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Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by gozur88 on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @02:21PM (#10933177)
>Yep, the new face of heroin is white and affluent.

Have another look at the maps. It's white and poor.

Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by CPLX on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @02:27PM (#10933237)
And that is not a coincidence. People take heroin as a palliative for bleak life prospects. After a few decades of globalization life sucks for rural poor whites in much the same way it sucked for inner city blacks in the 70's.
Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by gozur88 on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @04:17PM (#10934108)
"Bleak" is too weak a word. I think I'd probably give up, too, if I lived in the soda economy:

>It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367903/white-ghetto-ke...

Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by finid on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @02:45PM (#10933388)
> After a few decades of globalization life sucks for rural poor whites in much the same way it sucked for inner city blacks in the 70's.

That may be interpreted as, live for inner city blacks is now better than for rural poor whites. Otherwise, we should be seeing the same OD death rates across both populations.

Or there's something that's not being reported correctly regarding this issue in the black community.

Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by e15ctr0n on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @06:37PM (#10934977)
See 'Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites' http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-overdoses-pro...

> Drug overdoses are driving up the death rate of young white adults in the United States to levels not seen since the end of the AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago — a turn of fortune that stands in sharp contrast to falling death rates for young blacks

> Yet overdose deaths for young adult blacks have edged up only slightly. Over all, the death rate for blacks has been steadily falling, largely driven by a decline in deaths from AIDS.

> There is a reason that blacks appear to have been spared the worst of the narcotic epidemic, said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a drug abuse expert. Studies have found that doctors are much more reluctant to prescribe painkillers to minority patients, worrying that they might sell them or become addicted. “The answer is that racial stereotypes are protecting these patients from the addiction epidemic,” said Dr. Kolodny

Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by IndianAstronaut on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @03:35PM (#10933788)
If not globalization, it would have been automation or something else. They were just in general underprepared for a changing economy.
Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by CPLX on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @03:41PM (#10933829)
Or maybe they have been mercilessly trampled underfoot by a corporatist political system on a well funded and organized campaign to crush organized labor, prevent national health insurance, and remove support systems for the working class. There's nothing inevitable about this.
Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by elenorelange on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @07:13PM (#10935120)
What's inevitable is that they were going to lose. Life is a struggle of all against all. For some people to win, others have to lose.
Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by eropple on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @08:28PM (#10935434)
In no way is it nearly as settled as your sweeping generalization suggests. Pareto-efficient outcomes exist for so many things, why should they not for society?
Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by taurath on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @09:33PM (#10935697)
It should terrify all those who believe they are safe from this type of thing. Most on this forum are doing well, but there could come a time when they look upon all the people judging them for not having the 'obvious' foresight to prepare for economic changes. Thats the fun thing about economic changes, sometimes they don't go the way that the "experts" expect. Even the smartest people predict wrong.
Re:How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across A... by onetwotree on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @08:26PM (#10935423)
Both, in my experience. I feel like the essential feature here is race, however.