In Maine we&#x27;re dealing with it, on seemingly, epidemic levels.<p>I don&#x27;t know how it was in the 80s and 90s, but in school it sure seemed like heroin was in the slums. This is absolutely no longer the case. The rise of Oxycontin and other pain killers being abused recreationally and having the steady supply slow to a crawl has led to more and more people opening up to the fact that heroin doesn&#x27;t have the stigma it once did. It&#x27;s no longer some devil drug that you inject into your arm with a dirty needle in some dark alley.<p>&quot;It&#x27;s the same as oxycodone? I don&#x27;t have to inject it, I can just snort it?&quot;<p>It&#x27;s super easy for kids these days to be swayed to use it. &quot;What do you mean it&#x27;s 3-5 times CHEAPER for the same exact high?!&quot; This is why heroin is in suburbia and rich neighborhoods, there&#x27;s no longer a distinction, a dividing line, between heroin and &quot;yuppie heroin&quot; (pain killers).<p>Growing up in a relatively small town in Mass, I had never seen it, heard of it being sold, or known anyone (friend&#x27;s friends&#x2F;family, etc) to use it. Now, I know for fact it&#x27;s big in the town. In fact, someone got arrested not that long ago for having a KILOGRAM of heroin and a KILOGRAM of cocaine, not two streets from where I grew up.<p>I support over the counter Narcan (I honestly can&#x27;t see how some people don&#x27;t...), I support safe injection sites with counsellors present, I support needle exchanges, and I support REQUIRING all pharmacies to sell needles to anyone who&#x27;s over the age of 18.<p>The heroin epidemic needs to be treated as a health issue. We don&#x27;t need to be putting every user we find in prison. Why not break the cycle? Why not figure out why they&#x27;re using and try to help them?<p>I&#x27;m not sure if it&#x27;s well known or not, but opioids in general are fairly rampant in the IT world. I help a friend (an ex-addict) run, what is essentially, an anonymous (online) NA meeting for IT professionals. We sometimes have 500 people in a single meeting. You&#x27;d be surprised the type of individuals that are addicts. When you make good money you can actually use and still have a job, still have a car and a home, etc.