Courtesy of Gee Vigna

Nicky Vigna.

On February 4, 2010, Gee Vigna and her husband discovered a horrible sight in the room of their seventeen-year-old daughter, Nicky.

"We had no idea she was using any drugs," Gee tells Daily RFT.

Nicky had overdosed on heroin. Doctors pointed to track marks on her arm.

"That was the beginning of what I would call the fight of our life," Gee says.

It's a fight that her family lost, despite their best efforts to help their daughter. On January 3, 2013, Nicky, at age twenty, overdosed again, and this time, she did not recover. Now, Gee is trying to raise awareness about the growing problem of what she says is "the silent killer" that's destroying families and communities across the country.

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Representative Bryan Spencer is promoting a bill that would offer immunity in certain cases to individuals who seek medical attention for a drug overdose -- and for the Missouri lawmaker, it's personal.

"I had a student who died of heroin use," he tells Daily RFT. "He was a bright young man who had a great future in front of him."

Spencer, who taught elementary, middle and high school classes for more than twenty years, argues that individuals who call 911 for friends who have overdoses should have limited immunity against possession charges.

"You're weighing a conviction versus a life," he says. "I understand both sides of the argument. But you have to decide: Is a life more important, or is putting someone in jail more important?"

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Missouri is the only state in the country that doesn't have a so-called "prescription drug monitoring program" -- a fact that could be contributing to the rapid growth of heroin use in the state, as evidenced by new data we reported on last week.

"There are a lot of people who are 'doctor shoppers,' who go from doctor to doctor," Brenda Schell, executive director of the Missouri Recovery Network, tells Daily RFT. "And when they no longer can get prescription drugs, they turn to heroin and heroin is fairly cheap."

One Missouri lawmaker, with support from advocates, is pushing a bill that could address the increasing challenge of heroin abuse in the state.

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Missouri may be the Meth Capital of the United States -- but the state may have an even bigger problem when it comes to heroin use. So says a new study released this week that shows that heroin is, in some ways, more of a concern for law-enforcement officials than meth -- and overdose rates have increased dramatically in recent years.

"We've been on the national news...for meth," says Brenda Schell, executive director of the Missouri Recovery Network. "Now we found that heroin and opiate use has triumphed over the meth problem. Heroin...is one of the most severe and significant drug problems in Missouri."

What's causing the spike -- and who is using?

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Maybe

Little meth lab on the prairie.

Toward the start of every new year, the Drug Enforcement Agency adds up the number of "meth incidents" from the previous year and divvies them up by state. More than once, Missouri has come out the state with the highest number of meth lab busts.

The latest figures show that 2012 was another banner year in Missouri meth production. When broken down by county, Jefferson County had the second highest number of labs in the country.

"It's astronomical," Corporal Chris Hoffman of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department tells Daily RFT.

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