Thursday, September 25, 2014

Heroin is Killing Very Few of Our Children.

The other day I drove past a billboard announcing, with the illustration of a smiling white man, "heroin is killing our children."  I have many problems with such billboards, not least of which being the complete lack of any contextual information.  Why is there a smiling white person with the message of death from heroin?  Normally I would just assume it was a preacherman, since I generally associate such with fearmongering about children and drugs, but religious groups typically put their names on their billboards.

As far as actual warnings about risks to children from heroin, heroin is so far down on the lists of things children die from worldwide (or even in just the U.S.) it's not actually on any of the lists.  I can't even find a good source telling me specifically about child mortality and heroin.  Granted I am currently googling in a very lackadaisical fashion, but I am coming up with the impression that heroin usage among children is not a particularly large risk factor for children in the U.S. or, frankly, anywhere else.  I'm sure there are some people, including children, dying from it, and maybe if the billboard explained risk factors and mitigation strategies therefore rather than displaying a smiling white person, it would be a vaguely worthwhile billboard.  As it is, I'm still thinking unintentional injuries, malignant neoplasms, congenital abnormalities, suicide, homicide, and respiratory diseases are all killing way more of our children.  {/citation}  So I'm really puzzled by this billboard.

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