Heroin Heroin is an illegal opiate drug. Use of heroin causes physical and psychological problems such as shallow breathing, nausea, panic, insomnia, and a need for increasingly higher doses of the drug to get the same effect. Together, these actions account for the user's loss of control and the drug's habit-forming action.
Injectable drugs can have grave consequences.
Of great importance, however, is that the user never knows whether the next dose will be unusually potent, leading to overdose, coma, and possible death. Needle sharing by injected drug users is fast becoming one of the leading causes of new AIDS cases. The AIDS virus is carried in contaminated blood left in the needle, syringe, or other drug-related implements and is injected into the new user when he or she uses this equipment to inject heroin or other drugs. There is no cure for AIDS and no proven vaccine to prevent it. Heroin use during pregnancy is associated with stillbirths and miscarriages.