Heroin Epidemic

There are lots of heroin deaths where I live, which is about an hour outside of Chicago.

My understanding is that there were a lot of OxyContin addicts and they cracked down on Oxycontin availability. Heroin was similar and less expensive and there is an increasingly large supply coming out of Afghanistan to feed the habit.

Pretty big here too. MA/RI line. Not impacting my and my friends age bracket really because we're too old and our kids are too young, but I've heard some news about it.

Heroin, as from my perspective, has always been a drug that had been very depended on availability and pricing on the illegal markets.
People buy it first time, when they go to their cannabis dealer, out of curiosity and if the guy sells it to get more "consistent" customers.
(Partly) legalizing the cannabis market was maybe one of the smartest moves, the US could have done to lower its impact.
Sure, as long as there is war in the main heroin producing countries, they will try to flood the market at affordable pricing to get long term customers and finance their weapons. Afghanistan is one of these countries...
Lost a few friends to this drug, but already in the early nineties. Heroin does not have this impact on Germany anymore, like from the seventies to early nineties. It is still present, but not overly. I guess it just has a kind of renaissance in the US right now ... maybe due to the homecoming veterans from Afghanistan, who knows.

I've heard stories that our soldiers receive orders to leave poppy fields alone in A-stan. Those orders would come from "up there" not a military commander.

I can attest to this. I have an elderly friend who was having back pain and the doctor prescribed Oxycontin. I couldn't believe it. I told my friend this was a highly addictive drug and be very careful taking it. She quit taking it the net day.

This is absolutely correct. A lot of people from all over the country were traveling to Miami where "pill mills" were giving up to 380 80mg Oxycontin for as much as just saying their foot hurt. The DEA went in and shut these down, which was a good thing. That still didn't cause people to no be able to get medication, and so there were just a few people moving over to Heroin. 

Where the massive problem happened was when FL elected Rick Scott, whom my family knows personally, he is an absolute asshole, and pardon my french. My family is friends with the director of the local major hospital, he even said to my father and I once that if Scott were to get elected if would cause major issues nationally, and that sometimes governments have to allow the lesser of two evils. I believe that is what we are seeing. Rick Scott came into office and went after ALL pain clinics and doctors practices, not just pill mills. I have a problem with this, my father suffers from a rare degenerative spine problem (which I also have, and it's getting worse) and he is in extreme pain every moment of his life. He used to be prescribed a certain amount of medication that allowed him to live a semi normal life, when Scott was elected the DEA basically went into every pain clinic and acted like a bunch of mob thugs, threatening and roughing up the doctors, using scare tactics and such, which has led to them turning patients away, or decreasing their medications so much that they are living in extreme pain. Some of them are turning to illegal drugs in an attempt to find some relief. 

So what has this caused? This has all caused people who were legitimately prescribed meds to turn to illegal drugs, it's caused doctors to stop treating patients with pain, and, it has also caused the underground market for drugs to go illegal again, turning to heroin and even meth. This epidemic will not stop until the massive DEA restrictions on pain medication goes away. This is very similar to prohibition in the 20's where it just opened an illegal underground market, and with that comes thugs and criminals. So not only are people turning to heroin, meth and crack, now gangs and the mob are starting to thrive again, becoming powerful on the illegal drug market. 

That's the lesser of two evils, which is better? A semi regulated legal distribution, or an outright illegal underground market that provides a concrete foundation for the mob and gangs to become powerful again, bringing back murders and drug wars. As crazy as it sounds, it's like the 2000 election, it all comes down to Florida. I hope they fix this, it's hard to watch my father go through pain and not be able to play with my little girl and such. Also how this is causing an uprising in mob and gang re-birth, that's a scary thought fellas.