Heroin Use Surges in Chicago Area

 Posted on December 05,2012 in Chicago News

Heroin seems to be making a comeback on Chicago’s North Shore, according to the Chicago Tribune, and it’s being used by people younger than ever before. According to the Tribune, Meghan Murrin, 21, is a high school senior at New Trier High School, and died for a few minutes—but was luckily revived with adrenaline—after a heroin overdose. Several north suburban police departments are dealing with an increasing number of stories like Murrin’s: “more arrests, more overdoses, more deaths.”

Wilmette Police Chief Brian King told the Tribune that “it’s currently more available than it probably has been in a couple decades. You can get a bag $10.” King said that he plans to launch a public information campaign, and numbers show “an uptick in the drug’s popularity.” There were two recent incidents in which people were arrested for likely buying the drug in Chicago and attempting to inject it in parking lots off the Eden Expressway. Recent arrests include two Glenview women in their early 20s, and a 32-year-old Skokie man who was found overdosing outside of his vehicle in the Edens Plaza parking lot.

In 2010, according to King, there was only one heroin overdose, death or possession charge in Wilmette. In 2011 that number had risen to 10, and as of October of this year, that number had already reached seven. “Offenders have ranged from 19 to 41 years old,” according to the Tribune. According to a 2012 Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy study from Roosevelt University, “the average age of first use of heroin decreased from 25.5 years old in 2009 to 21.3 years old in 2010,” and that on any given day in 2008, 2,866 youth aged 12 to 17 used heroin.

The same study cites that according to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican heroin production increased a massive 668 percent from 2002 to 2011. Chicago is among one of the major U.S. cities that have “reported an alarming growth in heroin use among younger peoples in the suburbs.”

If you or someone you know has been charged with a heroin drug charge, don’t go through it alone. Contact an experienced Illinois criminal defense attorney today.