How Deeply Stigma Trumps Substance Use Disorder
The purpose of this blog and this film isn’t to be political. We will most certainly look at how laws and legislation are connected to stigma but our aim isn’t to focus on anything outside of stigma associated with Substance Use Disorder.
That said, there was a comment the President of the United States made the other day that won’t stop rolling around in my head.
When asked about Roger Stone on Wednesday in the Oval Office the President responded this way.
“I want to thank the Justice Department for seeing this, this horrible thing... And I didn’t speak them by the way, just so you understand. They saw the horribleness of a nine year sentence for doing nothing... You have murderers and drug addicts- they don’t get nine years. Nine years for doing something that no one can even define what he did.”
Look closely. The stigma is in there. It’s neatly tucked away about 3/4’s the way through. “You have murderers and drug addicts- they don’t get nine years.”
Again, this isn’t a political post. This is to notice how insidious the stigma toward addiction can be. Drug addicts lumped in with murderers. It takes us all the way back to the marketing campaign of 1914 that accompanied the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.
Heroin was prescribed as a non addictive pain medicine in the mid to late 1800’s and there were robust marketing campaigns to boast its marvelous non addictive results!
When it was discovered to not be what had been promised and promoted it was outlawed and people who had in fact become addicted had to resort to any means necessary to obtain the drug.
We have to realize in 2020 that addiction wasn’t yet considered a disease... That wasn’t even on anyone’s mind so these people, in pain from withdrawal and being controlled by their addiction (which should never have happened with a non addictive pain medicine) weren’t even seen as medical patients.
They were left out on their own to fend for themselves.
As a result they did what they had to do to get the drugs they were addicted to by any means. Essentially the medical community, the government and the media created the problem, discovered it was a problem and punished those with the problem.
Sound familiar? That’s because it is. And yet, even today in the 21st century when we all thought our cars would fly we are still punishing the addict and giving the makers and marketers of drugs more money to make more money and sell more drugs.
When the person with the highest title in the land can’t distinguish the difference between the two how do we as a society come to understand the difference. We’re still riding a wave created in the early 1900’s that depicts the addict as ”deviant, crime prone, weak willed moral failures” and our cars are still submitting to gravity.
Murderers AND Drug Addicts. In the same sentence. Interesting choice of words when the true statement might be murderers murdering drug addicts.
