Many or us have used opioids successfully to get back into an active life after no other method of pain relief worked. No those folks are rightfully panicked as fewer doctor will prescribe opioids and then only for short term. I read the below article today and it rings so true, that when Black people were the public face of addiction to pain killers they were drug addicts ruining their communities. Then research hit the wires showing lots of White people were overdosing and dying. White people from our beloved rural areas like New Hampshire and Ohio. Ok, there are lots of Black people in Ohio but they were not the ones in the news. Suddenly it became an epidemic, peopled by blameless, struggling White folks.
I had not taken time to face that obvious point until reading this article, though I knew it was true. It's another part of our cultural landscape that White people don't HAVE TO focus on, yet it is interesting to listen to those who MUST focus on it.
I ran a community centre in the 90s. Many addicts used to visit the centre: morphine, heroin, methadone. Some would be injecting methamphetamine. Interestingly they were all white. I guess at the time there were not many black people in my community. The numbers are increasing, though, but predominantly it's the white folk who were and are the drug users. Children bought up in an environment of drug abuse are likely to follow their parents example. I've seen it happen so many times. You could look at various people in the community and tell who'd be the up-and-coming criminals. There have been many violent deaths in my town perpetrated by white people. The black people I know are generally trustworthy and inspiring. Of course, city life is totally different. I originally come from London. There are places now you would not dare venture. Ghettos, gangs, guns, knives and drugs. Interestingly there are more black deaths than white. Apparently, in the first quarter of this year we've had more violent deaths than New York, mainly stabbings and shootings. Yet, when you see images of people hopelessly addicted to one form of drug or another, including alcohol and spice, they are generally white. You see them slumped up against the wall, a needle hanging out of their arm. Young white men dress shabbily and with rotting teeth, unconscious on pavements after smoking spice. People so drunk they stagger all over the place, or sit at home nursing their bottles and feeding their hopeless addiction to alcohol. What is more shocking here in the UK, is not so much the drug abuse but the sex gang culture amongst some Asian men who abuse, rape, threaten and pimp underage, vulnerable white girls, passing them around their communities, gangs of dozens upon dozens of men abusing as many as a thousand young girls in any one community, some no more than twelve years old. Political correctness allowed it to flourish. It is still going on now. In Shropshire, gangs of Asian men have abused over 1200 young girls. Frightened of being labelled racist, councils and police officers turned a blind eye to what was actually going on. Of course, not all Asian men are bad, far from it. But it does seem to be a cultural thing. In comparison to their own, white girls seem to be devalued in these communities. In my opinion this is a despicable crime, an addiction to sex and an abuse of human nature.