New Yorkers’ appetite for heroin has exploded as its price has plunged, its potency has soared — and authorities have focused on prescription-pill traffickers.
The recent overdose death of heroin-addled actor Philip Seymour Hoffman underscored the drug’s resurgence in New York, proving it’s not relegated to the city’s back alleys, officials say.
“Oxycodone is becoming more difficult to get. It’s becoming easier to buy heroin,” James Hunt, acting special agent in charge of the New York office of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, told The Post.
He said roughly 80 percent of first-time heroin users have abused painkillers before turning to the drug.
“Heroin shows no prejudice. It cuts across all [socioeconomic] lines,’’ Hunt added.
New data released by Hunt’s agency shows the heroin scourge shows no sign of slowing, as its kingpins flood the streets to meet the increased demands of their diversifying clientele and authorities try to bust them just as quickly.
The amount of heroin seized by the DEA has increased 67 percent between 2009, when officials recovered 86 kilograms (190 pounds) of dope, and 2013, when 144 kilograms (317 pounds) was seized, the vast majority of it coming from the city.
Hunt said heroin dealers are filling the void left by an ever-decreasing supply of prescription painkillers, which have become the focus of his agency in recent years.
With prescription drugs such as oxycodone becoming harder to come by, heroin suddenly offers a cheaper high that’s more addicting.
But it’s a killer — because it can be extremely pure or laced with other powerful narcotics, authorities say.
That, coupled with a low tolerance once people start using again after treatment, is catching addicts off-guard.
“As states move to limit the supply of illegal prescription drugs, it stands to reason that if they can’t get a prescribed [drug] that they would seek out a drug like heroin that has a similar effect,” said Susan Foster, vice president of CASAColumbia, a research group at Columbia University.
“Unfortunately, heroin dealers understand that,” Foster said, adding that the social consequences that arise as a result of addiction cost taxpayers millions in health-care and criminal-justice expenses.
Authorities are moving to cut off the supply, which they say is coming over the porous Mexican border, smuggled into the country inside everything from guinea pigs to prosthetic legs.
Dealers are currently using branding names such as “Government Shutdown,” “NFL” “and “The North Face.”
In 2009, it was “Twilight,” “MySpace,’’ “Obama’’ and “The Departed,” while in 1990 they favored “Tango and Cash” and “Goodfellas.”
“The Mexicans are flooding the market,” Hunt said. “They are clever businessmen whose product is poison. Heroin today is cheaper, more abundant and more potent than it was 10 to 20 years ago,” he added, noting that the purity of the drug has continued to increase as the price has gone down.
Hunt said the heroin found in New York currently runs between $50,000 and $60,000 a kilo, while the same quantity may have cost more than $200,000 a few decades ago.
And the superior quality of the drug surpasses what users might have had in the past, currently averaging more than 60 percent in purity, Hunt said, adding that 20 years ago, it was a fraction of that.
The amount of the drug seized at the border increased nearly four times from 2008, when authorities recovered 558.8 kilograms (1,232 pounds) of heroin, to 2012, when 2,091 kilograms (4,610 pounds) were recovered.
As authorities have seized increased quantities of heroin, the number of statewide arrests has soared, too. So far this year, 287 people have been picked up on heroin-related charges. There were 129 arrests in 2013.
The DEA has also been knocking over more drug dens known as “heroin mills,” where big-time dealers store massive quantities of the drug before spreading it out across the region.
Thirteen such drug dens were raided across the state in 2013, with the majority within the city limits, compared with only four in 2009.
Recently, the NYPD busted a heroin mill in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that had been supplying much of the city and Long Island. The ring is estimated to have sold as many of 360,000 bags of smack, with a street value of about $3.6 million.