Sad video interview of the parents of one 22 year old heroin abuser who died from an overdose in April. In his car.
I don’t know if you recall, but about a year and a half ago, the LA Times did a series of well-researched stories on how black tar heroin was making inroads into “Middle America” and the suburbs. Here’s an excerpt:
Immigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of America.
Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar.
Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into cities and small towns across the United States, often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none. In many of those places, authorities report increases in overdoses and deaths.
One of the things that came through he Signal’s story and this video is that parents had no idea heroin was so easily available in the SCV. After all, people move to places like Santa Clarita to get away from those kinds of things which we associate with the inner city or urban areas. I’m guilty too- for a long time I didn’t believe it was a real problem. So how the hell did heroin get into our town to the extent that we have hundreds of overdose cases and 10 deaths?
Let’s step back a bit. First of all, when did it become more profitable for poor Mexican farm boys to cultivate heroin rather than sugar? Billions of people use sugar each day, and millions probably grow it, but how many people use heroin? Were the margins too low on sugar or what? And once these farmers decided it’d be more profitable to produce heroin, how’d they develop the business intelligence to realize that a places like the SCV would become fertile marketplaces for their product? Why not a more dense place like LA, or Chicago or Buffalo? Did they take a look at the competition (other drugs) or the cops and realize it’d be an easy market to conquer?
I guess what I’m saying is that we have to look at this heroin problem as a classic case of supply and demand. Before, there wasn’t too much of a supply in heroin in the SCV, so demand was low or nonexistent. These Mexican farmers decided one day to make heroin instead of sugar, and part of their business plan was to find customers who liked the high they got from the drug. And one day they decided Santa Clarita would be the next market they target. Voila! A marketplace was born.
And now, after creating the demand for their product, the SCV will be just another marketplace for heroin in the eyes of drug producers. They’ll do everything a typical CSUN MBA would do: tally their profits and losses, improve their infrastructure, and get as much margin per unit from their salesforce.
Oh sure, every now and then we’ll read a good tale about our Sheriff’s Deputies busting some 20 something kid who has in his possession a brick or two of heroin. The City will release a blurb about the number of heroin balloons that were seized in Q4. This will make us feel good, but in reality, it will just constrain supply for a little while, and prices of heroin will probably go up in the SCV, enriching dealers even more.
This is basic capitalism and supply and demand. You can’t stop it. Deputies are no match for marketplace forces. We’ll never win this war. All you can try and do is educate people not to get into it in the first place, which is what we’ve started to do.
But that never feels satisfying enough. Especially against a background of increasing and accelerating globalization where normal Americans can never move fast enough or far away enough from the effects of every disruption in the global market, from Greece’s debt ratio to the price of sugar in rural Mexico.
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Heroin has been with us for a very long time and has remained at the forefront of the concern of law enforcement and public health officials, yet its overall prevalence remains low. This is primarily because the hazard, for those aware, is so great. It will wreck your life before it kills you. In both respects, it’s far more hazardous than just about anything else, and people tend to know that. It’s also hard to find, or at least it was. And there’s the problem. The chance of someone in the SCV, say, two years ago, having first or second-hand knowledge of heroin was very low.
Paradoxically, it’s going to take some time for people to get used to hearing these stories before it sinks in. We need more so that we may see less.
Chemically, it’s just another step along the path of an opiate addiction – and with each step the risk of overdose increases, while the chance of recovery lessens. Something like half of the people who have ever tried heroin are using it right now. For those who are clean, they will spend the rest of their lives at considerable risk of death from a relapse, even after decades.
I hope educational efforts such as this meeting will help. The other problem is, people are often well along a life of opiate addiction before it’s socially acceptable for friends and loved ones to butt in. For most people, myself included, knowing that a friend is doing cocaine – even once – is reason enough to get in their business (or to shun them). However, few people feel comfortable commenting on how many painkillers someone is taking. In fact, if the LASD were to break out the numbers, I’d imagine you’d find ODs for prescription painkillers and anti-anxeity medications to run laps around our numbers for heroin.
Back home there has been a black tar heroin problem for quite a while, with too many overdoses. The problem did not occur within the inner city but instead in cities like St Charles where the upper middle class and upper class families live.
I guess the question is why. Is it because in the “hood” money is tight and the drugs of choice are marijuana, alcohol or prescription abuse? Or is it because kids in the nice burbs don’t see death and destitution on a day to day basis, don’t know.
Mike makes some very good points with regards to how addictive this drug is.
My heart goes out to the Lage family. Having two sons in their young 20s our families lives have paralleled each other. There can be nothing worse in life than the death of a child.
Heroin? I thought its use died out after the 60s and would never come back again. Raising our kids we of course counseled on not using drugs but heroin was never part of that discussion. Of course by the 70s it was well known how damaging the drug was with the deaths of rock stars and all. It pretty much went away. (Of coarse cocaine seemed to increase after that).
My generation raising their kids in the SCV have been completely naive to the possibility of heroin making a comeback. The kids getting into this have never been taught by their parents about the danger of this drug. They are getting in with no knowledge of what they are really getting into.
I praise the Lage family for having the courage to make this video to help get the word out on the destructiveness of this drug. I’ve yet to look at all the other reports but it looks like the community is coming together to get the word out as well.
May God Bless them and hold their son Cameron in his arms.
Heroin never went away, in any shape or form. And it’s been here all along in the SCV, as I sadly know all too well. Not from personal use, but from losing a friend in the late 90s to it. That stuff is more than powerful, beyond addictive, and easily one of the most destructive drugs on the planet. But we know this.
Good to see it’s at least getting a little light shed on it, as people (not just parents & teachers) need to be aware that it is here to stay. Unfortunately.
Thank you for posting the video, Jeff. I just showed it to my two high school kids. I didn’t exactly lead a sheltered life growing up in the SF Valley, but heroin was something only hardcore junkies did. It’s frightening to see this happen to a family who seemed to do everything right- scouts, church, sports with their child, living in a “safe” area, getting to know their child’s friends- yet still… he dies in his car of an overdose. Alone. My heart aches for them.
There but for the grace of God, go I
Why are people surprised that heroin is/ has been readily available in this valley or anywhere? If people want drugs, they will find a way to partake. Not exactly a huge shock or surprise IMO. Drug use and abuse crosses the whole economic spectrum. But the good news is that more people will be paying attention to their children like they should be doing.
We know someone personally (our 22 year old son’s age) who overdosed a couple of years back. Fine family, etc. etc. but people exercise agency to do these things despite all the benefits given.
They are also probably bearing a great deal of guilt because they did not deal with the alcohol abuse which was the first manifestation of addictive behavior. Like so many they probably heaved a sigh of relief that he was “just drinking” which is not immediately deadly in most cases but has stark cumulative effects.
It also brings into question the Hart District voluntary drug testing program (again). Since opiates (like heroin) clear the system relatively quickly the worst tweaker can pass these tests with flying colors within a day of using, while someone who passed a joint at the party last weekend gets stung.
I agree, Tim. If your kid comes home drunk and has been experimenting with pills, you have to deal with it swiftly and decisively to have any chance at avoiding worse problems. And two weeks in Arizona is not a cure for heroin addiction. That said, the heartrending truth is that parents can do only so much. It is ultimately the user who makes the decisions, and those who are more physiologically prone to addiction can be the nicest people from the “best” families. Bless the Lages for sharing their story.
That’s why unannounced random testing works well, especially if done on a weekend. Cocaine clears the system in about 72hrs as well.
Although, if someone is doing heroin, they are doing it every day. Hard for a junkie to duck a test. Or am I mistaken?
Very true but some users actually time it in conjunction with a weekend so it won’t be as noticed and out of the system by Monday.