Nathanial.Dread wrote:Praxis. wrote:
Now that the face of the heroin epidemic in the US is white, drug abuse is no longer framed as a public safety issue, but a matter of public health.
I live in the Northeast, and it's been really extreme how the rhetoric surrounding heroin has changed in the last half decade or so. Back when heroin was a drug that was primarily killing the homeless and old Black folks, it was a scourge; addicts and dealers where vilified. There were always calls to be tougher on "crime," (which really just means tough on those icky poor people and PoC).
As soon as it started being housewives, and cute teenage girls dying of opiates, the language changed. Now it's all a 'social problem' and 'addicts have a disease and need help.' There's no way the Gloucster police dept. would have made the announcement that they were going to stop arresting heroin addicts if the majority of the users were black. No way in Hell.
That's not to say that this is bad, necessarily - more compassion for drug users and understanding addiction is a wonderful thing. But it really highlights how little Black lives matter in the United States.
Blessings
~ND
Eventually people will realize that all humans will want to alter their consciousness, at least at some point, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that...Though there are poor ways to do it.
It came as a shock "my God, addiction can effect normal people" it should have been a shock that these homeless and minorities were not being considered normal people...
eventually the cultural views on substance abuse will change, we need to realize that there are ways to alter consciousness which do not cause unexamined destructive compulsions (addiction), and that there's nothing wrong with consciousness altering if it's not causing problems.
-eg