According to addiction workers, Winnipeg is seeing a dramatic rise in heroin use amongst inner-city drug users—a concerning trend. Heroin use has always been extremely low in Manitoba, with abuse rates near zero. However recently, the province is seeing a trend in both increased heroin use and intravenous-drug users in the Winnipeg core.
Concerned health workers say that the trend means heightened risks of overdose, Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS among the region’s intravenous drug users.
Manitoba’s addiction workers are reporting:
- A rise in the number of opiate addictions in the last 12 months, most notably in the prescription painkiller Oxycontin
- A drastic increase in the number of heroin users in the last year
Opiate addiction started with middle-class suburban youth, but has since spread to the inner city. Meanwhile, the method of use has gone from snorting the drugs in powder form to injection.
Manitoba is seeing an increase in addiction and use of opiates of all kinds—not simply heroin, but other opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin and fentanyl.
As well, there seems to be an overall increase in intravenous drug use, where drugs that aren’t traditionally consider an intravenous drug, like fentanyl, are being used as such. It seems, reports one drug addiction worker, that Manitoban drug addicts are experimenting, possibly due to the relatively low availability of these drugs.
Furthermore, the province is experiencing a shortage of treatment spaces to meet this increased demand. There is currently anywhere from a three to 12-month wait for
methadone treatment, a common addiction treatment method for opioid addiction from heroin to Oxycontin, with 147 individuals already on the wait list.
Some addiction workers fear the results of a province-wide systematic crackdown on prescription opiate use.
Some are asking if the government cracks down on the drugs, making them no longer as easily available or more risky to seek out, will these addicts turn to heroin to get their fix?
Does this perhaps already help to explain the current increase in heroin’s popularity?
Source: Winnipeg Free Press 
