Heroin: A Deadly White Powder

In this week’s Analyzing Evil, I will not talk about a person. I will talk about an object that kills millions of people. It is heroin. Recently, I watched some videos and coverages on YouTube about many people who were on drugs on the streets of Philadelphia. They were high and uncontrollable. They looked like a zombie. It really scared me, though. But it was also a sadness and disappointment in the city government’s job to prevent and stop this vice.

Source: DEA

Heroin is an opioid drug made from morphine, a natural substance taken from the seed pod of the various opium poppy plants grown in Southeast and Southwest Asia, Mexico, and Colombia. Heroin is particularly dangerous because it produces intense euphoria, crosses the blood-brain barrier, and develops tolerance rapidly. It is an illegal substance that, nowadays, society is trying to eliminate. Each year, there are many overdose cases caused by heroin. Using heroin can cause HIV/AIDS, fetal effects, crime, violence, and disruptions in the family, workplace, and educational environments. It has a devastating impact on society and costs billions of dollars each year. That is a big societal problem, and people must do something to prevent it.

Nowadays, scientists and doctors are working to help patients who are addicted to heroin. A US city is proposing opening a heroin clinic to help alleviate the danger of heroin overdose. The clinic would provide a safe space for heroin users to use their drugs under medical supervision to help prevent the chances of accidental overdose. I’m afraid I have to disagree with that proposal because I think this idea is not only making the patient more addicted to heroin but also can kill the patients. These clinics are established to help the patients. Still, they don’t know that it only makes things worse by keeping the patient taking heroin under medical supervision because you still give them drugs, which they are addicted to and want to have more to satisfy their desire. Heroin can affect the brain pretty much and also cause brain damage. The brain contains opioid receptors, and it makes opioid chemicals actually in reaction to extreme pain. In any case, these actual happening sedatives won’t be able to last for a long time, and they may not be strong sufficient to assist with persistent torment issues, which is why numerous medicine painkillers contain synthetic opioids in their prescription. Basically, the clinics will give the patients more drugs, and it will increase the need for drugs inside the patient’s brain more than ever once the brain starts to interact with these opioids in spite of the fact that it is less to produce its own. The more an individual takes heroin, the less characteristic opioid the brain will deliver. This influences the opioid receptors and the risk or reward framework within the brain, which is the essential pathway that employments dopamine. If patients cannot require heroin when their brain needs the medication, they will involvement withdrawal symptoms. Also, heroin can cause violent behaviors because when a person needs more drugs, and something is stopping them from using it, they will get mad and commit crimes. Crimes on drugs is always a threat to society through generations.

These clinics won’t help the patient to get away with heroin addiction anyway. Many people are using this deadly thing every day and the chances of tolerance are high risks that we can never be expected. Maybe the scientists and doctors want the best things to come to the patient with the hope that they can be treated and healthy again. But giving patients more drugs under the prescription of the clinic will never be accepted, and it is totally wrong with the social moral to help patients who are addicted to heroin. People will think that scientists are trying to get the attention of those patients to get to their clinics with no help but using them as an experiment of their newest medicine. That can cause death too. Those clinics will never let any patients come out with chances of survival or healthy again. It will kill the patient more than anyone can think about. When those patients die, they will never be responsible for their actions and they always win because there is government behind them. Government spends billions of dollars on the war with drug crimes every year and they will never want to spend one more penny for people with heroin addiction. They don’t care and just want to get rid of those patients, who are supposed to get more help from us, by pushing them into those clinics and “killing them softly”. Society will look at those clinics with different points of view because they believe those clinics will not be able to cure the patients and the reputation of the medical industry will be ruined by those clinics with doctors and scientists who are nice. Still, they want to satisfy their wants and their completion of experiments.

Throughout the proposal, I think that the only way that can help heroin users to stay away from drugs is the love and sympathy of people around them. Friends, families, and coworkers can help them to open another bright road ahead and show those users that the value of life is more than those white powder.