Inner-city drug markets are expanding and becoming open-air shooting galleries. We are also seeing new drug markets in suburban communities and smaller cities supplied by increased and improved heroin and methamphetamine production from Mexico. These same epidemics are creating new subgroups of users who inject drugs. Changing patterns of addiction in the 21st century are starting to look more like the second half of the 19th century, which introduced morphine as “folk medicine” and the then-new miracle pharmaceutical, heroin. Then came the invention of the syringe “to reduce morphine addiction.”
The Department of Health and Human Services projects there are 419,512 persons in Florida “in need of, but not receiving treatment for drug (not including alcohol) abuse or dependency,” including 108,114 in the four southeast Florida counties. When Alvah Chapman and University of Miami President Tad Foote started The Miami Coalition for a Drug-Free Community 25 years ago, they understood that before we could become a drug-free community we must become a “recovering community.” Recovery-friendly communities and their elected officials welcome programs that help families and neighborhoods through the healing and rehabilitation process.
