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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Why is it that when “rural America” and the suburbs got caught up in a drug epidemic people blame the media, corporations, the lack of opportunity, and call it an illness, but when it was happening in the “inner city” it was all about “the culture”, “moral failings”, “getting tough on crime”, and “the war on drugs”.

I wonder what could the difference possibly be....

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Recently had a conversation about "inner city" communities with a coworker. We're in Baltimore and she's an immigrant from Russia. She's concerned about the aggressive behavior/vandalism/crime of "inner city youths" - but being new to this country, she's unaware of how they got there/came to be there in the first place. Slaves fled to northern cities like Baltimore with nothing. Post-slavery, the communities and wealth they built were in most cases repeatedly destroyed/quashed/displaced by racists holding positions of power. The anger seen today is from being constantly cheated, generation by generation, by people who claim to have the moral high ground.

> she's an immigrant from Russia.

Most Russians were literally owned by their landlords until 1861 [1]. After that, they suffered the most deaths of any country in both world wars, and many famines and purges under Stalin, and extreme repression in general in the Soviet Union.

Try not to frame her as completely ignorant of oppression.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia

Great points, and I didn't mean to, especially as a reflection of "all Russians" or something like that.

In the case of Baltimore, Wells Fargo employees targeted black families for subprime home mortgages in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis, even when they qualified for conventional mortgages with lower rates.

Wells Fargo organized events for African Americans on "how to build generational wealth," but internally said they were selling "ghetto loans" to "mud people."

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/07baltimore.html

https://consumerist.com/5283290/affidavits-on-how-wells-farg...

On that second link

> Paschal complained, yet Wells Fargo promoted him to area manager...

And here he is at another company...

https://www.jgwentworth.com/mortgages/about/branch-locations... https://www.jgwentworth.com/mortgages/about/branch-locations...

Well, it's gotta stop sometime right? Past history doesn't mitigate her concern

True. One of our newest coworkers has been robbed by gangs on the way back from work twice now, and he's only been working there for three months. There's real reasons to be concerned about crime.

So should she not be concerned about this behavior? Does the fact that it stems from systemic racism and oppression make her any more safe from it?

That in the former case, the drugs in question are given to you by your country's medical system, while in the latter case, you have to procure them yourself on a black market?

I’m not saying that chronic pain isn’t real or shouldn’t be treated, but many of the abusers are “drug seeking” patients who go to different doctors to get prescriptions and many of the doctors are illegally prescribing the drugs. Opioids also end up on the black market and definitely they all aren’t bought legally.

Also, it is public knowledge that the government looked the other way and protected drug growers in South America in the 80s because it was more concerned with the Cold War.

The thing is while a worryingly large minority of addicts used their prescribed medication first (including not taking as directed) the majority still used it illicitly either through street sources or stealing from those with legitimate needs.

There is still an obvious empathy gap and double standard.

> There is still an obvious empathy gap and double standard.

Well, no, there isn't obviously one. You seem to be alluding the the crack epidemic and the Just Say No / DARE types.

No one was getting hooked on crack after being prescribed medicinal cocaine by their doctor.

It is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

A more apt one would be the methamphetamine epidemic that preceded the opi(ate|oid) epidemic. Plenty of moral panic in the news, precious few folks gave a damn about the redneck tweakers.

The government was actively supporting drug cartels during the Cold War. They were looking the other way as it was bought into the US.

Even if opioids are prescribed legally at first - abusers are getting it illegally later.

That's true, but sort of side stepping the issue. Why is it that the country's medical system was willing to feed addiction-level quantities of abusable chemicals into some communities and not others?

In any case, there are large quantities of illegal drugs feeding the "opioid" crisis as well, though. Fentanyl didn't happen in a vacuum, it was pushed at people having trouble getting oxycodone. And yet we don't hear talk on FOX about the horrors of the appalachian cartels bringing this garbage across the border.

> yet we don't hear talk on FOX about the horrors of the appalachian cartels bringing this garbage across the border.

Perhaps you should do some research on the methamphetamine crisis. Plenty of hand-wringing over tweaker shake-and-bake operations and rural labs.

Maybe hands were wrung, I won't dispute that. And yet not demands for public action like there were in the 80's about inner city drugs. No "war on meth" was ever declared. No huge increases in law enforcement funding arrived in the rural west. No steeper penalties for meth were ever passed that I'm aware of. No focus on three strikes legislation to "clean up Colorado". The media coverage was an illustrative example, the story is about decades of deeply unfair prosecution via law enforcement of what in other demographics is deemed a social ill.

But agreed: hands were wrung about meth.

> No "war on meth" was ever declared. No huge increases in law enforcement funding arrived in the rural west.

Half of my family goes back to Appalachia, used to very several times a year. I can tell you anecdotally that there very much was there, though I doubt anyone would say "War on Meth" since there's already the "War on Drugs." Legislations, penalties, etc. increased in that neck of the woods. I've had junkies in my family (meth, heroin, oxy, etc.) in and out of jail most of my life. Hell, one of my buddies is an old meth cook. Man never graduated high school, but if you talk to him about the chemistry you'd think he was a university graduate.

Hell, one time on my way to school we couldn't get out of the neighborhood because someone discovered a shake-and-bake setup and the police, (fire) HAZMAT trucks were blocking the entire road. Everyone had to call off work or school that day while they cleaned it up.

I don't mean to be needlessly curt, but if you think there is something magical about the opi(ate|oid) crisis it is because you weren't well aware of preceding ones.

I recommend Dave Chappelle's new comedy special on Netflix as he touches on this in one of his bits.

People constantly blame the culture. Look at Hillbilly Elegy, for example.

probably the decades of people pointing out that the latter was wrong and research on addiction

Perhaps people are more sympathetic to people like them.

Exactly. The whole “that could be my child/mother/father/sister/brother”.

because far too many in the political arena needed the crisis and as such had little real interest in solving it. it served both as a source of funds for campaigns and family as well as a means to keep opponents at a distance for fear of being branded. so simply working the selected voters gives them a solid base, one they can turn out for any affront, and one which will accept being told who the bogeyman is as long as it means never having to look in the mirror.

it is the same reason a school shooting, usually in predominantly suburban non minority areas whereas many more than that die in cities weekly.

political power is all about using problems for gain, not solving problems. while it can work in outlying areas it does not have the quick payback the city machine can. go look at the social interest groups, the community coordinator type jobs, and you will see friends and family if not down on their luck politicians who know which team to be on.

This decade’s suburbs also have minorities hopped up on opioids.

You’ll never get resolution on the race baiting observation. You’ll never find it productive to try to get revenge by enacting the same failed policies “more equally”.

Yes, there are some people that are simply playing a game of power for people that look similar to them.

Now back to addressing the current problem holistically.

There is also plenty of studies that even in the same neighborhoods, Blacks are prosecuted more harshly for the same crime...

And the “same policies” are still in force in the inner cities and there are different policies in the burbs in rural America.

Yes, I’m aware.

This isn't one of those cases. Minorities being prosecuted for using prescribed opioids isn't exactly what is happening en masse here.

That is no different than until recently, crack had much harsher penalties than the same amount of cocaine. Crack was seen as an “inner city”. How many minorities do you really think live in what most people classify as “rural America” or even the suburbs?

Not that I am saying that I have ever gotten a racist vibe where I live, but let’s just say that every place we go in our part of metro Atlanta, we stand out.

Every study shows that most Blacks live in a majority minority neighborhood.

I get that you have an axe to grind and want to influence public policy but this opioid crisis just already has enveloped everyone under its ‘mental health’ umbrella. There wont be a resolution on the disparity of enforcement tactics.

Basically I’m just not having that particular conversation with you because thats not what this thread is about, and its clear you only want to derail into your writing prompt. The irony isn't lost on anyone, lots of people have seen the Dave Chapelle "Sticks and Stones" standup.

The structure of this crisis is prescribed drugs. So consumers of any color wont go to jail, and big pharma execs wont go to jail. Perhaps some particularly excessive doctors will, and feel free to make a statistical analysis of their ethnicity and socioeconomic status to find a correlation that matches your distress.

People using unprescribed and scheduled opioids still face law enforcement pressure.

You really think that everyone abusing opioids is obtaining them Legally? This “thread” is about blaming the media and not placing blame on “the parents”, “the culture”, “the lack of personal responsibility”, etc that was placed on the “inner city”.

> I wonder what could the difference possibly be....

People are reluctant to think the government is capable of what they did...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_(2014_film)

Why is it that when someone says a group was complicit in something that affected rural America that blame is being shifted solely on that group because of racism? Everyone is aware. Give it a rest.

Not everyone is aware of the extent and power of institutional oppression in America, and we can think of more than one thing at once. Realizing the double-standard doesn't prevent me from being upset at the institutional powers that got rural America addicted to opioids.

For the same reason why when race is presented as a contributing factor, people say "give it a rest." 'Those who choose to ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.' Society must accept that race relations has played and does play a role in how we tackle issue.

Because race is still a driving divider in our society.

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