Every cop a doctor; every doctor a cop

• In Event: Representing Race and Moral Panics: From Ebola to Heroin

Abstract

Labeled “the opioid epidemic”, a disturbing uptick in the number of accidental overdose events has plunged the US to the depths of yet another moral panic, disturbingly similar to the fear of the “superpredator” accompanied by the panic generated by pseudoscientific research in the latter part of the 1980s, which argued that use of “crack cocaine” just once caused instant addiction. We are once again on the cusp of a media-generated panic that has already had significant consequences that will be difficult-if not impossible-to reverse.
We will show how a combination of purely descriptive statistics, manipulation of the public sentiment, and fear of “the other” have created dangerous solutions to problems that have already been solved, yet failed to address the real issue of the widespread availability of cheap and exceedingly pure heroin. In these uncharted waters- every physician becomes a cop, and every cop a doctor.

Authors

• Mitch Librett, Bridgewater State University

• Dina Perrone, California State University, Long Beach