U.S. opioid crisis does more harm to Black, brown communities: report

Pedestrians walk across the street on Times Square in New York, the United States, March 24, 2021. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

Black and brown people mostly had access to the chemically similar but older and punitively policed methadone.

NEW YORK, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- In the United States today, overdose deaths are increasing in the "Black and brown communities," reported The Nation on Monday.

As the pharmaceutical opioid addiction crisis shifted into an opioid overdose crisis in the country, authorities and health departments crafted a new healthcare-based, rather than a punitive, approach to addiction for the opioid abusers, it said.

Meanwhile, "Black and brown people mostly had access to the chemically similar but older and punitively policed methadone," the report said.

In 2020, while fentanyl continued to dominate the illicit market and drove up overdose rates, the rate of increase among Black individuals exceeded that for whites for the first time since 1999, according to the report.

"For decades public investment in Black and brown communities has been shifted from health care to punitive and militarized policing, leaving them with underfunded health care and harm reduction services," it said.

"It's not too late to fix our eyes on these goals and undo the damage of a century of 'drug wars' waged against our own people," the report added. ■