Efforts by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to fight the state’s heroin epidemic drew the attention of
60 Minutes, which put together a “Heroin in the Heartland” segment focusing on drug use in the suburbs of Columbus.
“This is the worst drug epidemic I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told
60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker in the broadcast that aired Nov. 1 and was repeated Jan. 24. “It’s in every single county. It’s in our cities, but it’s also in our wealthier suburbs. It’s in our small towns. There’s no place in Ohio where you can hide from it. There is no place in Ohio where you couldn’t have it delivered to you in 15 or 20 minutes.”
Hannah Morris, a college student from Worthington confirmed that assessment.
“To me it was easier to get than weed,” said Morris, who got hooked on heroin when she was 15. She has been clean for a year. “It started with weed, and it was fun. … It went to pills, and it was still fun. Percocet, Xanax, Vicodin, all that kind of stuff. Then, yeah, heroin.”
She told Whitaker how she and her friends would shoot up in the school restroom.
Heroin can be purchased for $10 or less.
The
60 Minutes crew visited the Attorney General’s Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) in London, where they were shown capsules and tablets of heroin seized during arrests.
At BCI, DeWine talked about the difference between today’s heroin use and that of decades ago, when, seemingly, only urban dwellers in the worst environments used the drug that is most effective when injected with a needle — a barrier for many.
“There’s no psychological barrier anymore that stops a young person or an older person from taking heroin. Anybody watching today, it can be your family. There’s no typical person. It has permeated every segment of society in Ohio,” he said.
Parents who have lost children to heroin told
60 Minutes that they feel guilty about missing the signs of heroin use. Too many parents are in denial and embarrassed about it, they said.
“No one was talking about that we had heroin in Pickerington,” said Heidi Riggs, who lost her 20-year-old daughter, Marin, to a heroin overdose. “We were in total shock.”
To watch a related CBS interview with the Attorney General, visit
www.OhioAttorneyGeneral.gov/HeroinInTheHeartland.