How African Americans were the worst victims of America's opioid crisis

#FeatureByBlogManagement - And make no mistake, these people are victims. Too often drug addiction is treated as the product of people’s choices. But the true tragedy of the opioid epidemic is that it is not a result of foolish choices, but predatory corporate greed.

These sufferers of opioid addiction, usually heroin addicts by the time you see them on the street, will be overwhelmingly African American. You do not need this pointed out to you; chances are, you have noticed already. If you have noticed, you have probably asked: Why?

Why are most heroin addicts black? How did African Americans come to suffer from the opioid crisis so much more than their fellow citizens? Let’s explore it by looking at opioids themselves.

What is an Opioid?

Opioids are drugs that manipulate the opioid receptors in the human body. These are parts of the nervous system responsible for communicating certain sensations, like stress and pain.

When the stress chemical cortisol is released through your body, it is the opioid receptors that receive it and make you feel stress. Opioid drugs make it so that these receptors cannot receive these signals. Suddenly, stress and pain do not just go away—it is impossible to feel them.

The use of these drugs is a dangerous game. They are meant to relieve pain, but they relieve that pain by disabling the body’s ability to feel it. The problem is that they do not remove any pain or harm from the body, they merely delay it. And eventually, the payment comes due.

The more powerful a drug’s effects on the opioid receptors, the worse the withdrawal is and faster dependency forms. The most common opioid drugs to be prescribed in the 2000s and 2010s were Vicodin and OxyContin, which were extremely powerful and habit-forming.

When are Opioids Prescribed Legitimately?

The purpose of opioids is, on the surface, to help people deal with pain. As a result, they are usually prescribed in two contexts:

For pain related to dental procedures

For pain related to workplace injuries

The reason that these are the situations where opioids are usually used is because they are both contexts where pain will be long-lasting. Having a tooth removed and an implant put in can hurt for days or weeks. If a construction worker gets their foot crushed, that pain lasts months.

But one thing you are probably already thinking is: “Sure, it lasts for months. But it is only unbearable for a certain period of time. Are high-power opioids really necessary?”

And therein lies the corporate greed we mentioned earlier.

When are Opioids Prescribed Illegitimately?

As you might have guessed, getting your foot crushed hurts. But after the bones are set back in their place and healing begins, the pain fades, particularly if it isn’t traumatized again.

However, there is an issue with the way opioids have been handled for the last thirty years. Medical providers are regularly wined, dined, and in some cases outright paid to prescribed opioids when they are not necessary. Why? Because it produces returning customers.

This started with the development of OxyContin for the US Military back in the Gulf War. 

The Department of Defense gave pharmaceutical companies a blank check for all of the painkillers that they could provide. Any army doctor out there will tell you that big pharma ran with that check to the bank. Opioids were readily available in huge quantities to the military.

They were also one of the main ways that the military had for managing pain overseas. If you were an American in Iraq from the 90s to the mid-2010s, then you were a long way from any medical care besides what was given to you. And what was given to you was OxyContin.

All of this together means that opioids were prescribed in three contexts they were not needed:

Dental care where lesser painkillers were needed over shorter periods of time

Medical care where opioids were out of proportion for the trauma

Military injuries where opioids were the only treatment available

How Does This Intersect with African Americans?

African Americans are disproportionally employed more in hard labor jobs where they are likely to suffer injuries on the job. That means factory workers, construction workers, and miners. 

They also represent more injuries in the military than normal, and on average have access to less dental care. If a person goes to the dentist once a year or less, than it is far more likely that they are going to come away with fillings or removed teeth rather than cleanings.

This can be pretty easily traced back to the ghettoization of African Americans. Going zip code by zip code, neighborhoods in the United States with African American populations are going to be located primarily in the inner city, have lower incomes, and less utilities open to them.

All of these issues combine to make it easier for African Americans (on average) to be victims of crime, suffer workplace injuries, and make it more difficult to both access and afford proper medications for those injuries. As a result, it is easier to obtain an alternative opioid, like heroin.

Conclusion

The greed of the American healthcare system knows no bounds, and the African Americans that find themselves trapped in the inner city suffer from it the most. Due to pharmaceutical companies’ desire to get their customers dependent on them for drugs, African Americans see far higher rates of opioid dependency while having far fewer resources for dealing with it.

And that is the real condemnation of the system, isn’t it? If a rich, Caucasian Instagram star develops a drug problem it is so readily describes as “their recovery journey”. 

The underlying racism of society comes out when an African American undergoes the same recovery journey. The truth is that the system was rigged from the start by corporate greed and a lack of access to proper care, combined with society’s aggressive antipathy. 

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