Trend Spotting: Heroin use on Long Island skyrockets.

I'd need heavy painkillers too if I lived on Long Island... From Newsday:

Between 2004 and 2008, at least 1,068 people in Long Island lost their lives in overdoses of either heroin or prescription opiates. In 2007 alone, a staggering 10,418 people were admitted to rehab facilities in both counties for opiate addiction. Statistics from other locales were unavailable yesterday.

Authorities say aggressive promotion by dealers, increased purity that allows users to snort or smoke the drug, rather than inject it with a needle, prices as low as $5 for a one-time high, and similarity to popular but costly opiate painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin are behind heroin's growth in popularity.

Experts say these painkillers - often found in parents' medicine cabinets, and legally prescribed - are more often than not the entry point to heroin addiction.