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If you did not know it...I will break it to you very gently
in three words that both sound alike and rhyme ....
RACE....RACE...and RACE!
There...now wasn't that gentle?
In case you have not noticed, there have been media
stories galore about the increasing use of opiate drugs and
especially heroin with WHITE FOLKS!
Yes, more and more WHITE FOLKS are getting strung out
and are dying due to heroin and meth and other damning drugs
and WHITE society is not happy about it.
And this is especially so in regards to young WHITE FOLKS!
Even in places like rural New Hampshire and Maine and other
seemingly WHITE drug free enclaves, WHITE FOLKS are getting
hooked on drugs and are dying at alarming rates.
Needless to state, this is causing pure havoc with
state budgets regarding treatment facilities and the
associated costs with social services as it relates to now
broken or dysfunctional homes, children at risk, domestic
violence and criminal activities to support a drug life
style.
Remember the award winning TV series, Breaking Bad
in which a WHITE high school chemistry professor and a WHITE
student went "bad" and set up a extremely profitable drug
lab and literally made a pallet size fortune of cash. Dem
were WHITE FOLKS!
Seemingly, they were nice middle class WHITE FOLKS who
lived in nice suburban homes with a swimming pool and with
pool parties on the weekends.
But, as we are now seeing in the mass media and with
special CNN reports, this drug activity, and the evils
associated with it, have left the "ghetto" with the expected
media faces of black and brown people and are now being
replaced with WHITE FOLKS faces!
The new look of addiction is not a DeMarcus or a
Tykyneskia but now it is a Julia and an Emily or a Mark and
a Roger....dem are WHITE FOLKS!
Why, you ponder, is there a now sudden emphasis and
shift away from the usual suspects of black and brown people
being seen as dope fiends and now we have celluloid pictures
of WHITE FOLKS acting the fool and getting hooked not on
phonics but on hard drugs?
Because if we can show that the new and emerging numbers
of new addicts are not from Hough in Cleveland, the inner
city locales of Houston, Philadelphia or are not the
societal dredges from Los Angeles, we can get legislatures
to feel a kinship with fellow WHITE FOLKS drug addicts; and
the money will start to roll out for treatment centers and
other monetary benefits needed to fight this national
scourge.
Regrettably, with this country so engrossed in
everything race (notice my caps above about white folks), it
sometimes takes "race" to cause the right thing to happen.
Black and brown people have been suffering for decades
with the drug problem and efforts to increase treatment
facilities and monies for accompanying social programs to
help the addict and the families were met with resistance
which was fueled by the right wing media labeling such
addicted persons as people of no value and much less being
voters to whom they had to campaign for their votes.
Now, with WHITE FOLKS and especially WHITE YOUTHS being
the new face of the war on drugs, WHITE legislators can find
cover and solace that they can do the right thing now
because now the new face of the drug addict is now sitting
in their own living room or across from the dinner table (or
used to be before they were kicked out!).
This drug demon is even beginning to invade WHITE high
schools with its needle and meth pipe and luring away the
young with its hidden siren call to early graves and ruined
lives.
WHITE FOLKS are now beginning to understand the depth
of this menace and hopefully along with this knowledge, will
come compassion for the black and brown families that have
long been caught up in that drug net.
Maybe, just maybe, when we have a national dialogue
about drugs and heroin addiction, the first images people
will not locate in their memory cells will be a Dy'Rek or a
Camulusia but now their own grandchild, nephew, niece or
their neighbor's kid.
Maybe, just maybe, the lawmakers who dole out the bucks
for social services will not be skinflints when rural
counties in Ohio and farm counties in Nebraska and Montana
cry out for funds to stop this plague because the plague has
turned from almost solely black and brown bodies to WHITE
bodies now included in the body count.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com
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