I get your point, but it simplifies history to a point that it isn't really fair.

America and most of the world wasn't kind to drug addicts in the past, no matter what their drug of choice was. In the past, black communities were effected in higher percentages by drug addiction due to their relatively lower socioeconomic status, but there has always been a very large total number of white addicts. I think it is probably true that some people saw drug addiction as "a minority problem," but I don't think everyone saw it that way. They just saw drug addiction alone as despicable. The way we treated crack vs coccaine is always a common argument people bring up, but the situation was far far more complicated that people admit. It was more of a rich vs poor thing, than a white vs black thing. There were plenty of rural and poor white crack addicts out there.

Only in the past 10 years or so has the country actually started to see addiction as a disease and not a problem of character. This change is largely due to public health, mental health, economic, and medical research. It didn't come around just because "white people were in danger." Rural and poor whites have always struggled with addiction and it has rarely been publicized until the heroin epidemic. They suffer the same problem of exposure as blacks have. The NAACP was obvoiusly right, but the nation didn't give two fucks about addiction at that time. I agree with you overall though that blacks were treated unfairly at that time. I just also think it isn't fair to neglect all the poor an rural whites that also suffered.

As this mentality has shifted, the opioid problem exploded. It was a perfect storm. New drugs were developed. Physicians were instructed to treat pain as the 5th vital sign. There wasn't enough long term research out for the FDA, physicians, and patients to make optimal choices on when to use opiates. The economy crashed. Americans of all races in rural/poor areas began to struggle.

Heroin and opiates aren't currently a "white problem." They are a poverty problem. I have seen so many patients of all races come to the clinic needing help. Insurance companies used to cover opiates for anyone. Hospitals would give opiates to anyone in pain, regardless of how much money they had. This effects everyone and we should be proud of how the country is actually recognizing addiction as a disease rather than chalking this up to another point of contention in the race war.