Police and public health officials in the U.S. have been struggling in recent years with the dramatic rise in heroin addiction and fatal overdoses from the drug. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 8,000 people died from heroin overdoses in 2013 – a 39% increase over the year before.

Kentucky emerged in the last few years as especially hard hit, where heroin deaths increased by 550% between 2011 and 2012 and have continued to climb steadily. That’s where investigative reporter Jason Cherkis spent more than a year looking into heroin addiction and treatment. He says there’s a growing consensus among medical experts that the most effective treatment for addicts is a combination of counseling and new medications, especially the drug Suboxone, which blocks the craving for heroin. But Cherkis reports most drug treatment facilities rely on an abstinence-based approach, which rejects the use of these new medications. The result, he says, is high rates of failure for addicts trying to get clean and, all too often, fatal overdoses when they relapse.

Jason Cherkis is a national investigative reporter for The Huffington Post. His series about heroin addiction and treatment called “Dying To Be Free” was published last week.
The interview and Cherkis’ work is not without debate. Many professionals and former/current addicts challenged Cherkis’ reporting as over-simplistic and failing to discuss many of the other treatments and treatment programs that are showing promise.

Here is a link to the interview with  FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies.