Opiate Crisis African Americans

Now because heroin is illegal, this can lead heroin addicts to look for cheap and legal alternatives, called opioids. Opioids can be easily obtained by going to the doctor’s office and be given a doctor’s note stating you need the medicine to relieve the pain. In the Opioid crisis we see many white americans struggle with either heroin or opioids and many wonder why it tends to be more known in the suburban communities rather than the stereotypical urban communities. Some conclude that it was actually due to the distribution of drugs in the urban communities to few members of the suburban community. Others have theorized that white americans are creating the drugs themselves and yet playing along with the stereotype of blacks or mexicans

Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, explained how our treatment of criminals has created a new racial caste system, and the only way to make change is by massive social change and Civil Rights movement. The criminal laws often focus on psychoactive drugs used by the minority populations. Minorities are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and punished for drug offenses. For instance, Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian were portrayed as violent, traffickers of drugs and a danger to society. Surveillance was focused on communities of color, also immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, and the homeless, who continue to be the main targets of law enforcement efforts to fight the war on drugs. Although African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the “New Jim Crow”(drug policy). The drug

The United States of America has had a war against drugs since the 37th president, Richard Nixon, declared more crimination on drug abuse in June 1971. From mid-1990s to today, a crisis challenges the health department and government on opioid regulation, as millions of Americans die due overdoses of painkillers. Opioids are substances used as painkillers, and they range from prescription medications to the illegal drug, heroin. Abusing these substances can cause a dependency or addiction, which can lead to overdoses, physical damages, emotional trauma, and death. To ease the crisis, physicians are asked to depend on alternatives to pain management. Law enforcement cracks down on profiting drug-dealers and heroin abusers. People are warned against misusing opioids. The controversy begins for those who suffer from chronic pain, because they depend on opioids. There’s so a correlation to the 1980s cocaine epidemic, and people are upset over racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the best way to avoid this crisis is to recover the people at risk, reduce inappropriate opioid description, and have a proper response.

Many people may not realize this but multiple states, including Michigan, are facing an epidemic. It is not a disease, however, it is a heroin epidemic. In a country where addictive opioid pain-killer prescriptions are handed out like candy, it not surprising heroin, also known as smack or thunder, has become a serious problem. The current heroin epidemic Michigan is facing, as are dozens of other states, has spiraled out of control in recent years. In Michigan, some of the areas hit hardest by this drug are in the southern portion of the state, like Wayne, Oakland, and Monroe Counties. The connection between painkillers and heroin may not be clear, but this is because both are classified as opioid drugs, and therefore cause many of the same positive and negative side effects. As a country, we are currently the largest consumer of opioids in the world; almost the entire world supply of hydrocodone (the opioid in Vicodin) and 81% of the world’s oxycodone (in Percocet and OxyContin) is used by the United States (Volkow). Along with consuming most of the world’s most common opioids, we have gone from 76 million of these prescriptions in 1991 to 207 million in 2013 – constantly increasing except for a small decrease starting in 2012 (Volkow). This widespread use has caused numerous consequences from increasing emergency room visits – for both painkillers and heroin – to sky-rocking overdose cases all over the country (Volkow). Michigan, unfortunately, currently has one of the

“The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. The cost of housing all those inmates: $80 billion a year” (Whitaker, 2016). The United States (U.S.) has been fighting an unwinnable war for the past thirty years. The U.S. government and the War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted African Americans and the prison population has quadrupled over the last thirty years. The U.S Government polices of the war on drugs have contributed to the mass incarceration of African American males due to sentencing and race disparities, over-policing, and anti-drug policies.

Though the effects to the health and culture of the African American community are more difficult to change. The spread of treatment centers and education, to spread the word about drugs and less propaganda about drugs. To shape the minds of our youth and to spread knowledge that drives them out of the cycle of addiction and violence caused by the “War on Drugs”. The African American community has been significantly affected by The Crack Epidemic in the areas of health and culture as a result of where the source of crack was coming from, laws around crack cocaine and the perception of the drug. Though the effects can not be reversed they can be prevented from our future by the exchange of support from each other in the

The opioid problem is big. The fact that multiple parties (FDA, Pharmacies, Doctors) are involved make the problem even more complex and difficult to fix. One of the best ways to begin helping the opioid crisis is within the FDA. The different types of opioids need to be re-tested to evaluate their necessity within our healthcare system. Too many readily available opioids are not beneficial. Next are doctors need to be taught to stand up again big pharmaceutical companies. These companies have their priority in profit, not patient care. Hopefully by implementing these factors, the opioid crisis can become a problem of the past.

Throughout history, the drug war has always targeted minority groups. “At the root of the drug-prohibition movement in the United States is race, which is the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing drug use, which first appeared as early as the 1870s (Cohen, 56)”. There were many drug laws that targeted minority groups such as the marijuana ban of 1930s that criminalized Mexican migrant farm workers and in the Jim Crow South, reformist wanted to wage war on the Negro cocaine feign so they used African Americans as a scapegoat while they overlooked southern white women who were a bigger problem for the drug epidemic (Cohen, 57). Instead of tackling the root of the drug problem they passed the blame to struggling minority groups within the United States.

A common stereotype about African American men is that they are engage in drug abuse a disproportionate way which it’s not true because according to statistics from the US department of Health and Human services that although eight percent of African American males cocaine, eleven percent of whites have use the same drug. This is, however, not the impression that we get from watching the evening local news or even an episode of television program COPS.

Heroin addiction does not discriminate it reaches across all social classes, age groups and genders. For instance, in Louisiana alone the rate of heroin overdose rose from 5 in 2008 to 110 in 2012. Heroin users often start off as patients who become addicted to prescription drugs for pain. The strict procedures that surround prescription drugs have caused many individuals to turn to Heroin which can be purchased cheaply on the street. Production of heroin in Afghanistan has actually increased since the United States entered the war on terror in that

Although the English word “drug” was only coined in the early 1300’s, humans have been partaking in the recreational use of substances since prehistoric times. Hallucinogens, alcohol, and opium existed before 6,000 BC; alcohol and tobacco use were common in the 1600’s ; and cocaine, LSD, marijuana, and heroin use rampaged in the last century despite harsh laws put in place.

The opioid epidemic that has taken over the United States is likely the largest public health crisis that our country has faced in the 21st century. It has torn countless families and small rural communities apart in its wake, and does not currently show signs of slowing down anytime in the near future. In the last couple decades, the United States’ government has addressed the epidemic as a criminal problem. Treating those affected by the opioid crisis like criminals has not yielded positive results overall. For some time, the public opinion has predominantly been that this epidemic should not be blamed on anyone other than those who take these opioids, and that it is their own personal downfalls and bad judgement that is responsible for their specific situation. While opioid abusers certainly deserve some accountability for their actions, there is abundant evidence of greater forces at work that have a lot of influence on their decisions.

The federal law, which punished crack offenses at a rate 100 times that of powdered cocaine, is a racist policy. The criminal justice system penalties for possession of crack, a drug often used by poor African American are more harsher than the penalties for the possession of powdered cocaine, whose users are white people. This is evidence of the racial disparities in the War on Drug. The War on Drugs has allowed minorities to become easier targets for law enforcement. The unequal treatment in sentencing between crack and powdered cocaine users is not justified. Crack is popular in black community and powdered cocaine is more commonly use by white. Law enforcement uses the federal law, which impact lower minority people who are able to afford

Even in laws there’s are bias towards people of color, such as example against the usage of drugs. African Americans are more likely to be arrested for drug charges than their counter part middle-class White males’, even if the drug charges offends are the same (or some cases even higher offense than black males). In addition, there even police forces that have engaged in higher usage of drugs, such as crack, yet they are not charged against the law due to their status and authority as a police officer. That is enough evidence that there are hardly any accountability in the police forces. When there are not much accountabilities and consequences, this allows a police officer to abuse their power and potentially act among injustice actions towards

Opiates, otherwise known as prescription painkillers, have become an enormous problem in the United States. Addiction, overdoses, and death are only a few of the problems caused by opiates. Painkillers can be prescribed to help lessen chronic pain, pain from surgery, pain from serious accidents, or pain from terminal diseases. Opiates are highly addicting and have become highly abused in the United States in the past few years. Prescription painkillers need to be banned in the United States because of the dangers they bring to the patients to whom they are being prescribed. The FDA needs to become more involved in the awareness of how dangerous these drugs are and place a ban on them.