Cheap Yuppies: The Demographics Of Heroin Users Have Changed

Heroin is popular again, though not for reasons you expect. Gone are the days of desperate junkies in poverty settings. Now it is primarily cheap young urban professionals. Few studies on the demographics of present day heroin users have compared them to heroin users 40 to 50 years ago. In the 1960s, heroin junkies were primarily young men from minority groups living in urban areas. Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., of Washington University, St. Louis, and colleagues analyzed data on nearly 2,800 patients from an ongoing study that used self-reported surveys from patients with a heroin use/dependence diagnosis entering treatment centers and also from patients who completed a more detailed interview (n=54).   read more

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