EDITORIAL: Heroin is a recipe for destruction

When most people think of heroin they envision a sorry, down-on-his-luck lad lost among the murk and messiness of a major metropolitan area.

Not necessarily. Not all heroin addicts reside in a poverty-stricken urban area.

Connersville is a town of approximately 13,000, relatively the same size as Bedford. Near the end of 2014 Connersville reported 36 heroin overdoses in a two-month span. Six resulted in fatalities.

Obviously, that’s a small town with a very big problem.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly invited Sharon Cranfill, director of House of Ruth in Connersville, to join him for President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address in Washington. The House of Ruth is a non-profit providing residential counseling, job training, and other services to Fayette County women coping with addiction.

Last summer, Donnelly and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, introduced the Heroin and Prescription Opioid Abuse Prevention, Education and Enforcement Act. The bill aims to help combat heroin and prescription drug abuse by “giving law enforcement the tools they need, bringing together experts to develop best practices for prescribing pain management, and establishing a national prescription drug abuse and heroin use awareness campaign.”

Studies have linked prescription drug use to heroin. Approximately four of every five new heroin users admit an addiction to prescription pain medication prior to experimenting with heroin. Pain medications Oxycontin and Vicodin generate effects similar to heroin when taken in large doses. They rank among the most commonly abused drugs in America.

Donnelly’s bill would create an inter-agency task force to develop new prescribing practices for pain medication.

Heroin is debilitating and incredibly difficult to shake. Nearly one in every four people experimenting with the drug becomes dependent on it. Author Ann Marlowe described heroin as “a stand-in, a stop-gap, a mask, for what we believe is missing.”

Heroin is not a remedy for loneliness and heartache. In fact, it is a formula for loneliness and heartache.