Commentary: Harm Reduction and the Proletariat

STOP THE MADNESS –

Oct. 13, 2022 – Now opium derivatives, like heroin, are once again the actual opium of the people. People use heroin and fentanyl analogues to escape oppression temporarily. Black Panther Michael Cetewayo Tabor documented in “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide” that heroin was cut and sold to Black people in the internal colonies of the U.S. in the 1960s because it offered the youth an illusion of escape from their conditions of neoslavery.

Now, in 2022 the chickens have come home to roost, as Malcolm X said. White people have experienced the tragedy, the loss, the chaos of drug addiction. This return came differently from former years, though. The U.S. government was directly responsible for the addiction of Black youth to heroin.

This time around, it was the drug manufacturers — Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson — who masterminded the drug epidemic. The Sacklers, owners of Purdue Pharma, had their names torn down in a revolution from below against this addictive process, their name cast as low as the bodies in the ground.