I don't think it's just about putting poor people in prisons over drug offenses. If they legalized cannabis, they probably fear it opening the pandora's box of arguments about how to treat addictions to harder drugs and potential legalization.
This county did not give a fuck about heroin addiction and the later the meth epidemic until it started creeping up in middle class white suburbs and became a problem for them. The opiod crisis also ties into that and their answer to it has always been more drug testing, more laws and further incarceration.
It's not so much 'White America'. It's the middle class and the white suburbs. Rural America is poor and they are the ones dealing with the meth and opiod crisis the most. They don't show families who live in trailer parks dealing with these addictions on TV or talk to the average working class person in the rural south who has addicts across their family. The only white people they give a shit about are those in giant houses and come from the middle class. You can clearly see this in documentaries and TV programs about meth and opiods. Watch a bit of Dr. Phil's show. You never see normal working class people on his show, it's always white people with huge houses, multiple cars in the garage and money. At the end of the day, it all go back to class.
I live in a rural area in a southern state and the only answer to the opiod crisis here has been a push for further drug laws and a crackdown on prescriptions. This has damaging effects too when you are prescribed opiods and are forced to do drug tests to prove you're actually taking the meds, and if they don't show up in your system, they cut the prescriptions and accuse you of selling them.
The war on drugs has always been about punishing the poor.
Rural America is poor and they are the ones dealing with the meth and opiod crisis the most. They don’t show families who live in trailer parks dealing with these addictions on TV or talk to the average working class person in the rural south who has addicts across their family. The only white people they give a shit about are those in giant houses and come from the middle class. You can clearly see this in documentaries and TV programs about meth and opiods.
Damn, never realized this before, but you're totally right. Anything poor whites get addicted to is counted as "white trash" and they're dehumanized for it. But when rich whites get addicted to pain pills, then it's suddenly a societal crisis and not dismissed as a failure of the individual.
I don't think it's just about putting poor people in prisons over drug offenses. If they legalized cannabis, they probably fear it opening the pandora's box of arguments about how to treat addictions to harder drugs and potential legalization.
This county did not give a fuck about heroin addiction and the later the meth epidemic until it started creeping up in middle class white suburbs and became a problem for them. The opiod crisis also ties into that and their answer to it has always been more drug testing, more laws and further incarceration.
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It's not so much 'White America'. It's the middle class and the white suburbs. Rural America is poor and they are the ones dealing with the meth and opiod crisis the most. They don't show families who live in trailer parks dealing with these addictions on TV or talk to the average working class person in the rural south who has addicts across their family. The only white people they give a shit about are those in giant houses and come from the middle class. You can clearly see this in documentaries and TV programs about meth and opiods. Watch a bit of Dr. Phil's show. You never see normal working class people on his show, it's always white people with huge houses, multiple cars in the garage and money. At the end of the day, it all go back to class.
I live in a rural area in a southern state and the only answer to the opiod crisis here has been a push for further drug laws and a crackdown on prescriptions. This has damaging effects too when you are prescribed opiods and are forced to do drug tests to prove you're actually taking the meds, and if they don't show up in your system, they cut the prescriptions and accuse you of selling them.
The war on drugs has always been about punishing the poor.
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Damn, never realized this before, but you're totally right. Anything poor whites get addicted to is counted as "white trash" and they're dehumanized for it. But when rich whites get addicted to pain pills, then it's suddenly a societal crisis and not dismissed as a failure of the individual.