Generalities and Misconceptions: NPR'S Statistical Analysis of the Opioid Epidemic

An NPR article reviewing rural Americans’ beliefs regarding the opioid epidemic explained that Trump supporters are more likely to believe that big business involvement will directly lessen the blow of opioid crises, whereas Clinton supporters were less likely to believe so. This article does a good job at collecting data, but details and variables such as “rural” should be defined more clearly. Additionally, these authors of this article failed to use a lens of institutional oppression, meaning that they objectively reported the data without explaining several aspects of addiction. One aspect is that addiction is a disease. Another is that addicts may but do not always fall into either racial or gender-based minorities. They may fall beneath the poverty line as well, and may struggle to escape their economic statuses but cannot due to lack of employment, lack of psychological resources, an additional mental health problem, etc. These authors fail to explain the contexts of drug addiction; what it does to the human mind, and how it affects somebody’s brain; all three of these are extremely important factors when understanding drug addiction. This article is a testament to how framing can lead to the development of and implementation of stereotypes, because this article, though it’s generalities may provide some statistical information, fails to address any of the personalized issues which are societal and institutional that allow addicts to be stereotyped and abused by systems. While the article is not meant to discuss the roots of addiction, such a context should at the very least be introduced in order to fully educate the readers on the debate at hand.