Pubdate: Mon, 09 Nov 2015
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Victor Goode
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v15/n611/a06.html

WHITE ATTITUDES ON HEROIN ADDICTION

To the Editor:

Re "White Families Seek a Gentler War on Heroin" (front page, Oct. 31):

The change in white attitudes about hard drug addiction is a 
bittersweet revelation. Addressing addiction as a public health issue 
rather than as a criminal justice matter is long overdue.

For decades the police, judges and politicians who now express an 
enlightened attitude toward the addicted saw only addicts and 
criminals when those afflicted were mostly black or Latino. 
Inner-city addiction was written off as the inevitable product of 
community dysfunction or individual character deficiencies.

But all that seems to be changing now that the addicted are 
increasingly young, white and middle class.

I welcome this change but hope that new policies will be administered 
without the racial bias that has characterized our drug laws in the 
past. We must address this problem with intelligence, but we must 
also deal with why our previous policies were driven by racial bias 
and a passion for punishment.

One would hope that in this day and age compassion would be 
colorblind. But our drug policies tell a very different story.

VICTOR GOODE

Long Island City, Queens

The writer is an associate professor at the CUNY School of Law.
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