If you account for all opiates......not just heroin....than the current epidemic is worse (by far) for black americans than the 70's was in terms of addiction/use. THAT's something that I've noticed is NOT being talked about. People have a perception that black American opiate use is just crawling along like normal and that white use has skyrocketed. It's true that relatively speaking...the increases in white opiate use have increased faster than the base levels of 2000. But significant increased use is across the board for all races. It's also true that Af-AM opiate use has grown with diminished relevance to class. Meaning....more and more middle/upper-middle class black people are using opiates which is a deviation from previous trends. Ie drug addiction being mostly a lower class problem.

Regardless of the motivations.....we ALL need to soften the drug war. This opiate epidemic is unprecedented in a macro sense. And it carries much more significant secondary problems than if it was coke/crack/speed/etc.