Almost 200,000 Americans aged 25 years or younger are currently afflicted with heroin addiction. While this estimate seems a very small percentage of the 281,421,906 people measured in the United States by the Census 2000 project, the following selection sums up my feelings best:

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent,
a part of the main; if a clod be waded away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend or of thy own
were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne (1572-1631), Meditation XVII

During the mid-to-late 1990's, a rash of heroin overdoses occurred in a suburb of Dallas, Texas named Plano. From Janurary of 1994 until December of 2000, 23 heroin-related deaths occurred in this town of just 200,000 people. Worse, 20 of those deaths were of people between the ages of 12 and 22. Local hospital statistics estimate the number of people who came to the emergency room because of acute narcosis at over 200 people in the same time frame. Many teenagers wound up at the emergency room three, sometimes four times due to heroin. The problem in Plano was so severe that the two high schools - Plano Senior HS and Plano East Senior HS - both earned the nationally recognized moniker "Heroin High."

The irony of the entire situation is that Plano, Texas is a model community, with an excellent educational system - many of the schools are recognized as "Blue Ribbon" schools. Much of the city is upper-middle class, not at all the stereotypical setting for a heroin outbreak. Regardless, this just proves that youths can fall through the cracks anywhere.

One final thing. While a death related to a heroin overdose is classified as acute narcosis, it is a much more violent and disturbing death than such a name can possibly convey. Users high on heroin often find themselves hypersensitive to light, sound, and touch. Often, they will lock themselves in closets or in unoccupied rooms to prevent sometimes painful sensory overloads. One other side affect of all opiates is the loss of the gag reflex. Combined with the nausea provoked by heroin use, death usually occurs due to vomit which immediately enters the lungs. As with pneumonia, the victim suffocates, unable to draw a breath.