Generational Effects: What Public Health Administrative Data Tells Us About Heroin Use Disorder

Illicit use of heroin has been a major public health crisis in the United States for decades, and the more recent availability of other opioid-based substances has caused the number of heroin users to increase further. More than seventy thousand Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, from both illicit drugs and prescription opioids—a two-fold increase in a decade (NIDA, 2020). An analysis on data retrieved from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that from 2002 to 2013 the overall rate of heroin addiction increased from 1.0 per one thousand to 1.9 per one thousand, a 90 percent increase overall. They also found that annual average rates of past-year heroin use increased from 1.6 per one thousand from 2002 to 2004 to 2.6 per one thousand from 2011 to 2013 (Jones, Logan, Gladden, & Bohm, 2015).