Heroin use on rise in SE Missouri

By Scott Welton

scottw@standard-democrat.com

SIKESTON -- In 2005, a heroin arrest was unusual; rare even, according to Jane Pfefferkorn, executive director at Mission Missouri.

"Now it is all over," Pfefferkorn said. "Heroin is moving from the city to the suburbs to rural areas -- and it is happening all over the country."

And at Mission Missouri, they are trying to do something before the problem gets any bigger, she said.

"We are not trying to keep it from coming; it's already here. We are trying to keep it from being as bad as it has the potential to be," Pfefferkorn said. "One of the reason we are so involved in this is back in 2006, '07, we were starting to hear from our clients that St. Louis was being overrun with heroin and as they were coming back to this area were beginning to hear about it being here. The number of overdose deaths were to the point of being an epidemic: in six and a half years there have been 1,800 heroin deaths in St. Louis County."

Hindsight being 20/20, Dan Duncan of the National Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse in St. Louis knows now the signs of heroin's arrival were there if they had only known to look, Pfefferkorn said.

"He said there were indicators on the front end of the epidemic they did not realize," she said.

Some of these indicators are an increase in the number of calls to drug addiction hotlines, an increase in crime, an increase in treatment admissions at hospital and rehab centers and an increase in the number of heroin-related emergency room visits, according to Pfefferkorn.

"The Daily Statesman called because they had three overdose deaths from heroin in Stoddard County," Pfefferkorn said.

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