In recent years, especially on the national political stage, the opioid epidemic has emerged as a deadly and worsening issue across the country. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 90 people die every day in the United States as a result overdosing on some sort of opioid. Undoubtedly, this epidemic is one of the worst that our nation has faced, and needs to be addressed. With that said, Ta-Nehisi Coates unpacks a vital observation when it comes to how we as a country respond to, talk about, and create policy for different epidemics in his article “The First White President”. “Black workers suffer because it was and is our lot. But when white workers suffer, something in nature has gone awry. And so an opioid epidemic among mostly white people is greeted with calls for compassion and treatment, as all epidemics should be, while a crack epidemic among mostly black people is greeted with scorn and mandatory minimums”. This quote and the article as a whole illuminates the ways in which the struggles of working-class folks have been incredibly racialized.
More specifically, Coates asserts that the national rhetoric surrounding the opioid crisis has been that of compassion, treatment, and redemption. On the flip side, people who are addicted to crack-cocaine are characterized as immoral, dangerous, and criminal. Without a doubt, studies suggest that addicts of any kind must be treated with compassion and care as opposed to being criminalized if we hope to effectively combat widespread drug addiction. That said, the discrepancy exists between the majority of people who suffer from addiction to these two drugs. For the most part, black people suffer from higher rates of addiction to crack, whereas white people suffer from higher rates of addiction to opioids.
The discrepancies, however, do not end with the rhetoric surrounding these crises of addiction. According to the American Addiction Centers, black men are far more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than white men. And according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, of the 225,242 inmates serving time for drug-related crimes in 2012, 45 percent were black and 30 percent were white. Additionally, black people who are convicted of drug crimes are more likely to receive higher sentences than their white counterparts who convicted similar crimes and who had similar criminal records. Ultimately, we must confront and reform the laws, structures, and practices that have been codified over years that serve as another powerful tool of white supremacy.
WC: 417
Pledged: Nick DeMaris
Sources cited:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The First White President”, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/
The American Addiction Centers, “Race and Addiction”, https://americanaddictioncenters.org/race-and-addiction/
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