The number of people who began using heroin for the first time decreased by more than 50 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to new government data released Friday, even as deaths from opioids overall haven’t yet shown any sign of slowing.
An estimated 81,000 people started using heroin for the first time in 2017, compared to more than 170,000 people in 2016. The largest bulk of users was among adults ages 18 to 25, 46,000 of whom started using the powerful, addictive drug in 2017.
The data, released Friday, are part of an annual survey on drug use from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. The survey examines drug use for people in the U.S. that are 12 years and older.
The latest figures could signal progress in the opioid crisis if the downward trend were to continue. But a similar reduction occurred from 2014 to 2015, when the number of people who started using heroin fell from 212,000 to 135,000, before climbing back up again in 2016.
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“Caution is advised in interpreting the fluctuations in the numbers of heroin initiates in single years because the relatively small numbers of recent initiates per year can contribute to these fluctuations,” authors of the report wrote.
Among the 2.1 million people in the U.S. who are addicted to opioids, 652,000 of them are dependent on heroin and the rest are dependent on prescription painkillers, according to the survey. Addictions to heroin tend to begin after someone has first developed a dependence on prescription painkilers following an injury or treatment for chronic pain. Heroin affects the brain in a similar way and is inexpensive and easy to access across the U.S.
Public health officials have been grappling with reversing the crisis, which killed more than 40,000 people in 2017. Most of the deaths are from fentanyl, an opioid that is made in a lab and is 50 times more potent than heroin. People who use heroin, or other drugs such as cocaine, often do not know that it has been laced with fentanyl.
The Trump administration has said it considers the opioid crisis a public health priority. The Senate is expected to vote next week on a wide-ranging bill that would spur the development for more treatment and that would give law enforcement officials more tools for stopping illicit drug trafficking.
