Heroin is cheap and widely available in towns and cities throughout the country. “Police officers are routinely finding drug users,” reports Katharine Q. Seelye, “unconscious or dead — in cars, in the bathrooms of fast-food restaurants, on mass transit and in parks, hospitals and libraries.”
A major part of the problem is America’s dependence on legal opioid painkillers, which has led to the latest heroin epidemic, one that has spread to white, urban, suburban and rural areas.
125 people a day die from drug overdoses, reports The New York Times, 78 of them from heroin and painkillers, while many others are revived, often in public. There is no record of how many deaths occur in public spaces, but officials agree the number is high.
Read more at The New York Times
