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Captain Heroin … What Have You Done?
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
No doubt it is tragic when anybody is addicted to a
narcotic drug and he is either found dead due to foul play
or he overdosed due to not knowing the strength of the
narcotic or simply wanted out of life.
But what is also equally tragic and an indictment on
the double standard of fair play in the USA is when you
compare the below acts.
Find out if you can guess what one of the below
samples received more news attention and police action than
the others. Here are the samples:
Sample One:
Leroy Washington, age 20, died in an alley off of Batavia.
Unemployed. Two kids. No wife. Drug overdose on heroin.
Prior criminal record.
Sample Two:
Lo’reAnna Crattle, age 31, died in her home on Machen.
Married. No kids. Worked as a domestic. No prior record.
Heroin overdose.
Sample Three:
Jerrundadina Foster, age 18, died in a drug house on
East Bancroft. Single. No kids. Unemployed. Overdosed on
heroin.
Sample Four:
Russell Manchester, age 49, died due to a heroin overdose
in a car parked outside of a downtown club. Married. One
child. Employed as a part time waiter. Prior record.
Sample Five:
Caesar Martinez, age 33, died of heroin overdose at a party
on the south side. Single. Four kids. Self employed as a
handyman. No
prior record.
Sample Six:
Philip Seymour Hoffman, age 46. Died of heroin overdose in
his private home in a ritzy New York neighborhood.
Multi-millionaire and famous movie actor. Single. Three
kids. Received national news coverage for days. Mourned by
national outcry regarding heroin addiction and abuse.
Arrests were promptly made of his purported drug dealers.
New national focus on the easy availability of cheap potent
heroin and how heroin use is increasing amongst white middle
class and upper middle class kids.
Renewed national campaign to bring the scourges of heroin
use to
the public’s attention.
In case you may have had difficulty spotting which of
the above samples curried national media attention and
renewed the focus on the increase use of heroin among white
kids, re-read above sample six.
The death of the actor Philip S. Hoffman has sparked a
new national debate about the availability of cheap and
plentiful heroin in the suburbs
and how America needs to get its act together before this
scourge claims more victims.
Now, we all know that “H” has been killing folks for
decades and has been a killer in minority communities for
that long and longer but until the tentacles of heroin use
started reaching rich and privileged white kids in suburbia,
it was considered a thing which “those” people did.
Now that we know that heroin is an equal opportunity
killer and destroyer but maybe, just maybe, when this
national focus is renewed on the horrors of heroin, that
people other than those who are rich and famous will get
some press ink and maybe, just maybe, their lives, ruined or
cut short by their addiction to heroin, will mean something.
It is OK for heroin to be contained with the limits of
“inner cities”
or the jungles of public housing complexes. That is what the
manufactured images would have you to believe. Or, that it
is just an addiction problem for brown and black folks and
artists and jazz musicians.
That, as long as we simply boo-hoo it away and its
claws do not come near white suburbia, it is OK. It can be
contained.
But, oh…when it cuts down the Philip S. Hoffmans and
Hollywood’s best and brightest stars and begins to creep
into tony suburban enclaves and rural America…now that is
when it gets serious and it has to stop!
It is OK when the drug wars take minority members as
its captives and ruin neighborhoods and wreak havoc on black
families, but when those same drug wars led by Captain
Heroin start decimating young white males and females who
will not have a chance to re-produce their own kind, it is
time to make the “H” war serious.
But until there are more deaths similar to Philip S.
Hoffman, there will be a brief hue and cry and then we will
move on to the next crisis not understanding that Captain
Heroin takes no prisoners and he is in it for the long haul.
Captain Heroin was not happy that his faithful foot
soldier, Philip S. Hoffman, got sloppy and exposed himself
to public scrutiny. Captain
Heroin would have preferred that Philip S. Hoffman had taken
the proper dosage, got his high and moved on and thus not
brought attention to the treachery of Captain Heroin.
Captain Heroin did not mind the above samples 1-5
being exposed.
They were mere small fish in the big ocean and no one plays
any mind to small fish. But when the whale, Philip S.
Hoffman, got caught with Captain Heroin’s needle in his arm,
Captain Heroin now has to wait out this current national
outcry before he can go around and claim more victims with
impunity.
“Thanks a lot, Philip!” said an outraged Captain
Heroin to Philip S. Hoffman while he was still in the grey
body bag at the morgue.
“Now look what you have gone and done!”
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
Tolliver@Juno.com
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