Right here in our backyard: Heroin use spreading to communities not touched before

The trunk of a vehicle used to smuggle bags of heroin into the United States. Law enforcement experts say the drug, once mostly limited to urban areas, now is available virtually nationwide. Heroin often is taken up by people addicted to prescription pain drugs no longer able to get high on them or unable to afford or find them.

Submitted photo Tiny bags of heroin are weighed on a scale at the Lee County Sheriff's Office following a recent bust.

Mexican "black tar" heroin ranging in color from dark brown to black, is a less pure form of heroin that tends to be sticky like roofing tar or hard like coal. Because of its consistency, it's usually dissolved and injected or smoked, rather than snorted or sniffed. It's more likely to be distributed in the western and southwestern parts of the United States. Mexican drug gangs are purported to be behind the rise of this type of heroin availability.

SHNS photo by Emmanuel Tambakakis Above: Some paraphernalia typically used to inject heroin: needles, syringes, spoons, cotton balls and tiny plastic bags. The parents of a 20-year-old Maryland overdose victim found the material under his bed after he died. The general public may assume addicts require needles but heroin can be smoked and snorted or packaged as a suppository.

SHNS photo courtesy U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (3) "White powder" heroin from South America has become the most prevalent form of the drug in the United States, particularly in the Northeast, South and Midwest. Although typically purer than the "black tar" variety, white heroin is still often cut with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk or other drugs, making the active dose of heroin difficult to gauge. That often leads to dangerous side effects and overdose.

eroin has become the deadly crest of a wave of addictive drug use in communities around the country even here in Southwest Florida.With addicts desperate for a cheaper high than prescription drugs or seeking a more powerful fix, experts are seeing heroin addiction treatment admissions, overdoses and fatalities rising in nearly every region, including areas where the drug has seldom been seen before.

In Ohio, state officials say drug overdoses from heroin increased 25 percent between 2008 and 2009, and are continuing to rise.

In Cowlitz County, Wash., an unusually pure shipment of heroin killed seven people in just five days during April.

In St. Louis city and county, officials report heroin killed 310 people in the past two years alone.

In Collier and Lee counties, law enforcement authorities say that they hadn't seen the drug in this region for "quite a while," but that a major resurgence has occurred within the past few months.

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Right here in our backyard: Heroin use spreading to communities not touched before