Deflecting a “crisis”
The opioid epidemic in Appalachia as state violence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21611075 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brian Pitman (0000-0001-7614-3890, Clemson University), Stephen T Young (0000-0002-2091-4622, Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Forensic Sciences, Marshall University, Huntington, WV, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 225-249 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Justice Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1028-2580 • E-ISSN: 1477-2248 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10282580.2023.2297183 |
| OpenAlex | W4390346720 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 50 |
Drug overdoses are the number one preventable death in the United States. In 2022, over 109,000 people died as a result of a drug overdose. The rise in drug overdose deaths has corresponded with the US government’s neoliberal turn, which refuses to intervene in markets, expands the security state, and individualizes social issues. In this paper, we argue that this crisis is the result of state violence. More specifically, the state set the framework for responding to the crisis with the War on Drugs that began in the 1980s. The opioid crisis emerged due to the state deregulating the pharmaceutical industry, leading to the distribution of opioids across the country, but that were disproportionately distributed to the Appalachian region. When the state finally did respond, its response further entrenched criminalization as the state’s approach left a vacuum of people addicted to opioids forced to turn to the illegal heroin and fentanyl drug markets that exacerbated death rates further. Finally, the state continues to largely ignore and demonize harm reduction alternatives in lieu of expanding the prison industrial complex further. This, we argue, is state violence
Criminalization · Criminology · Drug · Drug overdose · Harm reduction · Heroin · Medical emergency · Opioid · Opioid overdose · Poison control · Political science · Prison · Psychiatry · Public health · Sociology · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Medicine · Opioid Use Disorder Treatment · Prenatal Substance Exposure Effects
Smoke and mirrors
Not Quite White
Toward a New Politics of Outrage and Transformation
Imprisoning Appalachia
Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning
Decarcerating Disability
Enforcing Freedom
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime
Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas in Rural Appalachia
How the Reformulation of OxyContin Ignited the Heroin Epidemic
How Structural Violence, Prohibition, and Stigma Have Paralyzed North American Responses to Opioid Overdose
Free trade and opioid overdose death in the United States
You are not clean until you're not on anything”
The Opioid Crisis
Cognitive fracture
(Un)seeing like a prison
The OxyContin Epidemic and Crime Panic in Rural Kentucky
The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin
Is the Prescription Opioid Epidemic a White Problem
The New Jim Crow
The War on Drugs That Wasn’t
The Contradictions of Immigration Lawmaking
Wild, Wonderful, White Criminality
Total Extraction
Neoliberal globalization and the war on drugs
Violence, Peace, and Peace Research
Pedagogy of the oppressed
Drugs, Violence, and the State
"Selective Hegemony and Beyond-Populations with "No Productive Function
| Citations per year | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |