The 21st century opioid crisis is America's third pharmaceutical addiction crisis. Each crisis has come as a surprise because it was presumed that middle class white people would not become addicted to a medication prescribed by their doctor and yet they did. The system of narcotic segregation in the U.S. in which some drugs become illegal through association with non-white users magnified those individual risks into this continuing crisis.
Featuring Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg on how American capitalism and its illusions of whiteness both created the opioid crisis and shaped the response to it. We are discussing their book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America.
Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig
Check out our newsletters and vast archives at thedigradio.com
Subscribe to Jacobin bit.ly/digjacobin and Catalyst bit.ly/digcatalyst