Some of the consequences of white America’s opiate epidemic—a topic that has been widely explored by media outlets and social scientists—are still coming to light. Opioid use and addiction have exploded in predominantly white communities around the country, and 90 percent of new heroin users over the last decade are white. The vast majority of those users—75 percent—first used prescription painkillers, which are prescribed to African-Americans and Hispanics with far less frequency, thanks to racial biases in medicine. Among the overwhelmingly white majority of new heroin users, the number of women doubled. That fact has specific implications for white women, particularly those of the rural working class, that come down to life and death.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the single year between 2013 and 2014, the life expectancy of white American women fell approximately one month, from 81.2 to 81.1 years. That decline is better understood not merely as a fraction of a year but as a contributor to almost a decade and a half of truncating white American female lives. A 2015 Urban […]