TCC Symposium Addresses 'Heroin, Prescription Drug Epidemic'

Heroin has made a huge comeback in Tulsa County in recent years. 

It kills people and costs our state millions of dollars, which is why a TCC student hosted the state's first heroin symposium today.   

Some say heroin addicts today are different from the past.

One of the main points of this seminar is that the face of heroin has changed. 

It is no longer the strung out guy under the bridge, it's college students, young professionals, coaches, teachers, doctors and some say if we don't get a handle on it now, it's only going to get worse.

"Opiates make alcohol seems like mother's milk and that's the truth," said TCC student Oscar Padron. 

Opiates are prescription painkillers and heroin. Doctors write more than 250 million painkiller prescriptions every year and people often start taking them legitimately, then become addicted.

"The leap from legal drugs to street drugs is not a far leap and once they are addicted, good sense goes out the window," Padron said. 

He said heroin is the most expensive of the streets drugs and more addictive, which is why it's no longer the street bum using it, but people with money.

"Today's heroin addict is someone with a lot of disposable income, upper, middle class, this is who the cartels are targeting," Padron said. 

He said the Chinese are new players in the market, flooding our streets with low grade, imitation fentanyl, but, painkillers and heroin are also available online.

"You can have black tar heroin delivered to your home in 2016. That seems outrageous to me but this is the reality we're facing," Padron said. 

They say the first step in fixing this problem is acknowledging it's here and it's not going away and second, for everyone to work together to get it out of the community.