Capitalism and America’s addiction epidemic
25 February 2017
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report Friday showing that nearly 13,000 people died from heroin overdoses in 2015, up four-fold from the 3,036 deaths reported in 2010. The overall incidence of overdoses from all drugs has more than doubled since 1999.
The drug epidemic affects all ages, genders and races. The overdose rate for the 55–64 age group has gone up nearly five-fold, while the 45-54 age group had the highest rate of overdoses overall.
Whites had the highest rate of overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for blacks and Latinos. The overdose death rate for whites, which was lower than that of blacks in 1999, has more than tripled since then.
What is behind the shocking and tragic growth in drug overdoses?
The drug epidemic has been concentrated in former coal mining regions such as Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee, along with so-called “rust-belt” states such as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. These areas of the country have been hardest hit by decades of deindustrialization, mass layoffs and wage-cutting, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing ever since.
Industrial and mining towns in these states have been turned into wastelands, littered with the rusting hulks of factories that once employed thousands of people. In places like Pontiac, Michigan; Akron, Ohio; and Huntington, West Virginia decent-paying jobs are scarce, while schools and community centers have been closed by the dozens.
The social distress that finds a particularly concentrated expression in the rust belt exists throughout the country. In 2015, for the first time in 23…