Last summer, I helped conduct an unpublished, comprehensive study on heroin. The stigma, propaganda, health and social effects, criminality, production, usage rates, etc.

The fact of the matter is, we are about to experience a heroin epidemic in this nation due to 3 factors:

1. Heroin use will spike due to the fact that pharmaceutical narcotics (oxy & roxy) are now mandated to be reformulated chemically so you can no longer get high from snorting it.

OXY REFORM LEADS TO HEROIN ABUSE

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In addition to the abuse of oxycodone IR 30 mg, I believe the reformulation has led to an even stronger increase in heroin abuse. Heroin is potent and relatively cheap in the United States, and it makes sense that some of the increase is the result of this change in formulation.

2. Mexican drug cartels, losing billions due to legalized pot in the US, have started manufacturing more opium than ever before.

Drug Dealers Ain't Dumb

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mmigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of the U.S., reports the Los Angeles Times. Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a form of Mexican heroin known as black tar. Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into U.S. cities and small towns, often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none. In many, authorities report increases in overdoses and deaths.

Immigrants from Xalisco in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit have brought an audacious entrepreneurial spirit to the heroin trade. Their success stems from both their product, cheaper and more potent than Colombian heroin, and a business model that puts a premium on customer convenience and satisfaction. Users need not venture into dangerous neighborhoods for their fix; they call in their orders and drivers take the drug to them. Users are encouraged to bring in new customers, rewarding them with free heroin if they do. In contrast to Mexico's big cartels -- violent, top-down organizations that mainly enrich a small group -- the Xalisco networks are small, decentralized businesses.

Heroin Boom in the USA

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Mexico has a new distinction in the world of illicit drugs as Heroin has seen a six-fold increase in production from 2007-2011 making it the largest Opium producer in the World to second place Afghanistan. Previously 87% of the World’s production of Opium originated in Afghanistan in the 2004 period which contributed roughly $4 billion dollars per year to the country with a 4,500 metric tons output noted in 1999.

And 3, the DEA and other US Forces are protecting opium for our buddies in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had eradicated the plant more than a decade ago.

Afghans Growing Big Time

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America’s war on drugs is failing in Afghanistan, with opium production at record levels, despite spending $7.5 billion to tackle the problem. Over 200 thousand hectares is used to grow opium, an increase of 36 percent, according to a US report.
The report, which was commissioned by SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction makes grim reading, with opium poppy cultivation increasing by over a third, while the country now has about 1.3 million heroin users. This is a ten-fold increase compared to 2005, when around 130,000 people were using the drug.

Obviously, there are many more factors that will lead us to another drug scare in this nation, and we will continue to build larger boxes to house addicts and fund the police to a militarized level unseen in history in order to keep us safe from the dangers in this taboo plant, but the above three factors will only serve to enhance the War on Drugs, while there is mounting evidence that our continued policies of old will fail. Once more, while educational outreach has helped with the civic ballot initiatives with marijuana, the wall of ignorance dealing with narcotics will continue to become more founded in misinformation than ever before. Not until we can allow ourselves time for civic discourse and debate will the failure that is almost every governmental drug policy cease to exist, and until then, we become less free with every passing policy.