IT’S a subject we find hard to talk about, even though it kills more people in America than guns or cars and claims more lives than murder or suicide.
I’m talking about drug overdoses, taking close to 44,000 lives a year. These often follow a pipeline from prescription painkillers to heroin — a result, in part, of reckless marketing by pharmaceutical companies and overprescribing by doctors. These days, heroin is out of control, with deaths nearly tripling in three years.
To understand the lure of heroin and how to combat it, I came to Baltimore to talk to some experts: addicts.
“A guy was like, ‘try this, it’ll make you feel good,’ ” recalled Ricky Morris, who has struggled for years with heroin. “And it did make me feel good. It makes you feel superhuman. You can have sex all night long.”
[For more of this story, written by Nicholas Kristof, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06...of&nlid=67927627]
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