U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell is pledging his support for efforts to battle heroin abuse in northern Kentucky and elsewhere. The Republican lawmaker testified on Wednesday (May 14) in Washington before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.
McConnell says the problem has spread rapidly through Boone, Campbell and Kenton Counties.
“According to the northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force, the number of court cases for heroin possession and trafficking has increased by five hundred percent from 2008 to 2012 and is expected to double again in 2013. To put this in perspective, the three counties of northern Kentucky contain sixty percent of my state’s heroin prosecutions in 2011, even though they are home to less than ten percent of the state’s population.” –Mitch McConnell
McConnell says addicts have turned to heroin because Kentucky has choked off the supply of prescription drugs. The senator says it’ll take a combination of incarceration and treatment programs, as well as education to halt the heroin epidemic.
