Opioid Crisis
Dear Christian Manduley and Kimberly Berryman,
I am writing to you to talk about the impression your article “The opioid crisis took this 8-year-old’s father away” (2017) had on me. The article touched on important issues in today’s society about the opioid crisis. The article represented the topic of how opioids can affect a person life and their family’s lives as well. Further in this letter I would like to explain how you represented the topic of the opioid crisis in your article.
The article touches on how easy it if for an average person to get addicted to opioids. It shows how just after a dentist appointment Drake became addicted to opioids. This is completely different from how the media displays it because they talk about people become addicted due to the fact that they are poor or of a certain race. Your article shows the real side of the opioid crisis because in fact most opioid user are white. According to KKF, 37,113 of the white race died from opioid use compared to 5,513 of the black race who have died from opioid use (2017). It is a shocking statistic that media does not display to the public because it would skew there view that opioids users are not just poor and minorities.
Your article talks about how opioids has affected families especially the children. It represents that topic well because many people forget about the children of these opioid users. As stated in the article, “Drakes addiction made life harder for his 8-year-old daughter” (2017). This shows how his daughter’s life was made much harder for her because of his addiction and if it weren’t for her grandmother should we probably be in foster care. This article really touches on emotions because it has the reader think that if their child was sent into foster care because of their addiction it would be awful. This aligns with general media because in the media wants you see the child as the victim and feel sorry for them. As stated in Media Construction of Children, “we now have children as the victims of folk devils” (Jewkes 2004). A folk devil is something harmful to society and opioid is that (Goode & Ben-Yehuda 2009). This shows how media loves to display children as these innocent victims and your article does that.
Not only does opioids have a negative effect on the child’s life but it also creates a negative lifestyle for the user. In the article it talks about the user, Drake, went to jail for theft. This aligns with the ongoing topic about how drugs increases crime rates in America. This article portrays the fact opioid use does mean you are more likely to be behind bars. According to the article With More Opioid Use, People Are More Likely To Get Caught Up In The Justice System by NPR it states “people who use opioids, including heroin, were up to 13 times more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system” (2018). The article you wrote does not explicitly state that because Drake used opioids, he was more likely to go to jail instead it just displays the fact that after he used drugs he got involved in crime. This correlates with the media because the journal Media Constructions of Illegal Drugs, Users, and Sellers: a closer look at Traffic talks about how it is portrayed in movies that “crack is instantly addicting and leads to a deviant lifestyle” (Boyd 2002). Although Drake is not doing crack, this still explains how media likes to portray drug users. In relation to The Crack Attack article, media and politics like to overexaggerated the “folk devil” to receive more publicity and concern. (Goode & Ben- Yehuda 1994). Unlike The Crack Attack article, your opioid article focuses more on factual evidence that is not thrown out of proportion.
This article clearly portrays the right message about the opioid issue. It clearly states the affects it has on user’s life. Not only that but it states true facts that are not over exaggerated like the media would do. Although there are some connections between how the media would portray the message and how the article it overall presents a clear issue for users. To further go along with the article, I believe you should write more about the effects of opioids have on users life. I believe this because it really powerful to the readers and to help them understand the issue in America.
Sincerely,
Amelia Condon