The Same Old Face Of Heroin

Maia Szalavitz rails against the media narrative that heroin use is just now penetrating the white middle class, which paints an inaccurate picture of the “typical” heroin addict as poor and black:

As far back as the 1970s, the heroin-addicted population had a white majority—and in every decade since then, white heroin addicts have outnumbered blacks. Although, because blacks are a minority in the population, they are somewhat over-represented in most of the late 20th century. Nonetheless, from the 1980s onward, the typical heroin addict was not black. And in the most recent group, blacks are actually under-represented. African Americans make up around 12% of the population—but in the 2010s, 90% of heroin addicts are white.

So why is today’s media hyperventilating about heroin breaking free from the ghetto, when that had already happened back in Ronald Reagan’s era? And when is the media going to stop rewriting the same story Newsweek first ran in 1981 about the new “Middle-Class Junkies”? This will only happen if we examine why we’re so keen to see white middle-class addicts as “not typical.”