“It’s now a main stream problem.” 
 
 The uptick in usage is attributed to users waning off of prescription opioids and turning to heroin because it’s cheaper and more readily accessible than prescription drugs, the researchers said in their report. “Our typical image of a heroin user is a ‘dirty junkie,’” said lead study author Theodore J. Cicero, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Conclusion and Relevance Our data show that the demographic composition of heroin users entering treatment has shifted over the last 50 years such that heroin use has changed from an inner-city, minority-centered problem to one that has a more widespread geographical distribution, involving primarily white men and women in their late 20s living outside of large urban areas. Design, Setting, and Participants Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyzed (1) data from an ongoing study that uses structured, self-administered surveys to gather retrospective data on past drug use patterns among patients entering substance abuse treatment programs across the country who received a primary (DSM-IV) diagnosis of heroin use/dependence (n = 2797) and (2) data from unstructured qualitative interviews with a subset of patients (n = 54) who completed the structured interview. In the 1960s, nearly 83 percent of users were boys and men, with a median age of 16.5, who lived in urban areas and started using heroin as their first opiate, the study found. Whites and nonwhites were equally represented in those initiating use prior to the 1980s, but nearly 90% of respondents who began use in the last decade were white. About 90 percent are white, according to the study, and 75 percent now live in non-urban areas. However, more recent users were older (mean age, 22.9 years) men and women living in less urban areas (75.2%) who were introduced to opioids through prescription drugs (75.0%). Drug enforcement officials have in the past been prone to attack the problem only from the supply side, the study author, Cicero, said. The number of deaths from heroin overdose almost doubled in 2013 from a year earlier.
– Not too long ago, the profile of the typical heroin user was pretty straightforward: an inner-city male about age 16. No more, says a new study in JAMA Psychiatry. Thanks in part to the surging use of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin, today's typical first-time heroin user is more likely to be a white 20-something, either male or female, from the suburbs or a more rural area, reports Bloomberg. The link to the prescription drugs? People get hooked on them but can't afford to sustain the habit and so turn to cheaper, easier-to-get heroin. “The price on the street for prescription painkillers, like OxyContin, got very expensive,” says the study's author in Forbes. “It has sold for up to a dollar per milligram, so an 80 milligram tablet would cost $80. Meanwhile, they can get heroin for $10.” The result is that 90% of new heroin users in the last decade were white, with the average age of first use at 23. Three-quarters of them got started on prescription meds. The shift to heroin has become even more pronounced as the makers of the prescription drugs take steps to curb abuse, such as making their pills harder to crush. “The crackdown in prescription narcotics has pushed more people over to heroin,” an expert at the Cleveland Clinic not involved with the study tells NBC News. (Click to read how how NYPD officers are going to start carrying a heroin antidote.)