Piankillers gateway drug to heroin......

[Sir X]

Painkillers are a gateway to heroin
By Mariana van Zeller, Special to CNN
June 23, 2011 10:00 p.m. EDT
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Mariana van Zeller: Prescription drug abuse is worse than '80s crack epidemic
Overdose deaths from prescription painkillers more than doubled between 2000 and 2007
Doctors in Florida prescribe 85 percent of all the oxycodone in America, she says
Van Zeller: Painkiller addicts are turning to heroin, which is cheaper and easier to obtain
Editor's note: Mariana van Zeller is a correspondent for "Vanguard," Current TV's original documentary series. Her story "The OxyContin Express," about prescription drug abuse and Florida's pill mills, won a 2009 Peabody Award. "Gateway to Heroin," a follow-up investigation, airs Monday at 7 p.m. EDT on Current TV.
(CNN) -- This past winter, I found myself following a drug dealer and his crew up the dark stairway of a triple-decker apartment building on the outskirts of Boston. Reaching a unit on the top floor, the young man pulled a gun from his waistband and set it on a coffee table next to a digital scale and a pile of drugs
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/2...codone.heroin/

[Sir X]

OxyContin a gateway to heroin for upper-income addicts

A Washington, D.C. heroin addict offered a reporter a rare, first-hand look at his struggle to overcome his addiction. VPC
Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY 11:52 a.m. EDT June 28, 2013
Powerful prescription painkillers have become pricier and harder to use. So addicts across the USA are turning to this more volatile drug. The new twist: Heroin is no longer just an inner-city plague.

heroin
(Photo: Handout, DEA)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Powerful painkillers have become harder to get, so addicts turn to heroin
Once an urban problem, heroin now has a home in suburbs, small towns
This drug of last resort is more dangerous, feeds crime wherever it arrives
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Heroin in Charlotte has become so easy to get that dealers deliver to the suburbs and run specials to attract their young, professional, upper-income customers.

These lawyers, nurses, cops and ministers are showing up in the detox ward at Carolinas Medical Center, desperate to kick an opiate addiction that often starts with powerful prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin.

The center analyzed the patients' ZIP codes to find out where heroin had taken root, says Robert Martin, director of substance abuse services at the medical center.

"Our heroin patients," he said, "come from the five best neighborhoods."

What Martin and o
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...odone/1963123/