Help not handcuffs? What the hell?

"Drugs have been in black neighborhoods for years, but as soon as a bunch of white people start doing drugs: 'Oh GOD it's an EPIDEMIC!' " :Richard Pryor

I was a teenager in the 80s and the first time I saw a rock of crack cocaine I didn't think much of it. I'd seen people do powdered cocaine and thought it was stupid and knew cocaine could be smoked, but still didn't see the allure of getting high. I still don't.  When I saw my first crack rock, at 14 I didn't realize the  devastating impact it would have on my community and even members of my own family
        I saw intelligent young men and women throw away their futures, families, dignity and even their lives chasing the fleeting high and saw the working class neighborhood I grew up in slowly decay into a ghetto.  When I turned on my television every other TV show was telling me about the perils of drugs and even first lady Nancy Reagan (may she rest in peace) was telling me to "Just say no" to them.  I also noticed that law enforcement decided they would find a way to deal with our drug problem, they would impose harsher sentences for selling or possessing crack cocaine than for powdered cocaine. The irony of course being that you NEED powdered cocaine to make crack but I guess that escaped my law makers.
        I didn't realize it at the time but MOST of the people addicted to powdered cocaine were white and affluent and most of the users of crack tended to be black or hispanic. Essentially a stock broker living in a huge house on the right side of the tracks could be caught with a couple of grams of cocaine and get far less time than a kid from the neighborhood who was caught with two grams of crack. I'm not trying to say those being arrested for drug crimes didn't DESERVE to be, but looking back I'm wondering why the affluent were given a pass when kids from the city were sent to literally fight for their lives in America's prisons.

           Flash forward to 2017 and America again has a drug problem. This time it's not cocaine, it's opiates AKA pain pills and drugs like codeine.  Many become addicted to pain meds then when they can no longer get them, go to the streets where they become addicted to heroin.  The addicts by and large are kids in the suburbs and in rural communities all over America. The response has been swift. Drug treatment centers have sprang up everywhere. Insurance plans under former President Obama's Affordable Care Act include rehabilitation programs, politicians are getting on cable news shows in tears begging for more money to be placed into programs to treat drug addiction. I saw a sheriff in Ohio saying he sponsored a program called "help not handcuffs" and another pundit on a cable news panel saying "These people have souls and should be treated with compassion because they've succumb to an addiction."
        As I see this genuine outpouring of compassion I'm conflicted. As an American I'm proud to see my country taking positive steps to solve a serious problem, but as a man of color who has seen his friends sent to serve lengthy jail sentences for the EXACT SAME THING in the 80s and 90s my response is WHAT THE FUCK!?  I want those who are addicted to drugs to be treated as if they have a serious problem and we want them to resume normal lives and I've always wanted that, but where the hell was this compassion in the 80s and 90s when the majority of these people were men and women of color?  I'm not one to play the race card, but those who WOULD call the great country in which I live "racist" could EASILY use this as an great example to illustrate their point. The criminal justice system was more than happy to demonize young black and Hispanic men and women who became addicted to crack cocaine by throwing them in prison, but when it happens to some kid in a small town or in the suburbs suddenly they've decided that drug abuse should be treated with compassion?!
     What burns me up more than ANYTHING are some of the voices calling for compassion. The men and women who are saying that this is an "American" problem were the ones calling for the stiff sentences for drug offenders whose compassion seems quite odd in light of policies they had for "cleaning up America's streets".
       For the record, I do NOT think that we should warehouse men and women in prison for drug use. We SHOULD have programs for drug treatment and I think a national health service (like the British, Canadian or Australian models) would greatly help implementing one, but we as a nation need to OWN our hypocrisy on our "war on drugs" (as Nixon called it) for what it was overt racism and selective prosecution, then we can move forward and treat all our addicts not as denizens of small towns, suburbia or even the "inner city" but as Americans.