As Heroin Use by Whites Soars, Parents Urge Gentler Drug War

[Cali_Democrat]

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
OCT. 30, 2015

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When the nation’s long-running war against drugs was defined by the crack epidemic and based in poor, predominantly black urban areas, the public response was defined by zero tolerance and stiff prison sentences. But today’s heroin crisis is different. While heroin use has climbed among all demographic groups, it has skyrocketed among whites; nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.

And the growing army of families of those lost to heroin — many of them in the suburbs and small towns — are now using their influence, anger and grief to cushion the country’s approach to drugs, from altering the language around addiction to prodding government to treat it not as a crime, but as a disease.

“Because the demographic of people affected are more white, more middle class, these are parents who are empowered,” said Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, better known as the nation’s drug czar. “They know how to call a legislator, they know how to get angry with their insurance company, they know how to advocate. They have been so instrumental in changing the conversation.”

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Some black scholars said they welcomed the shift, while expressing frustration that earlier calls by African-Americans for a more empathetic approach were largely ignored.

“This new turn to a more compassionate view of those addicted to heroin is welcome,” said Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, who specializes in racial issues at Columbia and U.C.L.A. law schools. “But,” she added, “one cannot help notice that had this compassion existed for African-Americans caught up in addiction and the behaviors it produces, the devastating impact of mass incarceration upon entire communities would never have happened.”

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A generation ago when civil rights activists denounced as racist the push to punish crack-cocaine crimes, largely involving blacks, far more severely than powder-cocaine crimes, involving whites, political figures of both parties defended those policies as necessary to control violent crime. But today, with heroin ravaging largely white communities in the Northeast, and with violent crime largely down, the mood is more forgiving.

Read more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/heroin-war-on-drugs-parents.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

[lame54]

1. Hey - whatever it takes

[Brickbat]

2. Ox, gore, etc.

[Person 2713]

3. Surprise Surprise

[LiberalArkie]

4. And a lot of the bias I think came from the movies and TV shows where all the

drug dealers and drug "king pins" were black.

[Cali_Democrat]

5. .

.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. I think people in general have been calling for a gentler drug war ...

... or, even better, no drug war at all.

This trend is certainly not new at DU.