Chicago the Top US City for Heroin

Chicago and its suburbs have the worst heroin problem in the US, a new study suggests. The Windy City had 23,000 mentions of heroin in emergency room records, beating second-place New York City by almost 50%. Its jail also ranked first in the percentage of arrestees testing positive for heroin, with 29%. And heroin beat out even marijuana and cocaine as the illegal drug Illinois residents most frequently sought help for, CBS News reports.

“Chicago has one of the worst—if not the worst—heroin problems in the nation,” said one author of the report, which comes from Roosevelt University’s Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy. She added that users are more white, more female, and younger than the public probably imagines. Arrestees testing positive were much more likely to be white (41%) than black (25.3%) or Latino (24.3%).