When I was a freshman in high school, the only thing I really knew about drugs is that they could kill you. Common sense. However, I never really thought that anyone I know would ever die because of drugs… until it actually happened. One week before my 15th birthday, I learned that one of my cousins died of a drug overdose, but not just any drug. He passed away from a heroin overdose, the worst drug out there. Then, on my birthday, I got to see him one last time at his funeral and say goodbye. This was very difficult for me and my family, but especially his parents and sister. No parent should ever have to bury their child.
This experience made me realize that the heroin epidemic needs to stop. The drug itself is very easy to obtain since it is so cheap, which is one of the problems. An addict will do anything and everything to get their hands on this drug. They will steal from their families and strangers to be able to get heroin; they feel as if they cannot function without it. More and more people are using this drug and more and more people are dying from it as well.
There is no safe way to use heroin. However, Mayor Svante Myrick of Ithaca, New York, proposed the nation’s first drug injection center. With the increasing drug use of heroin, the mayor believes that opening the injection centers will reduce the amount of deaths from an overdose. the spread of infectious disease, and improperly discarded syringes.
There are other places around the world that have these centers, but this would be the very first one in the United States. Myrick released a report to CNN about the centers and said “the report is a blueprint for cities struggling to deal with a rise in heroin addiction and overdose deaths.” A study proved that the likelihood of sharing needles will be decreased by 70% and the likelihood of detoxing increase by 30%. However, this isn’t going to stop the use of the drug. I feel as if this is encouraging users to keep using the drug when what we really should be doing is finding ways to stop them from using heroin.
The centers would be “heroin assisted treatment” and heroin doses would be carefully monitored and controlled for people who have failed previous treatments. Dr. Brian Johnson, an addiction psychiatrist at State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, said to CNN, "You have lifelong patients who aren't going to follow your rules and they don't get better nor do they go away. At the end of the day, intravenous drugs are provided more readily than they were before." Heroin abusers are going to do anything to get the drug. They have before the centers, so what makes being inside a center that has it any different?
Calling the police and having the police bring Narcan to save the person is just the same as the nurse going to get it. The overdoses will still happen and the nurses will have to run and get the Narcan, but it could be too late by then. In my opinion, these centers are only to protect the spread of disease and not the actual person because at the end of the day, they’re still getting what they want: heroin. They’ll still be getting high. This isn’t going to help the heroin epidemic at all. Personally, I believe that it will only stop the spread of diseases for people, but will not help the overall epidemic. But we all have our own opinions.
