Stop treating Heroin like heroin. That's the very reason why we have so many opiate addicts. As a former opiate user who almost fell down the rabbit hole (unfortunately, my brother eventually did fall down that hole), by demonizing heroin, you set it apart from other opiates like Codiene, Vicodin, and Percocet/Oxycontin. It's not any different from those drugs. I found out the hard way. All of those drugs are opiates and if you were to snort heroin and if you were to snort Oxycontin, you would almost certainly prefer the oxycontin. It's a much cleaner, longer lasting high while the heroin high kinda blows. Taking it in pill form isn't any different. Heroin is only sorta useful when it's taken IV or smoked, but heating it up destroys the compounds which get you high so it's not a very good ingestion route.

Pure heroin is quite harmless by itself (provided you didn't take too much). People can live a full and complete life totally addicted heroin with probably less risks than even pot. The problem of heroin is never direct -- it kills/harms via overdose (misjudging a dose, or doing the same amount after your tolerance drops) or the most common "overdose" we hear of is when Fentanyl gets cut into your heroin (Yes, Fentanyl is way more potent than heroin and hospitals prescribe it all the time). The other ways people die is by mixing heroin with other stuff, namely xanax. You virtually never hear of someone just dying from heroin alone. And have you ever heard of someone getting lung cancer from their heroin?

The drug itself isn't like crack or meth where doing it for an extended period of time can permanently turn you crazy (Psychosis). Or kill you from exhaustion/sleep deprivation. People can take it for decades and show no obvious signs (functioning addict). The drug is always labeled "super hard" by the same people carrying around Percocets in their purse. But that's OK because they got it from a dentist/doctor. Percocet is oxycontin mixed with Acetaminophen and Oxy is almost as strong as heroin per mg. Demonizing heroin while you're taking vicodin or oxy is so hypocritical that there should be a new word invented for it, something that means "more than hypocritical".

Heroin's problem lies in that it really doesn't have a great medical application. What it does, other drugs now do literally (not figuratively) 1000x better. But heroin is incredibly cheap to make (relatively speaking) and provides a unique rush when taken IV. There are other drugs (like Demerol) which provide that same rush but hospitals instead inject it into your fatty tissue (ass) so it's slow to release (so you can't get the rush). So why don't drug kingpins make that stuff instead? Because those pharmaceuticals (like Vicodin, Demerol, and Fentanyl) require complex processes (many steps) and expensive labs to make well, and it's way more expensive than Heroin. Not just cost-wise but also time-wise. When you're out in some back-country in Afghanistan mixing your freshly dried Opium in a vat of Acetone to dissolve it, you're on the clock to get in and out with the product or the boss is going to be pissed.

I realize I'm starting to rant but that's because I myself always though "drugs are bad!" then I tried pot. Realized it wasn't that bad, safer than alcohol. That same "Well that's not so bad" happened to me with heroin. After snorting it I was actually disappointed and thought I was ripped off. I didn't realize it wasn't stronger than Oxycontin. I thought it was orders of magnitude stronger than these harmless little pills my dentist gave me when I got my wisdom teeth pulled. I was wrong. And that lack of understanding is what almost threw me down the rabbit hole.