How the 'Opioid Epidemic' proves racism across party lines

[Amadeus]

https://medium.com/@SonofBaldwin/th...way-and-treats-black-drug-addicts-d193d42ea20

The Media Treats White Drugs Users Like Angels Who Lost Their Wings and Treats Black Drug Users Like Demons Who Must Be Returned to Hell

Despite the drug crises in white communities being the largest the United States has ever seen, dwarfing the crack epidemic of the 80s, white people — from every class status — have the benefit of never being negatively judged for their behavior; white communities have the benefit of not being raided by rabid police departments and S.W.A.T. teams; white people aren’t being rounded up and shuffled into prisons by the truckload; white communities and the people who reside in them aren’t being pathologized; no one is blaming white culture for this deviancy; no one is attributing this to the immorality of Whiteness and white people; there’s even sympathy for babies born with opioid addiction; and they are sure to downplay crystal meth and hyper-focus on opioids-as-painkillers to ensure maximum sympathy. No, for white people, this is being treated as a health crisis from which they can be saved. And addiction, for white people, is being treated as an illness.

All of this is, of course, the complete opposite of how addiction was and is being dealt with in black and brown communities. In black and brown communities, to this very day, addiction is regarded as a crime and black and brown users are considered criminals.

Please consider that the media doesn’t broach how violent crime in white communities — violent crime between white people — has exploded as a result of this drug crisis. Notice how white drug dealers’ mugshots aren’t plastered on every channel at the top of the news hour. Notice how the criminal justice system treats white drug dealers as human beings with potential and is, therefore, lenient toward them. The term “white-on-white crime” isn’t even in the American lexicon despite this significant uptick in crime in white communities that no one is talking about. In fact, when crime related to this enormous drug crisis is being discussed, white people are, once again, blaming black and brown people for white people’s “fall from grace.” This charade is an essential part of how white supremacists ensure Whiteness and white people appear biologically, ethically, morally, and psychologically superior to Blackness/Brownness and people of color.

A very compelling article, and something I've been thinking about since 'Opioid Epidemic' became all the buzz.

 

[canceled.2021.3]

The liberal media treats minorities that way? Seems odd. They think black lives matter so they say


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[Sailor]

"dwarfing the crack epidemic of the 80s, white people — from every class status — have the benefit of never being negatively judged for their behavior;"

Like Rob Ford, Canadian. STFU you idiot.

 

[jmotivator]

A very compelling article, and something I've been thinking about since 'Opioid Epidemic' became all the buzz.

The argument you posted makes several patently wrong statements, and wrong assumptions leading to a decidedly wrong conclusion.

Arrests for opioid distribution are increasing, doors are being kicked in on suspected distributors (why does the writers assume the dealers are all white people?), and criminal penalties are being increased for distribution of opioids.

The disparity response in the initial spread of opioid addiction is because in the early stages of the epidemic the future addicts were getting their drugs legally through prescriptions.

The CD found that a medicaid recipient is twice as likely to get an opioid prescription as a person on private insurance, and five times as likely to become addicted to it. This is because for many poor people who were not previously exposed to opioids found that the free prescription they got from Medicaid could be used recreationally as well.

There is a good reason why the initial hot spots of the opioid epidemic were all in communities that were borderline poverty, working class areas in states that adopted Medicaid expansion. With Medicaid expansion came access to prescription drugs, and with the high rate of opioid prescriptions for Medicaid recipients we see a whole group of Americans getting their first experience of a medicinal high leading to dependency.

 

[Phantasmal]

The argument you posted makes several patently wrong statements, and wrong assumptions leading to a decidedly wrong conclusion.

Arrests for opioid distribution are increasing, doors are being kicked in on suspected distributors (why does the writers assume the dealers are all white people?), and criminal penalties are being increased for distribution of opioids.

The disparity response in the initial spread of opioid addiction is because in the early stages of the epidemic the future addicts were getting their drugs legally through prescriptions.

The CD found that a medicaid recipient is twice as likely to get an opioid prescription as a person on private insurance, and five times as likely to become addicted to it. This is because for many poor people who were not previously exposed to opioids found that the free prescription they got from Medicaid could be used recreationally as well.

There is a good reason why the initial hot spots of the opioid epidemic were all in communities that were borderline poverty, working class areas in states that adopted Medicaid expansion. With Medicaid expansion came access to prescription drugs, and with the high rate of opioid prescriptions for Medicaid recipients we see a whole group of Americans getting their first experience of a medicinal high leading to dependency.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...lem-but-pain-prescriptions-are-not-the-cause/

 

[jmotivator]

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...lem-but-pain-prescriptions-are-not-the-cause/

As a general observation SA may have a point, but that simply isn't the case with Medicaid recipients who happen to be the group most heavily hit by the opioid epidemic.

The problem with the approach of limiting the opioids now through medicaid is that the addicts have already been created and drug dealers simply offer the far cheaper heroin to those who are already addicts. The increase in overdoses is because the people who were used to taking an oxy pill before are now buying a bag of heroin and trying to figure it out themselves like an alcoholic mixing their own gin and tonics... or worse, finding the heroin to complicated and going the fentanyl route.