The drug trade is the top criminal enterprise in Harford County. As a result, death rates due to heroin abuse have been climbing over the last several years. Experts have labeled heroin the number one problem drug in Harford County.
“While more people are selling heroin in Baltimore City, more people are buying and using it in Harford County,” said Joseph V. Ryan Jr., manager of the Harford County Office of Drug Control Policy.
According to Ryan, Harford County’s high addiction rates result from residents having a large amount of disposable income, the county’s proximity to the I-95 Baltimore-Philadelphia corridor, and a large number of mental health issues in the county. People have been self-medicating with all kinds of drugs, from prescription pills to heroin.
“We deal with heroin addicts all of the time,” stated Deputy Craig Thompson. “Thefts and burglaries are usually related to those that are supporting their habits. Heroin, in particular, is on the upswing. It was bad in the late ‘90s, then it got a little better, and now it’s worse than ever before.”
According the Thompson, people have been getting addicted to over-the-counter drugs, but those pills are more expensive. Addicts that realize that heroin can give them that high for less money often begin using heroin.
The dangers of heroin are innumerable; thousands of Americans die every year from overdoses.
“Regular heroin use changes the functioning of the brain. One result is tolerance, in which more of the drug is needed to achieve the same intensity of effect,” states drugabuse.gov. “ Another result is dependence, characterized by the need to continue use of the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms.”
Despite these dangers, heroin is still readily available to the public. Research has proven that heroin is a drug that steals free will; addicts often desire sobriety, but cannot attain it because of the painful extent that their bodies have come to rely on the drug.
“There is a drug called Naloxone that brings people out of overdoses, which can save their lives,” said Thompson. “But sometimes, addicts will come out of their dangerous highs fighting, mad because you took their high away.”
It is easy to assume that since Harford County is a more rural, suburban area, heroin would not be as great of an issue here. But the reality is that 900,000 people, all over America, are addicted to heroin, according to the Foundation for a Drug-Free World. And Harford County contributes to that statistic.
“There are a lot of burglaries related to heroin in Harford County, where there are less potential witnesses. They hit us hard, because there is also a lot of affluence in this area,” said Thompson. “I saw someone steal copper gutter pipes from a church in the Darlington area, and I remember when people were stealing copper from the Patterson Mill High School construction site.”
The sheer fact that there are addicts desperate enough to take copper from a construction site proves the extent to which the heroin abuse has reached here in Harford County. The state government needs to strap down on these dealers, because people are dying. People are dying and the government labels them as criminals because they can’t always see that addiction is a disease. There needs to be a focus on bringing down the heroin dealers so that less people have access to this dangerous drug.