Black Entertainers and Drug Abuse: What Could Be Responsible?

King And Queen Of Pop: Gone Too Soon

"Are blacks (African Americans) genetically predisposed to addiction to narcotics? How is that once they start taking drugs, it spirals out of control- while many White celebs are still able to do drugs and "function."?"

Well, before  Whitney Houston, the last major celebrity to die from crack addiction was  Amy Winehouse.

 Unless my memory fails me, I do not believe that she was black.

And then there are others -such as Anna Nicole Smith, Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Elvis Presley, and many other white celebrities who died from some form of drug addiction or the other. So if there is a racial basis for drug addition, the evidence has so far been carefully hidden.

Moving on ..

If you travel to economically depressed cities with mostly white populations, you will find a major addiction to CRACK. Sure, crack addiction has also devastated black neighborhoods, but there are HUNDREDS of mostly-white communities in North America where crack addiction is also epidemic.

So the big factor underlying crack addiction is  NOT racial. It is Economic.  Simply put, crack is the poor man's cocaine.  If a cocaid drug user is rich, she will likely do cocaine. If she is poor, she will have no choice but crack. People like Whitney  Houston and Amy Winehouse who are rich (?) and also on crack are exceptions to the rule, and rich folks like that probably got into the crack habit from hanging out with ghetto company.

Moving on …

Unfortunately for all of us, between crack and cocaine, crack is by far the more addictive variant. The cheaper substance is also the more addictive and dangerous. People in Wall Street and Aso Rock can do cocaine and still function, because cocaine addiction does not, for the most part, alter the human personality. It merely depletes your bank account, perhaps until you can no longer afford cocaine, at which point you may descend down to crack, at which point your life will spiral completely out of control.

So if you have a good stream of income, you can keep it together, even with cocaine addiction. And since white people are on the whole richer than black folks, more white drug users will do cocaine, while more black drug users will do crack. That's why it sometimes seems as if they handle drug addiction better than the rest of us. They don't. They just have more money.

Crack, on the other hand, is devastating. It is like sex:  anybody who tries crack once will almost  invariably go back to it again.

Here is the pain: crack isn't just addictive. It alters the mind in a way that makes it impossible to function normally.  So a crack habit isn't just an addiction, it is a descent into insanity. If you are a Nigerian residing in North America, denying your children the opportunity to mess with that stuff should be considered a prime parental responsibility.

Finally, so far, crack-addiction treatment programs are really a scam. The Government injects an unholy amount of money into it, but the success rate is less than 1%! It would appear that, once you go crack, you never go back. I am a big believer in personal responsibility, but people addicted to crack lost control long ago.  What they really need is sympathy.

Final finally: while I generally don't support Capital Punishment, I emphatically support death penalty for drug pushers.  They waste too many lives. Nothing can destroy a community, or steal an entire community, so thoroughly.

Dominic Ogbonna