Racial Drug Addictions

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The Racial Aspects of Drug-addiction Tolerance

The Huffington Post recently published a response to the New York times article “In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs.” The articles point out the disparities between white and black drug-addiction, penalties, and social tolerance, but from very different view points.

The New York Times article was focused on the "discovery" that white people have drug problems, too. These addictions are finally being noticed as they impact more and more of the white social elite. The growing drug of choice for these white high-seekers: heroin. According to the Times, "nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white." and "deaths from heroin rose to 8,260 in 2013, quadrupling since 2000 and aggravating what some were already calling the worst drug-overdose epidemic in United States history."

The Times article goes on to show how this new awareness of drug-addiction has shaped the political field with Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and, on the other side of the fence, Hillary Clinton, all finally saying that there is a need to look at ways to decriminalize addiction and take a softer approach to those who live high to high. …show more content…
The article's author wants a softer approach and decriminalization of addiction, but also wants an acknowledgement that the ways and means of the process are deeply rooted in racism. The idea that politicians are just recently noticing that there is a problem, now that it is the white families that are dying and facing prison time, is a problem. The lack of commentary about the flooding of inner-city streets with crack cocaine and weapons under the republicans and the 3-strikes law under Bill Clinton, both of which decimated black families, just shows that whether republican or democrat, white is

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