The great American relapse

PICTURE a heroin addict. “A bum sitting under a bridge with a needle in his arm, robbing houses to feed his addiction,” is what many people might imagine, believes Cynthia Scudo. That image may have been halfway accurate when heroin first ravaged America’s inner cities in the 1960s and 1970s. But Ms Scudo, a smartly dressed young grandmother from a middle-class Denver suburb, knows that these days it is not always like that. Until not so long ago, she was a heroin addict herself.