No Longer an Inner City Problem

[Jabberwocky]

What the title really should be:

OMG! The Children of Middle to Upper Middle Class Suburban White Mothers and Fathers Are Using Heroin! We Must Mobilize Our Resources to Save Future of the Glorious White Race!

Sadly, what the title really is:...

"No Longer an Inner City Problem: Today's Typical Heroin Users Are White People in the Suburbs
Heroin users of the last decade typically got their start on prescription drugs."

What does the typical heroin user look like? The answer has shifted dramatically in the past 50 years, according to a new study [3] published in JAMA Psychiatry.

In the 1960s, heroin was used predominantly by men in cities—usuallyl in areas with large minority populations. They typically started in their late teens, and heroin was usually the first opioid they tried. Since then the picture has changed. Now heroin users start older, live in the suburbs, and are 90 percent white. The key to this shift is in another finding by the same study: while the heroin users of previous decades had not previously used other opioids, heroin users of the last decade typically got their start on prescription drugs.

The study authors explain:

“Part of this increase in heroin use and apparent migration to a new class of users appears to be due to the coincidental increase in the abuse of prescription opioids over the last 20 years, arguably accelerated by the release of OxyContin in the mid-1990s, which made large quantities of oxycodone hydrochloride readily available for inhalation and intravenous injection.”

What seems to have happened is that thousands of people—mostly white suburbanites—got the taste for opioids from OxyContin, Percocet and other prescription painkillers, and then simply shifted to the cheapest, most accessible source for their fix. Three quarters of the roughly 2,800 people surveyed for the study said that they tried prescription pain-killers before heroin:

“[T]here is now growing evidence that some prescription opioid abusers, particularly those who inhale or inject their drugs, graduate or shift to heroin, at least in part because it has become more accessible and far less expensive than prescription opioids.”

This pattern helps explain the sudden rise in heroin use in the U.S. After years of relative stability, heroin use rose steadily from 2007 to 2012, when it was estimated that there were 669,000 users in the U.S, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse [4]. This report estimated that the number of new users nearly doubled from 2006 (90,000) to 2012 (156,000).

The path many white suburb dwellers have taken from prescription painkillers to heroin shows the fraught relationship the U.S. has between legal drugs and illegal drugs. When they perform many of the same functions and one is cheaper and easier to find, can we blame patients for switching between them?

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/no-lo...typical-heroin-users-are-white-people-suburbs

Ugh the implications riding articles like these are rather very telling. And rather very disgusting. By "rather very" I mean "very Very".

Oh and I gotta tell ya, whether it comes to crack or heroin, the suburban white kid has long been a typical kind of drug users. Basically, statistically speaking, in terms of the so-called, inherently flawed and misleading categorization of "race"... Oh shite, you know what, I'm not even going to get into it. I'd be better of spending time getting back to studying.

 

[Crankinit]

Oh and I gotta tell ya, whether it comes to crack or heroin, the suburban white kid has long been a typical kind of drug users. Basically, statistically speaking, in terms of the so-called, inherently flawed and misleading categorization of "race"... Oh shite, you know what, I'm not even going to get into it. I'd be better of spending time getting back to studying.

I remember reading somewhere that the majority of crack addicts in the late 80's were white women. Can't remember where I heard it, but it's interesting if it's true.

 

[Jabberwocky]

"white" folks, certainly. no idea about gender though. in any case it's funny how the whole inner city, poverty ridden, crack baby black people's problem ended up... sometime I feel like people forget about the history of the crack baby and the related fear mongering of modern day politics. if it worked for the KKK it's gotta be good enough for our political parties, right?! old trick in the book really, scare tactics, it's just sad people never seem to really see them for what they are, at least in the moment, when they hold the most power over us.

 

[Crankinit]

"white" folks, certainly. no idea about gender though. in any case it's funny how the whole inner city, poverty ridden, crack baby black people's problem ended up... sometime I feel like people forget about the history of the crack baby and the related fear mongering of modern day politics. if it worked for the KKK it's gotta be good enough for our political parties, right?! old trick in the book really, scare tactics, it's just sad people never seem to really see them for what they are, at least in the moment, when they hold the most power over us.

I watched Deep Cover (a 1992 movie about an undercover cop infiltrating a crack ring) the other night and the propaganda and depiction of crack use was hilarious. It was almost a parody, talk about ''sub-human'' crack babies and mothers trying to sell their kids for crack money.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I watched Deep Cover (a 1992 movie about an undercover cop infiltrating a crack ring) the other night and the propaganda and depiction of crack use was hilarious. It was almost a parody, talk about ''sub-human'' crack babies and mothers trying to sell their kids for crack money.

Media like that highlighting our hippocracy as such is revolutionary. Subjectively I also find it delightful.

 

[my3rdeye]

Hard drug use in the ghetto is finished. The people who live there have grown up seeing the effects first hand in a way suburban people never did. Want to get a fight in the ghetto? Ask someone if they smoke crack. Its the most insulting thing you could ask. It will take at least a generation for that stigma to go away.

 

[weekend addiction]

Hard drug use in the ghetto is finished. The people who live there have grown up seeing the effects first hand in a way suburban people never did. Want to get a fight in the ghetto? Ask someone if they smoke crack. Its the most insulting thing you could ask. It will take at least a generation for that stigma to go away.

I knew many people in the ghetto who sold crack and yes they would be mad if you asked if they smoked it. I asked many times being the naiive kid I was. They'd always be like "nah man that shit made my uncle retarded. He can't dress himself." Or some equally crazy story and I believed them. Maybe not the story but the fact that they had no interest in smoking crack and just wanted to make money with it.

There aren't as many drug users in the ghetto I garauntee it. I used to hang out in the ghetto every now and then cause some kids I went to school with grew up a mile away on this crazy 5 or so blocks across the train tracks. People always assume that because there is a lot of drug dealing and government checks coming into those areas that they have a decent lifestyle. But for whatever reason that is far from the case. I have more spending money than many low-level dealers and I just work a kitchen job. Many people are criminals for the money you could make working minimum wage. And that's there only job. They just can't afford the hard drugs (or even the soft ones) in the way your or I can.