A little less than a year ago, I was at the grocery store where I work, counting down the hours until my shift ended. As I was wiping off a counter, I noticed a customer step into line. When I looked up, I recognized the woman as the mother of one of my close friends. I smiled, greeted her, and we started talking. Towards the end of the exchange, she threw a curveball into the conversation, sheepishly asking: “Is Danny* using drugs again?”
The question caught me off guard, and I hesitated for what I thought was just a split second. I knew the answer to that question, without a doubt. Danny wasn’t quiet about that kind of stuff. I had a choice to make: either lie to protect my friendship with Danny, or tell the truth about her son’s drug use.
My hesitation was answer enough for Danny’s mom, although I’m sure she already knew before even asking me. Her eyes displayed an overwhelming mix of emotion that her stony face lacked, and I quickly stammered out, “I know he’s doing stuff, but I don’t know to what extent.” Danny’s mom quietly thanked me, told me to have a good day, and left the store.
This week, rapper Macklemore released a music video for his song “Drug Dealer,” featuring Ariana DeBoo. The very first line of the chorus has DeBoo singing, “My drug dealer was a doctor/Had the plug from Big Pharma.” The historical context behind the hook: Purdue Pharma produced OxyContin, an opioid, back in 1996, marketing it to doctors as a non-addictive painkiller. The only issue? Purdue Pharma lied, at little cost to themselves. OxyContin turned out to be highly addictive, and the company and its executives were forced to pay $634 million in fines for lying to the public—but the profit they made from sales of the drug far exceeded their cost.
OxyContin-related deaths skyrocketed. With more and more opioid addicts in the marketplace, street drugs like heroin became hot commodities. Heroin doesn’t require a prescription, so it became a very viable alternative to the painkiller. As Macklemore says in “Drug Dealer,” “When morphine and heroin is more your budget/I said I’d never use a needle, but sure, fuck it.” The number of heroin users increased, and so did heroin overdoses and deaths. In 2014, the National Institute of Health reported that 10,574 people died from overdosing on heroin that year. Compare that to 1999’s statistic of 1,960 heroin deaths, and it’s clear that we are being faced with an epidemic that is only growing.
This epidemic can be directly accredited to Big Pharma. It is no secret that capitalist greed motivates pharmaceutical companies to pump the market—and patients—full of drugs that result in addictions. In MTV’s ‘Prescription for Change: Ending America’s Opioid Crisis’ video, President Obama said, “Anybody who’s grown up in America has known people who have struggled with [addiction], may have had struggles of their own.” Unfortunately, with the nation’s growing drug crisis, President Obama’s sentiment rings far too true.
I wish I could say that Danny is the only person—the only teenager—that I know who is a chronic drug user. But the fact is that I have many friends and family members who are current or recovering addicts. Relatives and friends who are or were addicted to things like heroin, prescription pills, cocaine, their usage spread across decades. Now that we’re in college, I’ve had friends who walked the edge of death, were brought back, and immediately went back to that cliff face the next weekend. Friends have been kicked out of their houses, sent to jail or forced into rehab because of excessive drug use. Addiction has torn its way through my family several times, but each time we’ve rebounded, as a family. But that’s not to say that addiction hasn’t left its mark. My friends see a tendency for addictive behavior that I often don’t recognize in myself. I see how tired my parents are when we get another phone call. I hear the heaviness weighing my brother’s voice down as we discuss things that my family kept me sheltered from for the first fifteen years of my life. And the memory of Danny’s mom asking me if her son had relapsed stays with me, even as Danny and I drift further apart, our lives going in two very different directions.
Macklemore’s song is a personal testimony to drug addiction. I can’t relate to his experiences, such as going through withdrawal or witnessing friends overdose. But the pain, the raw emotion, I know that well—in myself, in my friends, in my family.
Macklemore’s song is a step in the right direction when it comes to bringing awareness to the drug epidemic in America, specifically the opioids that are becoming encroached in our society. It shows that everyone is affected by addiction, not just the addicts themselves. More importantly, it draws attention to the real culprits behind the drugs. Addicts did not create the drug epidemic; Big Pharma is the source behind all of this, the “murderers who will never face the judge,” as Macklemore raps. Instead of punishing addicts, how about we punish the CEOs profiting off their addiction with more than just a slap on the wrist (because let’s face it, a $634 million fine for a company whose net worth is $14 billion is not severe at all). Let’s send the addicts to rehab, where they can get the help they need, and hold Big Pharma accountable for their actions. That’s what we need if we want to make a change: accountability.
*Danny’s name has been changed for the sake of his privacy.
