Heroin’s Children: Inside The US Opioid Crisis

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For the last few years the United States has been going through the worst drug crisis in its history. This is tearing families apart.  An entire generation of children is being abandoned, neglected, or orphaned because the adults in charge are addicted to opioids.

The addiction to heroin is stronger than any religious beliefs, human ties, or reasoning. Getting addicted to heroin is like being possessed by a demon; you simply stop functioning at a human level because you lose contact with reality. The first two times a person takes the drug might have been a choice but it gets out of their control really quickly.

Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for men and women under 50 in the United States. More than 100,000 people have died from drug overdose in the last two years alone.

The state of Ohio has one of the highest drug overdose rates in the country. It seems like almost everyone knows someone who is struggling with a drug addiction, and overdose is now the number one type of emergency call received.  Sadly, many times young children are the ones making the call because they noticed that the mom or dad has stopped breathing. Sometimes it’s both adults that need the ambulance. One shudders to think how their inexperienced brains are processing the things that are happening around them.

However, the impact on the children occurs long before the overdose takes place because by then the child has been exposed to a lifestyle in which the parent constantly places the drug in first place, neglecting everything else. This means that the parent might not be able to fix meals or make sure they have clean clothes to wear to school. It’s not uncommon for these children grow up to walk obediently in their parents’ footsteps and so the cycle is repeated.

How do these addictions start, though?

Sometimes it begins with a prescription for painkillers. The person then switches to heroin because it’s cheaper and more readily available and before they know it, it’s no longer about the physical pain.

What can be done to put a stop to this tsunami of madness? Who is to blame for the havoc heroin is wreaking? What legislations need to be put in place to punish those who are responsible for this mess? Watch this now.