As Spotlight Shines on K2, Heroin Invades East Harlem

El Barrio has seen a spike in heroin use, local health professionals say, part of an “epidemic” plaguing New York.

Share

By Payton Guion

Lost among stories of K2-crazed “zombies” on 125th Street and DEA raids in East Harlem – both looking for synthetic marijuana – is the increase of another, more troubling drug in the neighborhood.

Escalating heroin use in the United States over the past few years has been well documented, a spike caused by a squeeze on prescription painkillers and a glut of the poppy-derived opiate.

But until recently, heroin was out in the suburbs, away from the apartment buildings and bodegas of El Barrio, said Steven Margolies, vice president of medical and clinical services for Phoenix House in New York.

Now, East Harlem is part of what Margolies calls a full-blown heroin epidemic, one he said is much worse than the neighborhood’s well-publicized K2 problem.

Phoenix House is one of the drug treatment centers in East Harlem that has felt the increase of heroin in the neighborhood.

Phoenix House is among the East Harlem drug treatment centers seeing an increase of heroin use. (Photo by Payton Guion)

Christopher Alcazar, the director of admissions at Phoenix House’s East Harlem location, said K2 has caused some problems in the neighborhood, but heroin is what really has officials and health professionals worried.

“We’ve seen the rise of K2 in the area,” Alcazar said. “Heroin is where the real problem is now.”

Recent media stories have illuminated East Harlem’s K2 problem. The drug until very recently could be bought in a number of local bodegas and its effects could be seen on many people who hung around the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, a stretch The New York Times called “a street of zombies.”

Drug Enforcement Agency raids on K2 suppliers, distributors and retailers, plus a city effort to sweep that intersection of drug users, have made K2 harder to buy. But the K2 issue was never as pressing as the heroin problem continues to be, Alcazar said.

Harlem East Life Plan, a neighborhood drug treatment center, recently set up East Harlem’s first K2 treatment program, but Maggie McDermott, an official with the organization, said heroin has fallen under the radar in the wake of the area’s K2 problem.

Heroin is no recent arrival to East Harlem; the neighborhood grappled with heroin in the 1970s and 80s. But many are calling the new wave of the drug an unprecedented problem.

Every day in the United States, 100 people overdose on heroin, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

No specific daily overdose numbers were available for East Harlem or New York, but the city’s Health Department reported that between 2010 and 2013, citywide heroin-related overdose deaths jumped from 209 to 424, the most in the city since 2003.

“The problem with heroin has increased tenfold in New York,” said Erin Mulvey, special agent in the DEA’s New York office. “It has become a chic drug.”

Mulvey said heroin seizures in New York have increased 400 percent in the past few years and that the DEA’s New York office seized one-third of all heroin on the East Coast.

The return of heroin to East Harlem – and urban areas in general – is a disturbing change, Margolies said. In recent years, heroin use has been highest in the suburbs, while urban areas struggled with other drugs, such as crack cocaine. While suburban heroin use remains strong, the drug is increasingly infiltrating America’s cities.

125th Street and Lexington Avenue is the center of East Harlem's drug problem.

125th Street and Lexington Avenue is the center of East Harlem’s drug problem. (Photo by Payton Guion)

Margolies said the current heroin epidemic stems from the widespread use of prescription painkillers in the past several years. Go in for surgery, have some pills. Throw out your back, have some pills. Open your parents’ medicine cabinet, have some pills.

Those pills, especially hydrocodone, sometimes called hillbilly heroin, can quickly create dependency and their opiate structures are chemically similar to heroin’s. Now that regulators have realized their dangers – addictiveness for those prescribed and ease of access for others – it’s harder to get those drugs and prices have jumped.

Many users are turning to heroin, a cheaper alternative that provides a more potent high and costs a pittance in comparison.

“It’s dirt cheap, cheaper than marijuana,” Margolies said about heroin.

As admissions to area drug treatment programs rise because of El Barrio’s heroin problem, administrators are scurrying to deal with the growing number of addicts. Harlem East Life Plan, for example, offers methadone treatment and counseling services, according to the organization’s website.

Phoenix House has 800 beds in the New York area and offers both residential and outpatient care. In some cases, Phoenix House uses buprenorphine – another opioid treatment option. Margolies said he expects the heroin problem to increase, further stretching his organization’s resources.

“Heroin is our biggest challenge,“ he said. ”Heroin is what is killing people.”

 

(Feature image by Dimitris Kalogeropoylos/Flickr)

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

56,101 Spam Comments Blocked so far by Spam Free Wordpress