National Public Radio
Marisa Penaloza
The current drug addiction crisis began in rural America, but it’s quickly spreading to urban areas and into the African-American population in cities across the country.
“It’s a frightening time,” says Dr. Edwin Chapman, who specializes in drug addiction in Washington, D.C., “because the urban African-American community is dying now at a faster rate than the epidemic in the suburbs and rural areas.”
Chapman is on the front line of the opioid epidemic crippling his community in the Northeast section of Washington. He heads the Medical Home Development Group, a clinic specializing in addiction medicine.
About a dozen patients sit in the lobby of his clinic on a recent Monday morning. The clinic is on a busy street, and even on the second floor you can hear blaring ambulances whiz by — Chapman says often they stop right outside his building.
“Sometimes we’ll have a cluster of folks outside selling drugs,” he says. “We’ve had overdoses right outside, right under the building, right next door to the building.”
According to the Office of the Medical Examiner in Washington, D.C., overall opioid overdose deaths among black men between the ages of 40 and 69 increased 245 percent from 2014 to 2017.
Nationally, the drug death rate is also rising most steeply among African-Americans. Among blacks in urban counties, deaths rose by 41 percent in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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