From the Beaver County Times. Top: July 4, 2001, p. D3. Bottom left: July 9, 2001. Bottom right: July 11, 2001, p. D2. Eighteen years later, I can see that I mispredicted OxyContin’s fate; the government has neither banned the drug nor locked up the drug’s users en masse, probably due to the users’ predominant lack of melanin. Sure, economic motives may have affected the government’s response (big pharma has its needs), but never underestimate the power of good old all-American racism. Compare the opioid epidemic to the 1980s-’90s crack epidemic. Have you ever seen, for instance, any news story warning that opioid-addicted babies will grow up to become deranged, violent superpredators? (By the way, the above One-Eyed Jack image appears in in-house promotional material for the health-care company Abbott Laboratories; click here for more info regarding the tactics Abbott used to push “hillbilly heroin.”)–DVM, October 15, 2019, 5:21 PM EST
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 