22MOON.COM
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Heroin use in the United States increased by nearly 80 percent between 2007 and 2012 alone, and The New York Times’ main reaction to this depressing fact is to be overjoyed that the new addicts are mostly white.

The important point is not that ragingly addictive drugs are sweeping small-town America, young lives are being cut short, or that we lost one of the most talented actors of his generation to a heroin overdose. What matters is that that the drug epidemic is not having a disparate impact.

Excitedly reporting that “nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white” — yay! — the Times claimed that, with white kids dying from heroin overdoses, their parents are taking a “more forgiving approach” to heroin addiction.

Assuming that’s even true, are grieving parents the best source of public policy recommendations? If we’re basing our drug policies on the feelings of parents whose kids overdosed on drugs, how about having the parents of kids who have been raped and murdered write our death penalty laws?

Columbia professor Kimberle Williams Crenshaw lamented that if only whites had been dying of heroin overdoses sooner, “the devastating impact of mass incarceration upon entire communities would never have happened.”