The number of young adults admitted to California hospital emergency rooms with heroin poisoning increased sixfold over the past decade, the state said, the latest evidence of growing abuse of the highly addictive drug.

According to the article in Reuters Health, heroin abuse has been on the rise across the United States, in part because it has become easier to obtain than prescription opiates like Oxycontin. “It’s consistent with what we’re seeing in our narcotic treatment programs – just a lot more young people,” said Tom Renfree, who heads substance abuse disorder services for the County Behavioral Health Directors Association in Sacramento.

“There’s been a real spike.” About 1,300 young adults between the ages of 20 and 29 were seen in emergency rooms in the state with heroin poisoning in 2014, more than six times the roughly 200 seen in 2005, the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development said. Emergency room visits for adults ages 30 to 39 doubled during the same period, from about 300 to about 600. Teens also were seen in higher numbers, the data showed, with 367 treated in 2014 compared with about 250 in 2005.

The statistics do not include patients who were admitted to the hospital after treatment in the emergency room, and the state did not say whether the patients lived or died.

Heroin poisoning is most commonly caused by overdose, but it can also include instances in which the user has been poisoned by a substance used to cut the drug, or other adverse effects.

A recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that deaths from heroin overdoses nearly tripled from 2010 to 2013 in the United States.

Powerful prescription painkillers have become pricier and harder to use. So addicts across the USA are turning to this more volatile drug. According to an article in USA Today, the new twist: Heroin is no longer just an inner-city plague. Heroin in Charlotte has become so easy to get that dealers deliver to the suburbs and run specials to attract their young, professional, upper-income customers. These lawyers, nurses, cops and ministers are showing up in the detox ward at Carolinas Medical Center, desperate to kick an opiate addiction that often starts with powerful prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin.

The center analyzed the patients’ ZIP codes to find out where heroin had taken root, says Robert Martin, director of substance abuse services at the medical center. “Our heroin patients,” he said, “come from the five best neighborhoods.” What Martin and others like him are witnessing is a growing and more dangerous wave of drug addiction sweeping the country, ensnaring a new population – several hundred thousand Americans – in the heroin trap and importing crime to America’s suburbs. Feeding the frenzy: Prescription painkiller addicts are finding their drug of choice in short supply, so heroin becomes their drug of last resort.

As addicts move from legitimate prescriptions to the black market of pure, precisely measured narcotic pain pills to the dirty world of dealers, needles and kitchen table chemists, health officials and police are noting sharp increases in overdoses, crime and other public health problems.

Statistically it is likely that this phenomena exists in the world of workers’ compensation claimants, at least to some degree. Yet, has anyone actually seen a case of admitted heroin addiction come across the desk of those of us who manage claims? Indeed, it is rare to get a history of a claimant admitting to an addiction to any illegal substance, yet public health information defies the accuracy of the histories we are being given.