The Opioid Addiction Crisis and Racism: A Long, Troubled History

[tulipsandroses]

This falls in line with history that the GOP does not want taught anywhere.

The enduring racial gap in the opiate addiction rate stems largely from racist 19th-century medical beliefs about Black bodies, coupled with substandard medical care provided to Black Civil War troops.

In the past few years, opioids have seen an increase in media attention, as the country grapples with what has been called an opioid epidemic. However, opioid addiction is not just a plague of recent decades; the phenomenon of widespread opioid addiction dates back to the 19th century when the Civil War sparked the United States’ first opiate addiction epidemic among ailing veterans. Nineteenth-century opiate addiction cases usually originated in doctors’ prescriptions, a disturbing parallel with today’s ongoing opioid crisis resulting from opioid overprescribing during the 1990s.
SNIP
This enduring racial gap in the opiate addiction rate stemmed largely from racist 19th-century medical beliefs about Black bodies, coupled with substandard medical care provided to Black Civil War troops. Nineteenth-century psychiatry posited that, among other causes, opiate addiction stemmed from mental overstimulation, which led to insanity and substance abuse. Such overstimulation could only occur among intelligent, sensitive White Americans, according to Civil War–era psychiatrists. In contrast, White medical authorities claimed that Black Americans were too “simple-minded” to experience mental overstimulation, which precluded them from insanity and opiate addiction.

According to J. D. Roberts, a North Carolina doctor, Black bodies lacked “the same delicate nervous organization” as Whites, and thus “d[id] not demand the form of stimulant conveyed in opium” as did Whites. Black people, Roberts claimed, also had a “general ignorance” of medical care, an assertion implying that Black Americans lacked the knowledge to care for their health needs by self-medicating with opiates, as White Americans often did.9

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The relative infrequency of opiate addiction among Black Americans compared with White Americans has been touted as a “protection,” shielding African Americans from the brunt of the opioid crisis.20 Considered in the historical context, however, such rhetoric misses the mark. While it is true that during the Civil War–era opioid crisis and that of today, iatrogenic opioid addiction has been less prevalent among Black Americans than White Americans, this racial disparity should not be celebrated as a metaphorical silver lining. Instead, the relative infrequency of prescription opioid addiction among African Americans in the last century and a half merely reveals the long-standing, destructive influence of structural racism in American health care that has been, and continues to be, manifested in Black Americans’ unequal access to essential opioid medicines

[link:https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-opioid-addiction-crisis-and-racism-a-long-troubled-history|

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. One thing this article doesn't touch on is the opioid addiction rate for Black folks is not overall

much lower than it is for white people.

This article is specifically referring to addictions to prescribed opioid medications (though that distinction is academic in many ways).

Which, as the article says, is much more common among white people, and I'm certain that the racist-based ideas outlined are a big reason for that. It's definitely true that AA's have a much harder time getting an Rx for opioids from a doctor, and a lot of opioid addictions do 'start' that way. I wouldn't 'celebrate' that, but I don't think it's wrong to call it a 'metaphorical silver lining'.

Anyways ... a side effect of this very long-standing game of 'keep-away' that white people have been playing with the legal opioid supply has caused heroin to become the opioid of choice in the Black population. For so many decades, that was all that Black folks could get. That changed in the late 90's thru about 2010 when Feds finally started cracking down, pills were flooding the streets back then, but given the long-existing culture around heroin, Rx pill usage never really 'took over' in the AA community of opioid users. They weren't familiar, and they cost too much on the street. They were, and still are, 'white people dope'.

Why I am I mentioning this? Well, because using illegal heroin, esp. with needles, is significantly more dangerous to your overall health than popping Rx opioid pills. Infections, collapsed veins, HIV/Hepatitis, and the drugs you get are of an unknown purity/strength, which increases OD risk.

It is also much more likely to land you with a significant prison sentence.

What I'm saying here is that the tragedy here runs even deeper than making too many Black people suffer with pain they shouldn't have to. There's been a whole knock-on effect of this particular game of keep-away, wherein if you are Black, and an opioid user (for whatever reason, be it self-medicating for pain, or for 'kicks'), there's a very high chance that you are using the most dangerous opioid, in the most dangerous manner, AND the one most likely to land you in jail.

And I'm sure that's at minimum tangentially related to this long, racist history.

[tulipsandroses]

2. I should clarify that this article is from a psychiatry journal. So it was addressing

Last edited Sun Jun 27, 2021, 10:40 PM - Edit history (1)

healthcare providers re: disparities that still exist in healthcare. Because there are so many other disparities in healthcare, I have to agree with the writer here, that it should not be seen as a metaphorical silver lining. Especially to the intended audience. Healthcare providers. I am not discounting what you are saying. Just wanted to clarify the lens in which this was written.