Help Delaware battle heroin

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Heroin is killing people. It is destroying families and ruining lives. It is making criminals out of young people, and it is terrorizing whole neighborhoods.
Worse, it is spreading. Its low price makes it the drug of choice. And it is cheap. As the reporting in Sunday's News Journal/delawareonline special series shows, a bag of heroin can go for as little as $3. Yet a single 30-milligram Percocet could cost about $25. Too many people die from heroin overdoses. Far more have addictions that are burdens to themselves and their loved ones.
What is the solution?
HEROIN: Complete coverage of Delaware's deadly crisis
Certainly, prevention and treatment are answers. But they remain mere words without a discussion of how to prevent the drugs from traveling through the supply chain or how to build the character and provide the education it would take individuals to resist. Treatment is not a science. It is expensive and often so far beyond the means of many users that it borders on the unrealistic. And law enforcement? The fact that the drug has spread so far and has done so much damage shows that our blockade is not working.
More can be done, for sure. All of us – private individuals, families, churches, organizations and government – can spread the word, educate the young and support the burdened. We can pay for and back treatment programs.
For decades, users of heroin and other opiates were outcasts. There was no problem, society ruled, as long as the scourge was confined to special enclaves, among the poor or among minorities. Now, drug abuse, in all of its forms, has spread throughout our society.
We used police powers to slow the trafficking. We declared a "War on Drugs," with presidential drug czars and black helicopters hovering over borders. Nancy Reagan urged from the White House that kids should just say no to drugs. A real war developed, with drug warriors facing off against law enforcement officers. People were killed. Officials were bribed. And the whole "war" became the butt of jokes.
Now people talk about "decriminalization" and "legalization." Some people contend it would be better to legalize and control drugs like cocaine and heroin. Yet our experience with legal, but abused, drugs like the painkilling opioids OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin shows that the regulations and the regulators can be corrupted. For years, more people died from overdoses of these prescription drugs than heroin. Yes, we need to stop making criminals out of people. But we also must confront the fact that these drugs pose a danger, not just to the user, but to all of society.
We need to know more about why people turn to heroin and other dangerous drugs. We need to know more about how to help those trapped in addiction out of their torment. We need to come together as a community to develop a strategy and carry it out.
A good start would be Tuesday night's Imagine Delaware forum at Dickinson High School auditorium, 1801 Milltown Road, Milltown. Join us. (http://www.delawareonline.com)