Is Heroin Use 'Soaring'?

Following
yesterday’s
death of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman from an apparent
heroin overdose, MSNBC perceives
a “rapidly growing crisis of heroin and other opiate abuse” in the
United States. Under the headline “Philip Seymour Hoffman and
America’s Heroin Problem,” Max Lockie reports that “first-time
heroin use has increased in the U.S. by nearly 60% over
the past decade.”

That sounds like a big increase, but overall heroin use rates
remain very low. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and
Health, 0.3 percent of Americans 12 and older used heroin in

2012, compared to 0.2 percent in
2002. During the same period past-month use remained steady at
0.1 percent. According to the Monitoring
the Future Study, past-year heroin use among high school
seniors actually fell from 1 percent in 2002 to 0.6 percent in
2012.

MSNBC exaggerates the increase in heroin use by focusing on raw
numbers instead of rates. A chart accompanying the article shows
the number of past-month users rising from 166,000 in 2002 to
335,000 in 2012, which creates an alarming upward curve instead of
the flat line you’d get by comparing rates. The effect is less
dramatic for past-year use, but it still makes the curve
steeper.

A CNN story also cites raw numbers instead of rates
and claims,
in the label on a video, that “heroin use [is] soaring in [the]
U.S.” By contrast, the accompanying article refers to “an uptick”
and concedes that “heroin remains comparatively rare.” Measured by
past-year use, marijuana is 40 times as popular.

[Thanks to Stanton Peele for the MSNBC link.]