The Hypocrisy of Our Concern
There’s a drug epidemic in
America! Heroin and prescription opioids are killing U.S. citizens left and
right!
Across the country, but
predominantly in rural areas, we have seen a steady increase in deaths linked
to opioid overdoses. While this is, of course, an issue that needs to be
addressed and remedied, many have pointed out the hypocrisy of our concern.
This is far from the first time we’ve seen a drug epidemic sweep the country.
Yet the way we’ve been discussing, and attempting to deal with this crisis is
in stark contrast with the way we’ve addressed all of our previous drug
epidemics. While in the past we blamed the victims, got ‘tough on crime’, or
started a ‘war on drugs,’ this time around, the rhetoric being used is
startlingly more forgiving. Even
Republicans, who love nothing more than extolling the Reagan presidency and its
infallibility, have been making statements that are in direct contradiction
with Ronnie and Nancy’s ‘War on Drugs’. Remember when it was as simple as ‘Just
Say No’? Turns out it’s more complicated than that. Now it seems like we’re all
ready to have an in-depth discussion about drug use.
But why do we care about the
victims of this new epidemic so much more than we have in the past? Well you
know how I said “predominantly rural areas” earlier? That means white folks. We
care now because the people being affected are white.
Unfortunately, this is far
from a revelation to those of us who are all too familiar with institutionalized
racism. It comes as little surprise that when there’s a problem that affects
mostly minorities, the government, media and the general public turn a blind
eye, chalking it up to uncivilized behavior that needs to be stopped and thrown
in prison; but when white people are dying it’s a more complicated problem.
While I am far from the first to blow the whistle on this glaring discrepancy
in the country’s position on drugs, I thought it might be useful to dig a
little deeper into our persistent inconsistency when it comes to drug policy in
America.
Let’s take a look at
how we’ve dealt with drug epidemics in the past.
The most obvious example
being, the Crack catastrophe of the 1980s.
As the story goes, (with my
own little rosey spin on it,) at some point around 1984-85, there was an
enterprising entrepreneur/purveyor of cocaine with a real flair for business.
He believed that his product had seen its heyday a decade earlier and that
perhaps the white powder had gone the way of disco, as the ‘70s became the
‘80s. But he had a plan. If he could somehow make it appealing and accessible
to unrepresented, poor minorities a whole new market would open up. So after
some intense scientific exploration, research and testing, (“dissolving powder cocaine in water,
adding baking soda, and heating. The cocaine and the baking powder form an airy
condensate, that when dried, takes the form of hard, smokeable ‘rocks.’”[i]) this innovative industrialist had
invented a sure-fire way to put cocaine back on the top of the drug market. The
Harvard study that taught me how to cook crack (cited above) goes on to
explain:
“Crack
is an important technological innovation in many regards. First, crack can be
smoked, which is an extremely effective means of delivering the drug psychopharmacologically.
Second, because crack is composed primarily of air and baking soda, it is
possible to sell in small units containing fractions of a gram of pure cocaine,
opening up the market to consumers wishing to spend $10 at a time. Third, because
the drug is extremely addictive and the high that comes from taking the drug is
so short-lived, crack quickly generated a large following of users wishing to
purchase at high rates of frequency. The profits associated with selling crack
quickly eclipsed that of other drugs. Furthermore, unlike most other drugs,
crack is often sold in openair, high-volume markets between sellers and buyers
who do not know one another.”
Besides the fun image of
these Harvard statisticians sitting around smoking crack for research purposes,
it seems they did their homework. Crack use spread through vulnerable,
under-privileged, inner-city communities like wildfire. The government’s
response, under the Reagan administration, was a militaristic law enforcement
policy in the areas most greatly affected, changing judicial protocol to make
drug offenses easier to prosecute, and establishing mandatory minimum sentences
for many crimes but most severely for those that were drug related. The result
of these drastic measures was what has only recently been referred to as ‘The
Age of Mass Incarceration’. The entire country had been whipped-up into such a
frenzied fear by the media’s portrayal of ‘crack-babies’, crack related gang
violence and the unforgivable, savage, animalistic crack-head, that the
repercussions of this new tough approach seem to have been entirely overlooked.
Not only did our prison population continue to skyrocket, quickly surpassing
that of any other country in the world in comparison to its aggregate
population, but the people being incarcerated and falling victim to our new
mandatory minimums were not a representation of the country’s population. To
this day, while the total population[ii]
of the United States is roughly 77% white and roughly 13% black, the total prison
population[iii]
is 37% black and 32% white. While there are a variety of overtly oppressive
factors that play a part in this[iv],
the policies enacted during the Reagan administration’s continuation of Nixon’s
war on drugs certainly contributed to this striking disparity.
Today we’ve been hearing
about what a disaster our current drug problem is and what we have to do about
it. But not once has there been a call for increased policing or a judicial
crackdown on sentencing for drug crimes. Only tears and sympathy. The fear of
many white Americans that white supremacy is beginning to lose it’s grip on the
most advantageous and powerful positions, has led many to realize they are not
entitled to certain things that their parents were. And many of these people are
now committing suicide, voting for Trump, or turning to drugs rather than face
the possibility of eventual racial equality. So while I’m so sorry to hear that
they’re upset, I’m having trouble finding sympathy for victims of this epidemic
since we as a country have never given a crap before.
[i] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/fhlm_crack_cocaine_0.pdf
[ii] Based on
the 2013 US Census
[iii] Based on
The US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2013 male prisoner
data
[iv] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
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