Heroin addiction treatment

Heroin Treatment in South Carolina

Availability of heroin and heroin abuse are a minimal problem in South Carolina. Most of all the heroin users are concentrated in the urban areas of the state. The large parts of heroin users are African Americans or Caucasians. The number of young Caucasian addicts is rising.   
Caucasian and African American males are the main abusers of heroin in  the state of South Carolina, a state where the heroin abuse rate is considerably lower than the national norm. According to the DAODAS database, the number of heroin admissions to publicly sponsored treatment programs increased from 353 in FY1998 to 445 in FY2000. The number of both adult and youth arrests for the simple possession of heroin remained low with 116 in 1996 and only 134 in 1999.

Quite a few heroin trafficking organizations identify their particular brand of the drug by stamping a brand name or picture on the glassine envelopes holding the heroin. The use of brand names makes it easier for organizations to package their products in a manner clearly designed to facilitate market loyalty and discourage competitors from infringing on their clientele. Most of the retail-level heroin sold in the eastern area’s of the United States is sold by groups that use brand names. By developing a loyal customer base, crime rings can increase their market share and ensure greater profits. While the use of brand names or other signifying factors is common, some organizations change their signatures daily or weekly in an attempt to thwart law enforcement from catching on.

Many opiates are detectable with hair tests (the same which are detectable in a urine test) and are included in the standard set of substances tested for by many companies. The standard hair screen takes the most recent 1.5 inches of growth and uses those for testing. That provides a detection time of approximately 3 months. If a person's hair is shorter than 1.5 inches, the detection time period will be shorter. In addition to hair tests for heroin drug testing, in the past few years new technologies have been developed which allow for saliva testing for the presence of heroin and other type of opiates.

There are five primary types of heroin drug testing: urine, blood, hair, saliva, and sweat. Heroin can be detected in the person's blood for an unknown period of time, in the user's saliva for an unknown period of time, in the user's sweat for an unknown period of time, in the user's urine for 2-4 days, and in the user's hair for up to 90 days. There are several substances which can cause a false positive during heroin drug testing. These substances include: poppy seeds, Tylenol with codeine, most prescription pain medications, cough suppressants with Dextromethorphan (DXM), Nyquil, kidney infection, kidney disease, diabetes, liver disease, various quinolones and antibiotics.