reporting on Race and the opioid crisis

Many have welcomed the more compassionate approach to caring for people who use drugs problematically; however, there is public acknowledgment that, if similar compassion existed for black and Latinos who use drugs in America, those communities would likely not have been devastated by the impact of mass incarceration. The calls for a gentler drug war disregard the explicit racism ingrained in the construction and execution of our drug policies.  This nomenclature also suggests that communities of color were passively complicit in demanding and prolonging the drug war. As the opioid crisis continues in New York, and throughout the nation, many journalists are beginning to ask why blacks and brown lives did not matter when similar drug related crisis occurred.

There was no wave of compassion when addicts were hooked on crack

Faced with a rising national wave of opioid addiction and its consequences, families, law enforcement and political leaders around the nation are linking arms to save souls. But 30 years ago, it was a different story. Ekow Yankah, a Cardozo School of Law professor, reflects on how race affects our national response to drug abuse.

White Parents Are Fighting Back Against the Drug War They Helped Create

In previous decades the mothers and fathers of addicts advocated for punishing addicts harshly, but a new generation of parent-activists has embraced a gentler approach.

Inside a Killer Drug Epidemic: A Look at America’s Opioid Crisis

The opioid epidemic killed more than 33,000 people in 2015. What follows are stories of a national affliction that has swept the country, from cities on the West Coast to bedroom communities in the Northeast.

The case for drug war “reparations"

Activists have a plan to make legal weed lucrative for more than just white people

 Reporting Archive

• Long Island Police Commissioner Takes on Drugs, Gangs and Skeptics
• Trump Goes Full Nixon on Law-and-Order Executive Orders, Vows 'Ruthless' War on Drugs and Crime
• Dealers Will Be Charged in Overdose Deaths With NYPD's New 'Opioid Squad'
• Hollywood's Gentrification of the Drug War
• Is AG Jeff Sessions Quietly Waging a Second ‘War on Drugs’?
• 2 of a Farmer’s 3 Children Overdosed. What of the Third — and the Land?
• An opioid action plan with one troubling flaw: doubling down on dealer arrests
• The war on drugs remains as racist as ever, statistics show
• Death Rates Rise for Wide Swath of White Adults, Study Finds
• The Forces Driving Middle-Aged White People's 'Deaths Of Despair'
• There’s a big part of rural America that everyone’s ignoring
• Largely white opioid epidemic highlights black frustration with drug war
• The Death of the White Working Class Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
• Renewing the War on Drugs
• When a drug epidemic’s victims are white