Last week we wrote about how rampant opioid addiction is lowering the lifespan of poor, white men in rural America. This week a new study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health looked at the rising number of heroin users in the country, and most of them, again, are middle-aged white men without a college education.
According to the JAMA Psychiatry study, heroin use increased around five-fold, from .33 percent of the population between between 2001 and 2002, to 1.60 percent of the population between 2012 and 2013. Within that uptick, heroin use was higher among white Americans than non-white Americans, 1.9 versus 1.1 percent, respectively. The people most vulnerable to heroin use and heroin disorders were single white men in their thirties and forties who had either no degree or just a high school degree.
There are several reasons white men could be increasingly turning to heroin. For one, the middle class is shrinking, and white Americans, men and single people have made fewer economic gains than in previous decades, according to Pew Research Center. This dismal economic state has also fueled a mental health problem, and men are less likely to seek social support or medical care, instead turning to drugs to self-medicate, said Silvia Martens, author of the study and an epidemiologist at Columbia University.
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