Blacks are trending upward in the consumption of powerful narcotics, a situation that’s become so severe that African Americans are overdosing at higher rates than their White counterparts for the first time since 1999.
According to a report published by JAMA Psychiatry, the mortality rate for consuming powerful drugs exceeds that of Whites, which ultimately can be blamed on the levels of toxicity in the modern street drug.
For example, drug dealers are now mixing the ultra-potent drug fentanyl into cocaine and heroin without their customers’ knowledge. This often leads the victims to unwittingly inhale or inject too much into their systems.
“The high — and unpredictably variable — potency of the illicit drug supply may be disproportionately harming racial and ethnic minoritized communities, with deep-seated inequalities in living conditions (including stable housing and employment, policing and arrests, preventive care, harm reduction, telehealth, medications for opioid use disorder, and naloxone access) likely playing a role,” according to the study, co-authored by Black researcher Helena Hansen of the University of California-Los Angeles.
Another UCLA researcher who co-authored the study, Joseph Friedman, mentions just how potent fentanyl is, according to NPR. Just two milligrams of fentanyl, which is the size of two pencil heads, is enough to kill a person.
Fentanyl is used in hospitals to treat chronic pain or the excruciating pain that often follows major surgery. The problem for drug addicts is that they are often unaware their cocaine and heroin have been spiked with fentanyl, which is 100 times more potent than morphine.
Add to the fact that fentanyl is cheap and it’s understandable how it can litter the street market.
“People who are lower down on the social hierarchy tend to be exposed to fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids at disproportionate rates,” Hansen told NPR.
