A Mystery Solved
A few days ago, Jim asked me why anyone would call a substance six times as powerful as heroin* (OxyContin) "hillbilly heroin." He wanted to know why it wasn't called "hardcore heroin". My immediate response was "Because one is a bigot?" I mean, really, because why "hillbilly"? Why not "rural", which I presumed (as it turns out correctly) was what the term really referred to? I didn't know the answer to the question, but a Newsday article reveals it.
"Mainly it's abused in areas that don't have ready access to heroin," said Dr. Herbert D. Kleber, a professor of psychiatry and director of the division of substance abuse at Columbia University in Manhattan. "We don't see much OxyContin abuse in New York City. You see it in really rural areas, anywhere from Maine to West Virginia."
*I don't know the validity of this claim; it was simply the question that Jim asked me. I have no idea how powerful OxyContin is compared to heroin.