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Comment by thr0waway187 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, this time is different -- since white people are dying, we suddenly feel sympathy. When blacks OD from crack, they were thrown into jail and treated like morally failed individuals. When whites die from heroin, we feel sympathy and want to treat them.

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Mostly it's poor rural whites, most of whom arent all that deserving of much sympathy for other reasons, so most people even in New Hampshire aren't all that cranked up about it. What's mildly concerning to me is why so many have switched from the time-honored traditions of drinking and smoking away the depression of sad, broken hillbilly life and started bumping fentanyl.

I'm guessing opiates are more deadly than crack.

I’ve heard this argument many times now and I still fail to see how we’re feeling sympathy for these people. Every time this conversation is brought up I see 0 solutions and people that very low-key suggest these people have to die because coal must disappear, because outsourcing to China is good because we’re living in a global economy, because they vote Trump and they don’t share our liberal view of society and they might not like black people or feminists, etc.

I think the overall tone today is much more sympathetic than that surrounding the crack panic of the 90s, especially when the legal and political environments are compared (3 strike laws v complaints about Narcan expense seem to constitute the political extremes). However, I agree that the disturbing undercurrent of contempt for certain demographics is certainly quite prominent in the public discussion.

Those are some... pretty strange views. Where do you see them expressed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418764

I think you might be... extrapolating a lot from this.

One from this thread is fairly close to what they described.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15427888

The not deserving of much sympathy really brings it home. After all, rural white hillbillies don't deserve sympathy, I guess? I'd say that's rather prejudiced and, no, I'm not white.

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