NJ Suburbs See Youth Heroin Use Increase
Teens using text massages and Facebook to communicate about where to get drugs and the quality is now part of everyday life for too many NJ suburban teens. The war against drug use moved from the inner city to quiet suburbs years ago, but the new surge is unlike anything they have seen before. There is a greater number of addictions to heroin as a result of prescription painkillers.
The problem is at an all time high because, the market is flooded with cheap, pure heroin, the price is the lowest in its history, and with a generation of young opiate addicts running out of cash and their parents medication.
Drug dealers are setting up in Morris, Cape May, Sussex, Monmouth, Ocean, Warren and Hunterdon. Suburban teens are afraid or unable to travel to cities like Camden or Newark can pay a little extra to have heroin delivered to their neighborhoods. A bag of heroin that costs $5 in Newark can cost $10 in Morristown and as much as $15 in Sussex.
The highest per capita rate of treatment admissions for patients under 25 isn’t in Essex or Camden counties; It’s in Cape May.
Teens and 20-somethings are graduating from painkillers to heroin. Doctors were overprescribing the pain pills like they were antibiotics. There were so many painkillers out there in people’s medicine cabinet that it just created a massive wave of heroin users. When the pills became too scarce or too expensive, addicts still needed to get high and so they switched to heroin. One of his biggest challenges is getting parents to take off their blinders and realize high property taxes do not insulate them or their children from opiate addiction.
Seabrook is a private CARF accredited drug and alcohol treatment facility. We tailor our treatment to the individual patient’s needs in order to optimize outcomes—this often involves a combination of treatment, social supports, and other services. There is hope out there. All Seabrook programs are grounded in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). The Seabrook Model® of treatment includes a multifaceted medical approach to alcohol and other drugs including opiate detoxification, gender-specific therapy with special emphasis on relapse prevention, and family intervention services. Seabrook has treatment centers in New Jersey (NJ) and Pennsylvania (PA) with an outpatient office in New York (NY).
