As Heroin Use by Whites Soars, Parents Urge Gentler Drug War
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Coke, shroom, acid, horse users (midfle class)in past decades were dealt the same zero tolerance policies with no effect, this surge is seeing a different response in light of new acceptance of recreational drugs and in light of the failures of past policies.
But you know the NYT will get more views and reactions by framing it as racial.... But then they fail to look at policies in Latin America or Africa which are equally punishing, not to mention homogenous places like Japan and china where punishment is harsher and there are no minorities to oppress.
Is the NYT suggesting we go back to zero tolerance?
It used to be said sex sells, now it's race sells.
I agree. Race has nothing to do with this.
They've done this consistently for decades.
This is very close to the cliched observation that the best way to get rid of a law is to enforce it strictly.
I think minority complaints about certain issues did fall on deaf ears in the past (police brutality being chief among these) but America is a different, more tolerant place now that it was in the early 80's.
None of these drugs were the typically used by black communities. Crack cocaine was however, and special laws were passed in New York City to make the punishments for possesion / sale up to 118x greater than being charged for an equivalent amount of powdered cocaine.
If you really are trying to move away from the racial lens of the drug war, how do you explain the racist pretenses under which prohibition laws were passed, as well as the targeting of minority communities in policing and prosecution?
To my untrained and minority eye, compassion for drug users and the disgust with the drug war seem pretty well correlated with people seeing people they identify with going through the system.
Go to Venezuela see how they treat drugs users.
I think what happened was that drugs started to emerge from the underground shadows in the early 20th cent. People, politicians, etc. got spooked and being ignorant of how to best address (as we still are but understand some aspects better) took a hard stance against its proliferation into the general population.
This was followed by any strong central government. Here and everywhere. It's odd to see this framed as if it only happened because it affected minorities when the same policies happened in other countries with no minorities and countries where minorities are the majority and make the laws.
But another aspect is that people are responding to it differently because it is ravaging their own communities. It's easy to demonize drug users when they're people from other groups but not as easy when it is your child or neighbor.
That doesn't necessarily reflect racist attitudes but US drug policy has been absolutely shaped by racism in the past. Drug abuse was seen as just another aspect of black pathology and compassion for addicted users wasn't even on the table. Some of that was because there was a sincere belief that incarceration was the answer but enforcement and incarceration were (and are) disproportionately used against black communities.
And let's not forget that part of the reason marijuana was banned in the first place is because it was thought that black jazz musicians used it to seduce white women.
At any rate, I don't think that focusing on the fact that white folks affected by the heroin epidemic want more compassionate solutions is going to help things. Everyone should just be happy that rationality is beginning to prevail in our response to the drug problem.
>Right now she just wants to hunt down the person who sold Chris his fatal dose. “These dealers aren’t just selling it,” she said. “They’re murdering people.”
Drug dealers are selling the drugs not out of some kind of malice toward the addicts. The users want drugs, the dealers want money. Killing the users does no good to the dealers.
While it's hard to criticize the thoughts of a greiving mother, the focus should not be "let's punish these awful murderers!" but instead "let's find ways to eliminate the demand for drugs".
(I didn't get that far, I stopped earlier.)
What is needed:
1 - Legalization and regulation like that of regular prescription and over-the-counter drugs to:
1a - Make sure drugs are pure, labeled property and are not mixed with undesired compounds.
1b - Stop imprisoning and killing people over what they choose to do to their own minds and bodies.
1c - Stop the violence and corruption caused by the illegal drug trade.
2 - Much better education about how to use drugs safely and constructively.
3 - An end to the stigmatization of drug users.
4 - A sincere and well thought-through tackling of the issues (like poverty and mental health issues) that lead to self-destructive abuses of drugs and other substances.
There is a chance, however, that we can actually tackle the issue realistically and improve the ease of access to mental health services and community programs that decrease the demand for the drugs in the first place, thereby removing the incentive for dealers to sell the stuff. It's literally basic economic theory.
Of course it's possible. Some societies have already done it.
Furthermore, many used to think that desegregation would not be possible in their lifetimes, that the Soviet Union and Apartheid would not fall, that the Third Reich would last a thousand years, that a man walking on the moon was fantasy.
They were all wrong. Those, and many other radical changes have been accomplished in the last century.
If you asked an addict if they want to have to consume a product everyday in increasing quantities, lest they convulse into a fit of pain, insomnia, sweat and uncontrollable bowel movements for a week straight, they'd say no.
Free will and choice do not factor in with this scenario and a laissez-faire attitude towards highly addictive drugs can be damaging.
People turn to hard drugs for a variety of reasons, a good percentage of them out of untreated mental illness or their situation in life. Addressing why people turn to them would eliminate a lot of demand that is not organic.
Also note how the stats are intentionally skewed. They blame opiates, but then note most of the deaths are due to opiates plus other drugs as a mixture. Yet look around and try to find any safety info on mixing opiates and benzos and there seems to be little to no information.
Every day, how many patients are loaded to the eyeballs with opiates, both in and outpatient scenarios? And they don't have an overdosing "epidemic". It's not like nurses are somehow intrinsically more capable as humans of dosing properly.
Large-scale use of heroin is pretty terrifying, regardless. Remember that the Japanese made heroin legal and cheap in China during WWII, as a way of ruining the Chinese people... It's unsettling to see the US paying through the nose for the privilege of similar self-destruction.
I'd go for the more logical theory.
More importantly, I'm still opposed to the recreational use of strong drugs like heroin or cocaine as they're very lethal and can destroy families and communities pretty easily and I can't see any good use of them.
Of course, if we define moderate use of a substance as the level of consumption where health effects are little to none, you can consume something without jeopardizing your health.
You seem to be implying that either heroin or cocaine cannot be consumed in moderation (which is false[0][1]), or that their moderate consumption is tremendously bad for your health. If it's the latter, prescription opioids and stimulants like methylphenidate can be taken in moderation with limited health effects.
Many prescription opioids are very chemically similar to heroin. All prescription opioids work primarily via the same mechanism as heroin. Heroin is used in a medical context under the name diamorphine.
[0] http://jod.sagepub.com/content/13/2/219.abstract [1] http://www.doctordeluca.com/Library/AbstinenceHR/ControlledH...
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg
Disclaimer: The video itself is a bit hyperbolic and some of the examples and ideas presented are not 100% accurate, but it does support a treatment-first approach to addiction.
Heroin has spiked and whites correspond to ~70-80% of the population, so obviously there will be many white addicts.
The 'Drug War' exists to fight heroin usage overall; it's not targeted at a race.
First the media beats the drum of, the drug war is evil, the drug war is costing us millions, the drug war is ineffective, people need treatment not incarceration..they've been running this campaign for years.
Now that people are waking up to this fact, we're going to chalk it up to plain old racism.
Give me a break.
Racism was a significant component of the drug war from the beginning. The article doesn't seek to "chalk it up to plain old racism", rather the article seeks to shed light on some of the racial aspects of policy making.
Overall drug consumers have always trended white. Police resources are focused on sales, which happens in cities. Retail drug operations are designed around the laws, so the retail frontline people get swept up as users (because they carry small quantities), which impacts minority users harder.
http://i.imgur.com/NkyayV0.jpg
The country was (more) racist back then, but we can't forget that the Black community was the first anti-drug community. Harsh drug laws were just how things were done back then.
This quote from the article illustrates its assumptions.
"But today, with heroin ravaging largely white communities in New England, the Northeast and the Midwest, and with violent crime largely down, the mood is more forgiving."
Wow, that escalated fast.
The decades of brutality against the poor and racial minorities before that triggered no such reaction and was applauded by many.