Wow, just wow. As someone not affected by the heroin epidemic, this was very hard to read. I was almost brought to tears at how many stories involved children of heroin users and how their lives are affected.
The children celebrating a birthday in a time-limited jail room got me. They're a similar age to my own children. It's probably far better than a lifetime of health issues, but it seriously saddened me that those children didn't get to do that at their pace, in their family home, without third-party supervision, with friends, etc. Their "normal" gets entirely defined by mistakes of their parents compounded by their parents' inability to control that mistake.
I thought I was also not affected by the heroin epidemic. Last week my son's best friend's mom died in a heroin related incident. They're in first grade (6 years old). Heartbreaking.