Heroin Abuse in Hennepin County Minnesota

Heroin Abuse in Hennepin County Minnesota

Kenita Hamilton

ENG102-Compostion II

 Colorado State University – Global Campus

Jill Hawkins, Ph.D.

November 15th 2015

Heroin Abuse in Hennepin County Minnesota

Introduction

“This is a huge situation Minnesota is facing”, lamented Michael Coyne, a senior chemical health officer in Hennepin when asked about the heroin situation in this state. Many other stakeholders have echoed the concerns that Coyne contemplates. For long periods in its history, Minnesota, as a whole has been known as a county with the least influx of illegal drugs through its geographical boundaries. Today, however, devastating data keep emerging that indicate how Minnesota, specifically Hennepin, is one of the regions in America that lead in heroin abuse (Angler, 2012). The increasing rates of heroin abuse beg the question of what might have been done wrong in this state to instigate such a negative situation. Lack of seriousness in dealing with heroin abuse in Hennepin explains the alarming rates of abuse. A potential solution could be a holistic involvement, by all stakeholders, in the fight against this menace. This paper critically analyzes heroin abuse in Hennepin County of Minnesota. Ultimately, the paper aims at giving possible solutions to this solvable problems; having explored a lot of expertise input in this emerging social trend in Hennepin.

An Overview of the Situation

A brief history of America tells that Hennepin met the surge in drug abuse in the last two decades. In the premier of capitalism, Minnesota was not so much in contact with the rest of the world. According to Hagen (2014), a lot of trade in this state was internal to its counties or external to other states in the US. The escalation of capitalism, however, changed these trends. The situation was more vivid with the premier of free trade and the free market in the latter decades of the last century. Based on the emergence of free trade, a lot of information circulated and the curves for demand and supply of foreign goods and services stiffened more than ever (Wilson & Kolander, 2003). To this effect, even those regions that did not have so much contact with the external world started feeling the touch of this change. Minnesota also took part in this revolution.

In the last decade, Minnesota was said to be one of the states with massive external contacts in America. Among the factors that attach this state to the external world are such like trade, social exchange as well as the massive quest for information among other factors. Unfortunately, some of the contacts that Minnesota makes to the external world culminate to nothing but agony to their development. Mexico, notably, is one of the largest suppliers of illegal drugs in America (Hagen, 2014). Until the premier of free trade, drug lords in Mexico had very little contact with Minnesota. Today, most Mexican drug lords access this state with a disguised aim of legal trade.

Based on the discussion above, it is evident that the last two decades saw many changes in America and the world as a whole. Unfortunately, the state of Minnesota was not proactive to the changes that the world was seeing (Newton, et al, 2009). As the drug lords found porous borders into this state, the authorities still maintained the status quo with an outdated understanding that drug lords were never interested in Minnesota (Smith, 2013). Thus, no strategies, no analyses, nor seriousness was taken in understanding the drug abuse situation in this state. The lack of seriousness is evident in the fact that no organizations researched the influx of drugs into Minnesota until recently.