The Racial Injustice Behind the Opioid Crisis

By: Jade Robbins

The lense that we see through when examining the opioid crisis was carved out of a rich
history of racial inequality. Although we have taken steps in the right direction with how we
should be addressing drug epidemics in the future, the reason behind those steps is convoluted.
The majority of people who are affected by opioids are white and non hispanic. In fact,
80% of opioid overdose related deaths occur in white people. This is a result of limited access to
medical care for minority groups in America. The lack of access to medical care has limited the
amount of opioids prescribed to communities who are not white. For this reason, the majority of
media we see displays a victim rooted story of Big Pharma targeting those in need. While we
should be treating addiction in the disease model, with treatment and therapy, this approach did
not always come first.
According to ​Focus for Health ​“When faced with the crack epidemic in the 1980’s, the
‘​War on Drugs​’ focused on increasing law enforcement personnel and expanding prison
capacity.” This was largely because the face of the crack epidemic was urban communities who
were mostly black. Ultimately, many youth of color during this time found themselves confined
under long prison sentences.
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. They plastered images of black mothers
who had crippling addictions and called them monsters. Their solution when the drug affected
people of color was to demonetize the people themselves. The demonization of urban, nonwhite
drug users played a crucial role in the opening of “white” pharmaceutical markets in the 1990s
that proved so enormously profitable to companies. This lead to the mass marketing,
prescribing, and distributing of opioids that took place in the early 2000’s.
Unlike the crack epidemic, the opioid crisis is being handled with treatment. The
problem with this is that the treatment largely consists of another killer, methadone. Methadone
is responsible for ⅓ of opioid overdose-related deaths. Our solutions should center around the
mass over prescription of painkillers. The BMJ Journal writes that drug companies spend 19
times more on marketing than they do on research and development. This is where our focus
should lie. Just because the drugs are not originating illegally, does not mean that they are
regulated enough.
Aristotle’s philosophy of justice is based around determining the telos of a thing. This can
be applied to the way that unjust prison sentences were given. As a society, we have come to a
place where we understand that medically, socially, and logically, addicts are not bad people,
and should not be seen as criminals. The purpose of treatment is to heal, and addicts have all of
the virtues associated with needing to heal. According to Aristotle, justice means giving each
person what they deserve, and the people who are still incarcerated for nonviolent crack related
crimes do not deserve to be in jail.
Like any crisis that affects young people, pop culture is a lense of its own, and has it’s
way of examining situations critically with humor and art. To get away from the crackhead
propaganda, highlighting 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.
Artists like Amy Winehouse, Jay-Z, and E-40 expressed their experiences, and outlook when it
came to crack and its effects on their communities. The majority of songs somehow teetered
between condemnation and glorification of crack and how it changed lives. “​So what the f*ck
 The Racial Injustice Behind the Opioid Crisis
By: Jade Robbins
you trying' to pull pigs, Cause my sh*t right here is clean Dig, Least I sell to felons who don't
know no better, Beat me down, pull me over when I'm driving, I'm just a regular guy with a
business that's thrivin.” (Eminem 2007)
Essentially, although we have moved in the right direction with how we view addiction,
the history behind our lense is rooted in racial discrimination. People will always rise above their
circumstances through art; But it should be up to the people in power to create circumstances
based on equality and virtue.

Part 2 Rubric: ​Philosophy Cover Letter

10 9 8 7 5 0
Complete Strong execution Meets the Approaching the Below the Standard is not
execution of the with some room to standard standard standard present in the
standard improve paper
 
Category Score/Feedback

Depth of Thinking and Argumentation (10)
● Student shows DEEP thinking about their philosophy
of justice
● Student defends their philosophy with sound
argumentation
● Students’ commentary and evaluation makes
connections between any evidence or examples or
makes connections between another text.
● Student incorporates ​at least 2 ​outside texts from
their issue research
● Each paragraph is focused around a clear idea that is
relevant to the main argument
● Argument is logical and persuasive
9- I think that the level of thinking and
historical connections I incorporated into my
cover letter is really refined, and I am very
proud of the arguments that I displayed. I also
think that I was able to prove my argument
with multiple references, and this solidified it
more.
I think that I could have connected it to a text
in a more in depth analysis.

Applying your Knowledge (5) 9- I think that I was able to connect my issue to
● Student is able to meaningfully apply philosophical Aristotle’s philosophy of justice because it
concepts learned during this unit to their chosen really boils down to creating a system of
issue deservation, and I was able to apply that.

Refinement/Beauty (5) 10- I think that I refined my piece until I was

● Cover letter meets the minimum length requirement
● Meaning of your sentences is clear and easy to
follow
● Cover letter is carefully proofread for grammar,
spelling, and punctuation errors
really proud of it. The sentence flow, and
structure of my paragraphs makes sense to
me, and I incorporated rhetorical strategies to
make my opinion the only correct answer.
I could have refined my grammar more, and I
 The Racial Injustice Behind the Opioid Crisis
By: Jade Robbins

● Cover letter incorporates rhetorical strategies to didn’t have the most productive peer critique.
maximize impact on the audience
● Cover letter has been refined for grammatical
mistakes and contains no typos
● Try to use proper in-text citation formatting! ​We’re
practicing now so we can play to perfection with the
thesis paper next semester.