State data released last week shows the number of millennials going to California ERs with heroin overdoses increased more than 100 percent between 2012 and 2016.

The data shows a surge over the last five years that culminated in “412 adults age 20 to 29 [going] to emergency departments due to heroin.”

According to the Los Angeles Daily News, approximately “1,500 emergency department visits by California’s millennials poisoned by heroin were logged in 2015 compared with fewer than 1,000 in 2012.”

State health officials point to an increase in prescription pain medicine addiction as a contributing factor to heroin use:

One of the unintended consequences of this prescription drug epidemic has been the increase in heroin addiction and overdoses, in part due to the transition from prescription opioids to less expensive heroin street drugs. Heroin deaths have continued to increase steadily by 67 percent since 2006 and account for a growing share of the total opioid-related deaths.

Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center’s Dr. Crescenzo Pisano says another contributing factor to the California surge is that heroin is more readily available than it used to be. Pisano said it can be found with “the high school athlete…[or] the kid next door. It’s no longer people from the seedy side of town.”

On December 9, 2016, Breitbart News reported Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showing heroin overdose deaths overtook firearm-related homicides. There were 12,989 heroin deaths versus 12,979 firearm-related homicides.

California is now a microcosm of this surge.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.