What if The Opioid Epidemic Was Black…An Alternate History Post
The BLACK Heart of the Opioid Epidemic
——by Sonya Dickerson——
The Opiate epidemic seems to be getting worse in the ghettos of New York, Chicago, and Baltimore. Too many so called Oxy-babies are being born in hospitals all over the country. These children are born with low birth rates and a host of other medical problems.
“We’ve seen so many of them come in. We test these mothers for drugs the minute they come in the door, and the minute they test positive, we take their children and handcuff to the bed, thanks to the new law that Jeff Sessions helped to pass,” said one maternity health care worker who wanted to remain anonymous.
She’s referring to the law that Jeff Sessions began working on before he became the Attorney General, now known as the Sessions Amendment. Any woman that tests positive for an opiate will be held indefinitely. Experts say that this helps to point out repeated law breakers. However, critics state that more pregnant women of color are giving birth at home. The law was later amended to state that when they appear at hospitals for after care, that their children can still be held in custody, while they are placed under arrest.
“Good for them. Lock them up!” These chants were heard mostly from the white populace who were sick of those mostly Black and Latino users overdosing everywhere. These chants were heard at the rallies for the current President while in his bid for his sixth term in office.
“You find them on the streets, subways, even behind the wheel!” A shocked woman yelled at me on her way to the subway. “I say just let them overdose. Don’t give them help! They aren’t people you know. Just let them die. Why are we giving them Narcan?” She walked away in a huff with her umbrella nearly blowing her away, where she was hit by a cab. The cab didn’t stop.
The now flattened woman was speaking about Narcan, the drug that helps reverse an overdose for the addict. This drug is expensive and while the Black and Latino community leaders have asked for it repeatedly, the drug still remains widely unused. In fact, we found stockpiles of it just lingering in a warehouse. When asked when the drug would be released to the communities, I was simply told to fuck off by the owner of the building.
So I fucked off.
An estimated 99% of real Americans are against giving these addicts Narcan and reviving them again and again, from the most recent polls done.
“Why are we reviving these criminals? Ten minutes later, they are out getting high again! It’s madness. Just let them die. That’ll teach ’em gooder! To keep waking them up from death is stupid. Just let them freaking die. So I don’t have to pay for them!” said a woman out walking her dog, repeatedly stepping in crap as she walked down the sidewalk. She wanted to remain anonymous but that was difficult from the way that her sneakers smelled. Her name is Joan. Joan, with the smelly sneakers.
So many real Americans practically voiced the same thing. They felt that administering Narcan to these people actually made the problem worse. They felt that administering Narcan was just prolonging the inevitable. By letting these addicts die, society was actually getting a double benefit. Ridding themselves of drug addicts and getting out of raising and taking care of future drug addicts.
However, this epidemic isn’t going away. With state legislatures enacting laws to spontaneously drug test suspicous people on the street, even those with prescriptions are getting caught up in the net. We visited a jail in Chicago where we found people of color with cancer and other painful conditions, dying in jail.
“It’s mine. The doctor said I could have it,” a man whispered while turning blue. No medical help was given to this man who obviously suffered from a painful disease.
The drug war on opiates seem to be casting a wide net. Black pain patients are thrown in jail with those who are addicted to the drug. We are also seeing a lot of veterans of color in jail, handcuffed to hospital beds as well. Many of them simply took pills to relieve their pain from injuries they received in the most recent war.
“What the hell?” cried one veteran who found himself handcuffed to the bed. What the hell indeed. It is believed that Tylenol should have done the job for the constant and deep pain he felt from his amputated legs.
However, opiate use for White Americans is not as drastic as the numbers for Blacks. Most of these Whites, however were mostly found to use treatment centers that their private insurance covered. We caught up with one of them who simply said, “I can’t talk long, I have therapy. Tell my dealer I said hello.”
We will pass along the friendly message.
Lawmakers are dealing with the influx of these Black junk…I mean these Black people hooked on drugs by putting them in jail and with them serving lengthy sentences. With the new law, simply having one opiate in your pocket will lead to a lengthy jail sentence. A sentence that was nearly tripled in length. That length has tripled in a short period of time. One grandmother received a sentence of fifty years for four morphine pills.
“You have to have a strong nation with strong laws! The bible says so…somewhere!” Jeff Sessions was quoted. The President feels the same way.
At his last rally, he was quoted as saying, “Those sons of bitches need to learn that we will not treat them special. They are lawbreakers and they need to be thrown away. In fact throw those monke…I mean throw those junkies under the jail and keep them there!” This was followed by raucous applause by Trump fans. One even threw an innocent Black man out of the rally and he was wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. We are not sure why he committed that act.
For the next generation of people of color, it seems that they need to choose what they want for themselves. Asking that the government get them out of the mess that they put themselves in is too much for ordinary Americans. This crisis doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
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I didn’t have to imagine this. I just had to look at the responses of real people during the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s. So this was no fantasy fairytale. This was real.
White privilege. The ability to not give a shit about Americans who don’t look like you but when the tables are reverse, you reverse the treatment. Instead of jails, we gave them treatment centers. Instead of death, we gave them Narcan. Many White addicts are getting Narcan and then find themselves shooting up again. However, we see this as a compassionate thing.
We didn’t see this with the addition of crack to Black neighborhoods. Had Narcan been used for crack addicts, the White community would have went apeshit. Apeshit is a scientific term so look it up. They would have went mad about black drug addicts being revived on their dime.
We would not be telling the truth if we didn’t mention this. It’s so important to know that there is a double standard with the drug wars of today versus the drug wars of yesterday, which is responsible for devastating the Black community.
This is not to say that the opiate epidemic hasn’t hit the Black community because it has. However, it only became an epidemic because White people were overdosing behind the wheel or at their jobs. Not Black people in our neighborhoods. Then people put on capes instead of throwing them in jail and sought to change the law to get rid of mandatory minimums. They ignored the pleas of Black and Latino people in the 80s and 90s and just built bigger prisons. You know it and I know it.
And that’s what makes this the biggest, most bitter pill for Black Americans to swallow.
In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs
When A Drug Epidemic Hit White America, Addiction Became A Disease
Opinion: The Opioid Crisis Only Became a Crisis When It Affected White People
