H.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

I've just finished reading Jacob Sullum's "H: The Surprising Truth About Heroin and Addiction" (June) and am not at all impressed. I find it interesting that while Sullum quotes a sociologist who wrote that "narcotic addicts tend to 'mature out' of the habit in their 30s," every example of a "successful addict" (save one) in the article was 40 or older. How did he come to that conclusion? If he surmised that people in their 30s stopped using heroin because of a lack of criminal or corrections-related activity, he overlooked the possibility that many of them moved or died.

As a law enforcement officer who has seen firsthand the tragic results of heroin addiction, I can tell you that they are that bad, and that frequent. The fact that heroin kills is incontrovertible. Any attempt to minimize this fact, or to try to legalize or normalize or rationalize its use, demonstrates a profound irresponsibility, a profound stupidity, or perhaps both.

Stephen K. Hancox

Flemington, NJ

Thank you for the article. In the 19th century, heroin was considered a "gentle painkiller. "Anyone who has enough physical pain to justify morphine use might just as well use heroin. If heroin were legalized, the drug companies that produce morphine would have to compete with low-cost overseas producers of heroin, to the benefit of the consumer. Heroin was actually used to help people get off morphine addiction, as it was considered the less addictive of the two. There is no logical basis for its demonization.

Kirk Gray

Los Angeles 

What tripe! I held nay dying sister in my arms on the way to the hospital after she overdosed on this "harmless" drug. She had already vomited frothy, blood-specked foam, lost control of her bowels and bladder all over me, convulsed, and died before we could get her to the hospital. I think the New York Times story referenced in the article was fiction, as many of their articles have proven to be, and I think it is very harmful in justifying a filthy, deadly habit.

As my sister yielded more and more of her once beautiful self to this addiction, I tried to help her by intervention, forcing her to go into drug treatment, only to see her time and again sink back into her addiction. Tell the two children my sister left behind that heroin is just a harmless thing.

J. Turner

New Orleans, LA

I just finished reading Jacob Sullum's article; he is partially right and partially wrong.

I am an opiate addict. I have been since the day I tried heroin in San Francisco, back in 1969. I was in the U.S. Army, having the time of my life. I absolutely loved reefer and acid, and when I tried junk I loved that too. I just chipped while I was in the Army. But within two years after I got out of the Army, I had my first habit.

When you're young, kicking a habit is a piece of cake: Three days of feeling crappy, and you're a new man. I would use for a while, then stay straight for a year or two or three, then start over. By 1984 that three days of jonesing had turned into four or five, and it was no fun at all. After 1984 I stayed straight for 13 years. Then in 1997 hit it hard again for three years. Man, all of a sudden I was sick. After two days, I couldn't stand it anymore. This time, the nightmarish anxiety alone was beyond description. I went and copped some dope, then got on a methadone program. I've been on methadone now for three and a half years. It doesn't get me high but it does give me that satisfied feeling that an opiate gives you.

I did work the same job for 27 years, and I never had to steal. But I did sell all my possessions a couple of times and damn near lost my house. I retired with a good pension, but I sure do wish I had never tried heroin. If you have never tried it, don't.

Mike M.

St. Paul, MN

Jacob Sullum replies: The study by Charles Winick to which Stephen Hancox refers was based on addicts reported to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. As I noted, the study has been criticized, mainly because addicts who disappeared from the bureau's flies had not necessarily given up heroin. But subsequent research, including the Vietnam veterans study I discussed in the article, has shown that heroin addicts frequently do stop using the drug on their own. The fact that some people continue using heroin into their 40s does not negate that point.

Hancox says "every example of a 'successfial addict' (save one) in the article was 40 or older." If by addict he means user, that is not correct. The subjects in the Vietnam veterans study, Norman Zinberg's research, the 1973 Harvard study, and the 1983 British study (all mentioned in the article) included many opiate users in their 20s and 30s. More important, Hancox's failure to distinguish between users and addicts overlooks one of my main points: The vast majority of heroin users do not take the drug daily.

More generally, it is misleading to cite the most extreme examples of heroin use as if they were typical. Some drinkers die of acute alcohol poisoning, get killed in traffic accidents, ruin their lives through excessive consumption, or succumb to the cumulative effects o heavy drinking. (As Hancox might put it, the fact that alcohol kills is incontrovertible.) But these examples of abuse do not prove that alcohol cannot be used moderately and responsibly. Likewise, even if we ignore the various ways in which prohibition makes drug use more dangerous, the fact that some heroin users die of overdoses (or, more commonly, risky drug mixtures) or develop habits that disrupt their lives does not mean there is no such thing as an occasional or moderate heroin user. Indeed, the government's own data indicate that such users are far more common than addicts.