Why had blacks failed to become ensnared in opioid addiction? That question was addressed in 2014 data issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Doctors didn’t trust people of color not to abuse opioids, so they prescribed them painkillers at far lower rates than they did whites. “It’s a case where racial stereotyping actually seems to be having a protective effect,” marveled researcher Dr. Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University. Put another way: By 2014, while young whites were dying of overdose at a rate three times higher than they did in 2002, the death rate for people of
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