Crack vs. Opioids

      As I write this I am beyond intrigued at how this nation is acknowledging drug addiction with such gusto and fervency. Drug use and addiction has now become a bipartisan issue mainly because 80 percent of opioid overdoses are white. Even the president is calling it a crisis, and public health emergency. But, the issue is that white America only calls something a problem when they think it is affecting them. Crack hit black communities like a nuclear bomb in the 80's and 90's. The governments response was not rehab, or lighter sentencing, and it definitely wasn't justice reform. The government's response to the crack epidemic was to double-down on the "War on Drugs" first declared by Richard Nixon in 1971. In 1986, Congress passed the infamous 100-to-1 sentencing law, which treated the possession of 1 gram of crack — not the sale, mind you — as the equivalent of possessing 100 grams of powder cocaine. This was on top of a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for first-time possession of crack.https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/opioids-versus-crack-politics-race-and-addiction.htm

   What makes opioid addiction such a sensitive topic of understanding, but crack become a criminalized act? The answer is simply color and victimization. For centuries African American people were looked at as animals, property, economic wealth, and treated as such. White masters would rape African slaves because they were property of the land. Others saw the slave woman as a sexual being meant to be taken advantage of. Black men were used as baby makers to increase the money of said owner. Between slave codes, Jim Crow, Segregation etc.. There was never a time when the African American man/woman was ever free. So when rape, addiction, or abuse occurs, no one bats an eye. You cannot be deemed a victim if you are not viewed as human. For example, one reason that most opioid addicts are white could be because they are more likely to be prescribed pain medication. One study showed that doctors are less likely to prescribe pain medication for their black patients, believing (falsely) they had a higher pain threshold.