No Needle Needed: America’s Heroin Epidemic

Unlike the heroin of yesteryear, which required a needle, users nowadays can buy a powder-filled capsule that can be broken open and snorted — for just $10.

Katie Rucke
بواسطة Katie Rucke
In this March 11, 2013 file photo, Shavonne Bullock, a recovering heroin addict, holds a demonstration dose of the medication Suboxone during an appointment at the West Division Family Health Center in Chicago. Each dose is incorporated on a dissolvable film, which is placed below the tongue where is dissolves and is absorbed into the bloodstream. Suboxone helps suppress withdrawal symptoms and reduce cravings for people recovering from addiction to opioid drugs. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

For years, drug addiction advocacy groups have warned there was a growing heroin epidemic in the U.S. that would only get worse if lawmakers failed to pay attention. Specifically, the concern for many was that heroin was becoming more and more appealing to teenagers -- many of whom were overdosing and dying. Nationwide, heroin deaths increased 45

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Booming Opium Trade Props Up, Plagues Afghanistan

The illicit opium trade has propped up the nation’s fragile economy for years, but it comes with a heavy price in the form of conflict and drug addiction.

Jo Erickson
بواسطة Jo Erickson

As Secretary of State John Kerry negotiates with NATO and foreign ministers in hopes of persuading Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to let international troops remain in the war-torn country beyond 2014, is the U.S. also concerned with Afghanistan’s booming opium trade?  Despite years of U.S. and United Nations’ intervention, Afghanistan’s

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