PART A: Which statement best describes the relationship between the use of OxyContin and heroin?
A) Patients who are prescribed OxyContin and become addicted may use heroin to
achieve similar effects for a more affordable cost.
B)Younger patients have a more difficult time being prescribed OxyContin and therefore must seek out heroin on the streets.
C)While OxyContin is able to alleviate patients' pain, it doesn't have the same
euphoric effects of heroin, encouraging users to turn to the more addictive drug.
D)Patients who were originally prescribed OxyContin were eventually taken off the
drug when the addictive nature was realized and forced to turn to heroin to
relieve pain.

The answer is b. run-on.

Explanation:

When independent clauses are joined incorrectly, we have what is called a run-on sentence. An independent clause is a group of words that can stay alone as a sentence, which means it offers information that makes sense without the help of another sentence.

When we join independent clauses without any sort of punctuation, we have a fused sentence. When we join them only with a comma, we have a comma splice. The run-on sentence we are analyzing here is an example of a fused sentence, since it presents no punctuation:

- Flash flooding creates dangerous conditions rain falls too quickly to be absorbed into the ground or to drain.

In order to correct it  and not create a comma splice, we could do as follows:

- Flash flooding creates dangerous conditions; rain falls too quickly to be absorbed into the ground or to drain. (employ a semicolon)