Politicians and the police are simply making it clear that the war on drugs was never supposed to include white America.
Most of the media attention in the current nationwide heroin epidemic has focused on the uptick in overdose deaths among suburban, white, middle-class users — many of whom turned to the drug after experimenting with prescription painkillers.
And it’s among whites where the most dramatic effect has been seen — a rise of more than 260 percent in the last five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
But the epidemic has also been seeping into communities of color, where heroin overdose death rates have more than doubled among African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, but gone largely overlooked by the media.
The heroin epidemic in the African-American community is distinct for another reason, in that they’re less likely to come to the drug through opioids. Multiple studies have shown that doctors are less likely to prescribe opioid painkillers to blacks than whites, even young children, for the same ailments.
Even when they do get a prescription, blacks in low-income neighborhoods can struggle to find a pharmacy that has the opioids on hand to fill it.
“There’s a well-known phenomenon that there’s less opioids available in segregated minority communities,” said Dr. Compton of the NIH. “You can’t find them in the pharmacies. There’s less medical access.”
Most of the media attention in the current nationwide heroin epidemic has focused on the uptick in overdose deaths among suburban, white, middle-class users — many of whom turned to the drug after experimenting with prescription painkillers.
And it’s among whites where the most dramatic effect has been seen — a rise of more than 260 percent in the last five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
But the epidemic has also been seeping into communities of color, where heroin overdose death rates have more than doubled among African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, but gone largely overlooked by the media.
The heroin epidemic in the African-American community is distinct for another reason, in that they’re less likely to come to the drug through opioids. Multiple studies have shown that doctors are less likely to prescribe opioid painkillers to blacks than whites, even young children, for the same ailments.
Even when they do get a prescription, blacks in low-income neighborhoods can struggle to find a pharmacy that has the opioids on hand to fill it.
“There’s a well-known phenomenon that there’s less opioids available in segregated minority communities,” said Dr. Compton of the NIH. “You can’t find them in the pharmacies. There’s less medical access.”
No comments:
Post a Comment