In Fairview Park, Ohio, a woman is caught on tape snorting heroin in a McDonald's restaurant booth. Later she administers Narcan, a heroin antidote, to the man sitting across from her--he overdosed.
Last spring in Philadelphia, a man riding a city bus at rush hour injected heroin into his hand, in front of other passengers, including one who captured the scene on video, reports the New York Times.
It is an epidemic that is no longer relegated to crack houses and urban neighborhoods but heroin has moved into the public square.
A report by the Center For Disease Control and Prevention says that the number of heroin users rose by nearly 300,000 in the last decade.
Use of the drug grew among different income levels, in different parts of the country, but it more than doubled among whites and women.
Last month, The Obama administration announced a series of initiatives aimed at curbing America's opioid addiction epidemic.
The initiatives would make it easier to obtain medication-based treatment, expand Medicaid coverage and increase availability of a drug that saves people from overdoses, reports NBC News.
Dr. Paul Hardy spoke with CBN News about the new strain of heroin and why it is killing so many people. Click play to watch.
Narcan is one of those drugs, but is it a crutch?
"I think it is a resource for EMT and people who will be able to get the help they need and survive a possible death experience," said Dr. Paul Hardy, Founder of Recovery For Life .
"We've had more deaths in 2014 from heroin overdoses than we did traffic deaths," he added. "We are fighting this with everything we have."
Hardy is working with Virginia's Attorney General Mark Herring to pass the Good Samaritan Law--a bill that would offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to someone who is injured.
"If you're with someone and this person overdoses and we come and save that person's life you will not go to jail for calling and that's huge," explained Hardy.
Hardy says the most important thing is to save that person's life. He says they have to get to the place of making a decision about their addiction.
"The biggest obstacle is themselves," he said. "When they surrender their lives that is the biggest and the first step."
"The greatest thing we can do is reeducate them about their addiction and help them to try to understand that Christ and being in Christ is everything."
For more resources on drug recovery programs visit Recovery For Life.
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