struggle it still is," said Walker, 42, a white working-class dad. "A lot of people call this a problem, but it's an epidemic," he said, while describing the situation in West Virginia.West Virginia ranks No. 1 in the nation for overdose fatalities. Pill mills churning out OxyContin addicted many in Walker's hometown, including his son. Once the dirty doctors were kicked out of town and the pill supply ran dry, Walker said his son turned to heroin. "You could walk down the street and knock on someone's door, and there heroin was," he said. Situations like the one in West Virginia sound off the opioid epidemic siren. Both local and national news carry its echo across the country, citing each outbreak as the relentless continuation of an ongoing drug crisis--one that's described as having crept out of the so called inner-city and into affluent suburbs and rural towns, causing premature death en masse among the white population. Ask someone like Walker--middle-aged, working class, who is up on current events about opiates and heroin--and they'll tell you how dire th...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news