Sharing the Wisdom: A Presidential Lecture Series for the Next Generation-Disadvantaged by Design: The Racial Legacy of American Drug Policy Recording

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Video Summary

Dr. Deanna Wilson delivered a powerful lecture on how racialized drug policy and structural racism have shaped addiction medicine, medical education, and patient outcomes. She traced the history of criminalization from Black codes, convict leasing, and Jim Crow to the War on Drugs, showing how substance use has repeatedly been used to target and control marginalized communities. She contrasted the racialized treatment of crack cocaine and opioids, highlighting how media, policy, and clinical responses have often criminalized Black people while medicalizing and humanizing white patients.<br /><br />Wilson emphasized that these patterns persist today in disparities in overdose deaths, access to medications for opioid use disorder, pain treatment, and maternal care. She explained how racism becomes biologically embedded through chronic stress and the weathering hypothesis. The talk argued that equity efforts focused only on individual bias are insufficient; instead, addiction medicine must pursue racial justice through anti-racist, structural change.<br /><br />She called for structural competency, community-engaged research, culturally centered care, workforce diversity, and harm-reduction models. Her closing message urged fellows to use their power, challenge silence, and work toward “liberated addiction care” that removes barriers and restores autonomy, dignity, and humanity.

Keywords

racialized drug policy

structural racism

addiction medicine

War on Drugs

Black codes

convict leasing

opioid crisis

harm reduction

anti-racist care