The estimated number of heroin users increased from 68,000 in 1993 to 216,000 in 1996. A large portion of these recent new users were smoking, snorting, or sniffing heroin, and most were under age 26. In some areas, such as San Francisco, the recent initiates increasingly include members of the middle class. In Boston and Newark, heroin users are also found in suburban populations. Purity remains high, as does intranasal use, in the East and in some midwestern cities, notably Chicago and Detroit.
Supplies remain abundant.
Aggressive marketing and price cutting has intensified in some cities, such as Boston, Detroit, and New York. Australia Moves Forward with Plans for Safe Injection Rooms Plans to set up safe injecting rooms for heroin addicts will go ahead in at least three Australian cities despite a stern U.N. warning, according to the Associated Press. In a recent report, the U.N's International Narcotics Control Board said governments that provide addicts with clean needles and a safe place to shoot up may violate international law. The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Germany have each experimented with injection rooms as a way to limit the spread of infectious disease, decrease risk of overdose, and get drug users off the street. By permitting injection rooms, a government could be considered to be in contravention of the international drug control conventions,'' the Vienna-based board said.