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Heroin Information

What is Heroin?

Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as "black tar heroin." Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is "cut" with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons.

Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment.

Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of the Asian poppy plant. Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder. Street names associated with heroin include "smack," "H," "skag," and "junk." Other names may refer to types of heroin produced in a specific geographical area, such as "Mexican black tar."

What is the scope of heroin use in the United States?

According to the 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which may actually underestimate illicit opiate (heroin) use, an estimated 2.4 million people use heroin at some time in their lives, and nearly 216,000 of them reported using it within the month preceding the survey. The survey report estimates that there were 141,000 new heroin users in 1995, and that there has been an increasing trend in new heroin use since 1992. A large proportion of these recent new users were smoking, snorting, or sniffing heroin, and most were under age 26. Estimates of use for other age groups also increased, particularly among youths age 12 to 17: the incidence of first-time heroin use among this age group increased fourfold from the 1980s to 1995.

The 1996 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), which collects data on drug- related hospital emergency department (ED) episodes from 21 metropolitan areas, estimates that 14 percent of all drug-related ED episodes involved heroin. Even more alarming is the fact that between 1988 and 1994, heroin-related ED episodes increased by 64 percent (from 39,063 to 64,013).

NIDA's Community Epidemiology Work Group (CEWG), which provides information about the nature and patterns of drug use in 20 cities, reported in its December 1996 publication that heroin was the primary drug of abuse related to drug treatment admissions in Newark, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston, and it ranked a close second to cocaine in New York and Seattle.

Heroin in the Monitoring the Future Study (MTF)

According to the 1997 MTF, an annual survey of drug use among 8th-, 10th-, and 12th- graders, rates of heroin use remained relatively stable and low since the late 1970s. After 1991, however, use began to rise among 10th- and 12th- graders, and after 1993, among 8th- graders. In 1997, prevalence of heroin use was comparable for all three grade levels. Although the annual prevalence rates for heroin use remained relatively low in 1997, these rates are approximately two to three times higher than those reported in 1991.

What is Cheese?

Dallas (Texas) police are seeing a new drug on the streets and in the schools directed at young people called "cheese." The new drug mixture is a "starter form" of heroin, containing Tylenol PM and up to 8 percent heroin. Due to chemical interference caused by acetaminophen and diphenhydramine hydrochloride, forensic analysis can be challenging, according to police.

Typically described as a light tan colored powder with granules varying from fine powder to 1.5 millimeters in size, "cheese" is typically found folded inside a small paper bindle.

In a similar fashion to snorting cocaine, "cheese" is snorted through a tube into the nose. The effects that one may experience from "cheese" are euphoria, disorientation, lethargy, sleepiness, and hunger. As heroin has proven to be highly addictive, "cheese" appears to follow in the same characteristic and symptoms of withdrawal may onset as fast as within 12 hours of cessation of use.

For help with heroin addiction phone 1-800-893-7060.

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