Opioids and Converging Interests

Authors

Mary Crossley, University of Pittsburgh School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

Written as part of Seton Hall Law Review’s Symposium on “Race and the Opioid Crisis: History and Lessons,” this Essay considers whether applying the lens of Professor Derrick Bell’s interest convergence theory to the opioid crisis offers some hope of advancing racial justice. After describing Bell’s interest convergence thesis and identifying racial justice interests that African Americans have related to the opioid crisis, I consider whether these interests might converge with white interests to produce real racial progress. Taken at face value, white politicians’ statements of compassion toward opioid users might signal a public health-oriented approach to addiction, representing a white elite interest primed to converge with the racial justice interest in abandoning the punitive “War on Drugs” approach to substance use. These statements of compassion, however, have not eliminated white politicians’ endorsement of punitive policies. If both approaches to addiction (the public health approach and the law-and-order approach) operate simultaneously, past experience predicts that whites’ addiction will be addressed as a public health concern, while blacks’ addiction will be treated as a matter for the criminal justice system. A strong white self interest may emerge in statehouses, however. Because of growing fiscal burdens from the opioid epidemic’s impacts on health care costs, addiction treatment costs, and criminal justice spending, state policy makers have incentives to shift these costs to another payer (like the federal government) and to eventually decrease these costs (by funding effective prevention and treatment services in the community rather than incarcerating substance users). Focusing on expanding and improving Medicaid’s coverage of substance use disorders could help states meet both these objectives and simultaneously advance racial justice interests. Doing so, however, will require states to resist pressures to impose work requirements as part of their Medicaid programs. Ultimately, to effectively address the opioid crisis while advancing racial justice, we should reframe our efforts as a “war on addiction.”

Recommended Citation

Mary Crossley, Opioids and Converging Interests, 49 Seton Hall Law Review 1019 (2019).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/43