This was a really interesting podcast, and it made me look at things from different angles. When talking about drug use, we are biased to believe that it only happens in the inner city and low-income neighborhoods. However, it’s often the filthy rich who use drugs just as much. So why do we not consider the rich housewife who smokes weed or does other drugs a problem? What if that rich family makes millions a year from selling or distributing drugs, millions that they don’t even need? We do we only judge people from a lower socio-economic status that might be making their living off drugs and bringing food to the table from the money they get from selling drugs?
This podcast also helped me look at the current breakdown of the opioid crisis in a different way. I never realized that disabled people with chronic conditions and lifelong pain are now being denied access to the drugs they need to be able to function and keep living, and for their pain to go away. I also didn’t know that the government was reducing access to disability checks, so they are not getting any government support to get access to the help and medications they need to continue working and living their normal lives. While I do think we need to do something to get a handle on the current opioid crisis, there needs to be a difference between taking drugs away from children and communities and taking away medically necessary drugs from disabled people. Maybe there needs to be stricter regulations on access to those drugs, but those who need them to survive shouldn’t have to struggle without them and be labeled in the same group with drug addicts.
The questions you pose about how we perceive the different types of people who use drugs are some of the questions that also came to my mind while listening to the podcast. Looking at it from this angle is sickening because even though two people are performing the exact same action, we look at them in vastly different lights based on their background or what they look like, and obviously this happens with things other than drugs as well. I think the greater problem is that even though we see the inconsistency and discrimination in this belief, it can be a hard assumption to break because it has been force fed to us, and it is time we made a change in educating young people about this.
I had similar thoughts/questions while listening to the podcast. What we have been told about the opioId crisis vs what is actually true of it very blatantly points out people’s implicit biases about drug addicts. I believe a lot of people need to check what they think they know and what their biases are so that factual things can be taught.