Of all demographic groups in America, middle-aged whites are the only one with a rising death rate. This has come as quite a shock to many demographers, as the New York Times reported last year, since death rates for nearly every other class of people in the world (outside of conflict zones) are declining. As the chart above shows, the causes are mainly "poisonings" -- drug overdoses -- alcohol abuse, and suicide.
"The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014," reported the New York Times, based on research conducted by two Noble Prize-winning economists at Princeton.
“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” wrote two Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, a statement that is the economist equivalent of "holy freaking shit."
But why is this just happening to white folks? Don't African Americans drink and do drugs too? And don't they have a lot more to be depressed and suicidal about? This is where things get interesting. Reading Sam Quinones' book Dreamland, I discovered that the legal prescription of opioid painkillers like OxyContin, made by Purdue Pharma, was rampant in middle America. Even Rush Limbaugh got hooked. It's a legal drug, right? So what if it is basically legal heroin, it was prescribed by doctors -- and it's incredibly addictive, and incredibly profitable. Doctors soon figured out that treating pain was an easy way to make an awful lot of money.
However, research shows that many doctors are reluctant to prescribe pain killers to African Americans. Studies published in the Journal of Internal Medicine and other peer-reviewed and professional journals show that doctors, despite a desire to offer equitable treatment, prescribe strong painkillers much less frequently for their African American patients. Even kids. A study by Dr. Tiffani J. Johnson at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh found that African American children were at least 39 percent less likely to receive pain medications compared to white children with similar medical situations.
This is sad -- it grieves me to think of kids in severe pain being denied palliative relief. But opioids are highly addictive, and quitting is not easy. The explosion in Oxycontin use unfortunately coincided with a powerfully disruptive new business model developed by Mexican drug networks mostly from Xalisco, bringing cheap black tar heroin to cities and small town across America. Places like Vermont and New Hampshire, the suburbs of Ohio and Oklahoma, neighborhoods all up and down the east and west coasts, and everywhere in between. Offering free delivery service, good quality and low rates, these drug networks were there when people could no longer get the legal drugs. Making plenty of money, and eager to avoid trouble, the dealers focused on middle-class whites, and often refuse to sell to African Americans (at least according to Quinones).
It's bigotry, pure and simple -- drug dealers should not discriminate in serving customers. But it's probably saving a lot of African American lives. The reality is that heroin addiction and opioid drug overdosing from all sources is now mostly a white problem in America, created in the first place by the differential prescriptions to legal drugs provided by well-meaning (or greedy) doctors. Maybe we can call it whitelining.
We know that the war on drugs, mediated by the inherent racism of the American law enforcement and incarceration systems, has led to staggering numbers of drug offenders locked in prison for lengthy sentences. Prisoners in America are disproportionately of color and poor. Are we now going to see a similar effort targeted at middle-class whites? Lock them up and throw away the key for drug law infractions? This would have the beneficial effect of improving diversity in prisons, but I don't think we're going to see a "war on white people doing drugs" any time soon.
In fact, what we did see in heroin-afflicted New Hampshire was virtually every presidential candidate falling over themselves to call for compassionate care for this terrible disease, which needs to be treated like a medical ailment and not a criminal problem, said both Chris Christie and Hillary Clinton. Carly Fiorina shared tearful stories of her own family's struggles with addiction, and called on Obama to invest more in mental health and drug addiction treatments.
Yikes, what a good idea! How about we offer the same services to everyone in America? And why don't we start with all those folks we currently have behind bars, who deserve our care and compassion as much as anyone?