In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs

[applegrove]

In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/heroin-war-on-drugs-parents.html?_r=0

"SNIP...............


NEWTON, N.H. — When Courtney Griffin was using heroin, she lied, disappeared, and stole from her parents to support her $400-a-day habit. Her family paid her debts, never filed a police report and kept her addiction secret — until she was found dead last year of an overdose.

At Courtney’s funeral, they decided to acknowledge the reality that redefined their lives: Their bright, beautiful daughter, just 20, who played the French horn in high school and dreamed of living in Hawaii, had been kicked out of the Marines for drugs. Eventually, she overdosed at her boyfriend’s grandmother’s house, where she died alone.

“When I was a kid, junkies were the worst,” Doug Griffin, 63, Courtney’s father, recalled in their comfortable home here in southeastern New Hampshire. “I used to have an office in New York City. I saw them.”

Noting that “junkies” is a word he would never use now, he said that these days, “they’re working right next to you and you don’t even know it. They’re in my daughter’s bedroom — they are my daughter.”



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[kelliekat44]

1. Black communities and families struggled for decades with heroine addiction until crack.

Nobody cared, and people suffered on all fronts . Heroine addiction has now hit white communities and all of a sudden there is compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and rehab programs bursting out all over. If law enforcement were arresting white addicts in the same proportion as black weed smokers we would have to build more prisons in the north east.

[applegrove]

2. +1