One of the first long-term studies of heroin addicts has found that nearly half die prematurely. Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles tracked 581 male heroin addicts over a 33-year period.
Many people believe that millions of heroin addicts have just quit.
It's not true. All the addicts were committed by the courts to the California Civil Addict Program in the early 1960s. In three decades, nearly half of the original group died from drug overdoses or other causes, including murder, suicide, accidents, chronic liver disease and cancer. On average they died nine years earlier than the general population. Many of the survivors, whose average age was 57, were still using heroin and other drugs.