it's Time To Rethink Health Class Curriculums: The History Of Drug use

Freshman year health class covers eclectic topics ranging from mental health to drug use. Within every discussion, YouTube video, and documentary was a small intervention of why we shouldn’t become drug users. What was missing from these conversations was the context of drug use and abuse as a whole. Drug use is a specifically prevalent topic in health class; we spent a week dedicated solely to learning from recovered users. However, the dialogue around drug use and abuse in this class is currently damaging and needs to change.

After learning about drug use from an outside company, we spent a week watching a series as a class about a heroin addict. The show showcased how his family members were impacted by his behavior.

We were exposed to drug abuse in a variety of mediums, but there was a continuous, unhealthy emphasis on blaming the user. Not once did we talk about structural violence or how profitable drug companies are. Instead, we shamed users and used people’s real stories as a means of scaring us out of any potential drug use.

Being a Parker student is a privilege in many regards-- especially when it comes to the support I receive through having counselors and trusted adults in the building I can go to for advice. Going to Parker also means that I have a place to be for seven hours a day with vast opportunities for extracurricular activities to further keep me engaged with the school and consume my time. Having a safe place to be with people who care about my well-being is a luxury and privilege that only a minority of students receive.

I am lucky enough to not suffer from structural violence, which could potentially increase my risk of being a drug abuser. However, not nearly everyone has this privilege, and health classes need to teach that.

Drug abuse disorders are political issues because of how policies inform drug companies and social institutions. Teaching students to not abuse drugs because doing so will strain family relationships or cause someone to deter from future goals is not sufficient and is a harmful message. Health class must teach about the biosocial aspects, which are forcing people into becoming abusers.

Class time should be spent understanding the development of drug laws in the US and how they’ve become heavily racialized.

In the late 1800s, as many Chinese Americans were relocating to San Francisco, they became the main force behind building Western railroads. They brought with them the practice of smoking opium and, thus, built opium dens to smoke and relax after work. Arguably, the first drug laws came to fruition in 1875 when San Francisco banned opium dens. The justification for this ban was that the Chinese Americans were “threatening” locals with their opium use and consequently being “bad influences.”

Following the racialized ban on opium dens was the first federal immigration law: the Page Act. The United States terminated its open border policies and prohibited Chinese women from immigration due to Americans’ xenophobia and belief that Chinese women ran the opium dens. The United States claiming that Chinese Americans brought dangerous and threatening opium and then banning opium dens was a convenient way to embed racism within the law and keep Chinese people from immigrating to the United States.

In 1909, the United States passed the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act. This law strictly banned the smoking of opium, but people were still allowed to have it in their medicine cabinet and possess it in other ways. The practice of smoking opium was disproportionately utilized by Chinese people compared to any other group. This was, yet again, another way for the United States to create racialized laws surrounding drug use.

Creating drug laws to promote a racist agenda continued throughout the United States law as more drugs became introduced in everyday lifestyles. After the civil war, morphine was used for a variety of purposes: headaches, tuberculosis, and alcoholism. An extremely popular morphine-based product was Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, which had 65 mg of morphine. Both doctors and the media recommended that parents give the syrup to their babies to help relieve teething-related pain. Without proper knowledge about the power of morphine, parents would give their children a couple of drops, and these children would never awake. Even with such a high mortality rate, people continued to use the product and grow its popularity. Drugs didn’t have to be labeled, so people didn’t fully know what was in the syrup.

After the morphine craze came the love of opioids. People were able to purchase opioids over the counter, similar to the common day purchasing of Tylenol. Heroin rose to popularity as a means of treating a diverse set of illnesses including tuberculosis. For $1.50 people could get a couple of vials of heroin and all the proper materials to use it. The American medical association recommended heroin in lieu of morphine.

Next came cocaine, which was recommended and sold to treat toothaches and dandruff. With the rise of cocaine’s popularity came along more racist media and narratives. The New York Times published an article characterizing Black people as “murderers and insane” because of their “sniffing” of cocaine. This article didn’t argue that cocaine made White people a menace, just Black people. Furthermore, the article started the paranoia that Black men were harassing White women because of their “cocaine crazed brains.” The racist narrative around cocaine use further perpetuated the idea of White women being delicate, Black men being a menace, and the government’s need to step in to protect the White people.

In 1915, the government passed the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, banning any kind of narcotic. After this act was passed, cannabis rose in popularity. Once again, the narratives around cannabis use became heavily racist. The New York Times published an article entitled “Mexican, Crazed by Marihuana Runs Amuck With Butcher Knife,” giving cannabis usage a violent and racialized connotation. The same year cannabis use was reported to be safe, there was an influx in immigration from Mexico. Mexican workers brought cannabis with them, and the United States continued to push the racist narrative of cannabis due to the marginalized groups of people who were primary users.

Under Nixon, cannabis was put into the most restrictive and controlled category there is: schedule 1. John Ehrlichman said, on the record, that he knew the government was lying about the threat of cannabis and intentionally made it illegal to ruin the communities of people who used it. “You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” said Ehrlichman.

Along with embedding more racism into the law by restricting cannabis use, Nixon began the War on Drugs. Incarceration in the US was actually decreasing in the 60s and then increased drastically after the War on Drugs was declared. During the next decade, more than two million people were incarcerated, which particularly devastated Black and Latino communities. Prisons became the third-largest employer in the United States. The War on Drugs did not work to stop drug use and instead just increased incarceration. The government used incarceration as a means of dealing with a public health issue, which is extremely harmful. Drug use is a public health issue, not a time for individual intervention. The stated goal of the War on Drugs (to lower drug use and crime) is not the same as the actual goal (increasing incarceration and ruining marginalized communities). When thinking constructively about the United States law and government, it is vital to separate mainstream media messages from underlying goals.

Another essential differentiation that must be made when understanding drug laws is who is using drugs versus who is being incarcerated and policed for these drugs. They are not the same. White people use crack cocaine more than any other race, but 80% of people incarcerated for crack cocaine are Black individuals.

There had been a 100:1 powder to crack cocaine sentencing disparity due to a 1986 mandatory minimum sentencing law. Five grams of crack cocaine correlated to a five-year mandatory minimum. Five hundred grams of powdered cocaine correlated to a five-year mandatory minimum. Ten grams of crack cocaine correlated to a mandatory minimum of ten years. In 2010, Obama passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced this disparity to 18:1, but this law was not made retroactive. Therefore, someone incarcerated a few days before the law was passed is currently serving under the old laws.

The current narrative about drug use in health class is that people simply choose to become abusers and have the choice to stop but don’t. This is far from the truth. Learning about the social structures that force people into these lifestyles and keep them hooked for corporations’ profit is necessary. Further, learning about the history and progression of drug laws helps to provide vital context to the substance abuse and drug laws we see today.

In addition to not learning about any of the social aspects leading to addiction, I was not once taught about products like Narcan and Suboxone, further perpetuating the stigma around drug use and overdose. Because you probably weren’t taught this in school here is a quick rundown: Narcan, for those who are unfamiliar, is an opioid overdose reversal drug that is not always effective, but there isn’t harm in taking it in the event that somebody falsely declared an overdose. Furthermore, Suboxone is a medication used to wean people off of opioids and suppress the pain of withdrawal in the case that someone is suffering from opioid use disorder.

The blame and shame around drug abuse need to stop and be replaced with a curriculum in which drug abuse is taught through a biosocial lens. Many of the movies we watched depicted drug dealers as people standing on the corner of streets incognito style. I’d like to argue that the real drug dealers are people in white coats over-prescribing medication to create life-long users and spenders, increasing cash flow.