Comparing The Crack Epidemic vs The Opioid Crisis

By: Jade Robbins

Here are the facts. 130 americans die every day from opioid overdose. ⅓ of Americans
are prescribed opioids in their lifetime. The opioid crisis is being handled differently than any
drug problem in history. 75% of the people addicted to crack were white. 79% of the people
incarcerated for crack were black.

The problem with the way we are handling the opioid crisis is that we are not starting
from the root of the problem, which is over medicating. With the crack epidemic, the source of
the drug itself was illegal, so the way they handled the crisis was by waging the war on drugs.
The way that the opioid epidemic is being handled is by creating drugs like methadone.
Methadone is responsible for ⅓ of opioid overdose related deaths. For that reason alone, I think
this is similar to fighting fire with fire.

Setting is a huge contributor with any type of drug addiction. Unlike the Crack epidemic,
youth living in rural settings are 35% more likely to misuse opioids than youth living in larger
urban areas. This leads me to the sociocultural history and impacts on the approach to the
opioid crisis.

In the 1980’s the government focused on increasing law enforcement and prison
capacity in order to combat the crack crisis. The problem is, it had been proven that the disease
model works best for solving addiction issues, and treatment is more effective than
imprisonment. The white face of opioid has a more treatment and victim based approach. This
obvious juxtaposition proves that systematic racism affects much more than what is on the
surface. Basically, the lense has shifted from shaming mothers, calling them crack monsters, to
saving the victims of Big Pharma. (The faceless pharmaceutical industry responsible for creating
and marketing drugs.)

It has been proven that minority groups in America have less access to healthcare. This
is actually the reason that 80% of opioid deaths occur in white non-hispanic people. This is why
the focus is on the white people in this drug breakout. The basic idea of the difference between
the epidemics is; Treatment for the white drug problem, jail for the black.

In the pictures above for example. The article written about the white woman's death
was meant mostly to honor her and fight for better treatment, it was heart wrenching and
focused on fighting stigma around addiction. The story of the black epidemic was told much
differently. To get away from the crackhead propaganda, highlighting the addicts as criminals,
the black community used hip hop to claim their story. This is when the term ‘crack rock’ took on
a different meaning in the music industry.

Unlike the reclaiming of power in these songs, artists are now shifting their focus to
speaking on behalf of their own addictions, and the powerlessness they feel. Although I would
argue we moved in the right direction with addressing addiction, we need to recognise the
lenses we see through, and who is cultivating the story.