The Effect of Heroin on White America

Heroin Affect a Caucasian Family?

Cicero, T., Ellis, M., Surratt, H., Kurtz, S. (2014). The changing face of heroin use in the United States. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(7): 821-826. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.366.

The study is from a scholarly, peer-reviewed, academic journal: it shows that heroin use has changed over the past 50 years in terms of demographic affected. While it use to be a problem that largely impacted inner-city minorities, now it is being used primarily by \"white men and women in their late 20s living outside of large urban areas\" (p. 821). The consequence of this shift is that more Caucasian families are impacted by heroin use than ever before. The study hypothecates that a reason for the shift in demographic is the cheapness and availability of the drug; however, there is some social acceptance, as one subject notes, \"All of my friends use heroin and I know multiple people who will sell it to me or help me find someone who has it\" (p. 826). Another cause is estimated that white persons in suburban areas seek a pharmaceutical escape: \"If I have money I wanna spend it on something I know will get me high\" -- and heroin is more of a sure thing than pills, according to the subject of this study. This study is helpful in that it sheds light on the mindset of the white American heroin user and raises questions about what is going on in the suburbs of white America that is making so many Caucasians turn to heroin as a means of escaping their reality.

Seelye, K. (2015). In heroin crisis, white families seek gentler war on drugs. The New

York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/heroin-war-on-drugs-parents.html

This study describes how the major shift in demographic from minority use of heroin to Caucasian use has many Caucasian families calling for a \"softer\" war on drugs. The impact of heroin use on Caucasian families is thus described directly in this article, which goes into considerable detail about the drug and how it has hit suburbs and predominantly white neighborhoods, disrupting the middle class lifestyles of much of white America as a result. Now that Caucasian families are faced with a drug issue that they have never before had to deal with, their support for a hard-line stance on the war on drugs has shifted: now, as it is their own children and family members who are being affected by the drug, they are calling for \"a more forgiving approach.\" This indicates that effect of heroin use on Caucasian families has been to increase their awareness of the problem of drugs overall and how addiction leads to downward spirals -- how incarceration does not directly address the problem, and how better steps can be taken to help individuals hooked on heroin. The article is helpful here because it sheds light on how Caucasian families are changing their mind about heroin users specifically, viewing them not as criminals who need jail time but rather as victims who need help.