Retired Police Sergeant Teaches About Drug Abuse
Posted by azdrugrehabctr on February 5, 2015 under Addiction Trends, Opiate Abuse, Synthetic Drugs | 
Comments are off for this article
Sometimes people in the addiction treatment and prevention fields believe there should be less law enforcement intervention. However, in some cases law enforcement officers wind up joining the ranks and spend time helping educate people about drugs and addiction.
For instance, retired policy Sergeant, Bruce R. Talbot is taking the experience that he gained while working on the police force and imparting what he knows to parents, educators and young people. Talbot understands that that many young people start abusing prescription painkillers and then graduate to heroin. Talbot believes that in order to address the increasing amount of people dying from heroin overdoses the link between prescription drug abuse and heroin drug abuse must be broken.
Heroin used to be a drug that was abused by long-time addicts and stayed mainly within city limits. Now, law enforcement is seeing heroin at high schools in the suburbs. They get called to heroin overdoses in quiet neighborhoods and wind up arresting people for heroin possession in areas that have never reported heroin problems in the past.
Talbot explained that heroin is increasing in purity and is cheaper than ever. In the 1970’s, when heroin experienced a growth in popularity among older males, $10 would buy an addict four doses of heroin with a 3% purity rate. Nowadays, that same $10 buys an addict 12 doses of heroin with a 63% purity rate.
Talbot insists that the biggest problem that has come about with time is that drugs are much more potent than they ever were before. These more dangerous and powerful drugs are creating addicts at an alarming rate, and more importantly they are killing users.
Even synthetic drugs like bath salts and synthetic marijuana are more potent than the street drugs they are replacing. Bath salts provides a similar high to cocaine or methamphetamine, however the drug is so powerful that it can cause psychotic breaks after just one use. Spice, or synthetic marijuana, is meant to provide the same high that marijuana does, however it has been known to induce extreme paranoia and auditory and visual hallucinations.
“Young people have no idea how powerful and dangerous these new synthetic drugs [are],” explained Talbot. He encourages parents to talk with their children about the dangers of drug use. Talking to children about drugs illustrates that parents know what kind of temptations and pressure young adults are facing.
