Heroin, prescription drug use up in the Twin Cities

Trends are moving in opposite directions as cops focus on meth, and heroin dealers tap a new market.

By BOB VON STERNBERG, Star Tribune

Last update: June 30, 2009 - 8:33 PM

Opiate abuse is up, but stimulant use is down.

Those countervailing trends in drug use in the Twin Cities last year were detected in a new report by the Minnesota Department of Human Services. It found that emergency rooms and addiction treatment programs in the metro area reported spikes in the abuse of both heroin and prescription painkillers last year.

In 2008, 1,187 patients -- a record -- sought treatment for abusing prescription narcotic painkillers, a three-fold increase since 2002.

Between 2006 and 2007, Twin Cities emergency rooms reported an increase in visits of more than 67 percent.

During the same period, heroin-related emergency room visits increased by more than 65 percent.

Even as abuse of prescription narcotic drugs and heroin has soared in the Twin Cities, the use of cocaine and methamphetamine has dropped.

Those trends have been detected in comparable surveys being conducted in 19 other big American cities, said Carol Falkowski, who has directed the twice-yearly report for the state since 1986.

"When I got together with my counterparts, that same pattern was evident in the other cities," she said. "It's very rare to see a consensus like that because it's usually more of a mixed bag."

What's not unusual, she said, are broad cyclical trends in drug abuse, in which stimulants alternate in popularity with opiates, depending largely on where law enforcement has placed its greatest emphasis.

In this case, at a time when drug enforcement has been intensely focused on breaking up meth labs and distribution, heroin dealers have been focusing on the Twin Cities, which has not historically been a big market for them, Falkowski said.

The report says a combination of exceptionally high purity and low price is fueling heroin use in the metro area. That, Falkowski said, is the strongest evidence that "the dealers are trying to establish a new market and get new customers."

Hennepin and Ramsey counties reported 115 opiate-related deaths last year, compared with 31 for cocaine and 14 for methamphetamine.

Meth use apparently is declining, according to the report, after increasing for the first five years of the decade. Last year, hospital and treatment center admissions related to the drug accounted for 6 percent of all admissions, half the level in 2005.

Among all illegal drugs, marijuana continues to account for more admissions to treatment programs than any other, accounting for 3,199 cases last year.

Whether the trends directly reflect actual levels of drug use or are more driven by increased enforcement actions and intervention is impossible to say, Falkowski said.

"That's always hard to pin down, but these reports provide a good measure of the indirect consequences of abuse."

The state's report was prepared as part of an epidemiological drug-abuse-monitoring network made up of researchers convened by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Bob von Sternberg • 612-673-7184