AP: Overdose deaths for Black American soar during pandemic
Natisha Stansberry cries as she holds a locket of her child close to her chest in St. Louis on Monday, May 17, 2021. Stanberry was a victim of childhood sexual assault and her brother was murdered. She was told during a drug test that rat poison and fentanyl were found in her urine test when she went to Assisted Recovery Centers of America for help with her drug addiction. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
By Claire Galofaro, Brynn Anderson and Rodrique Ngowi
The work of Kentucky-based enterprise writer Claire Galofaro, Atlanta photographer Brynn Anderson and Boston video journalist Rodrique Ngowi made AP first to report on how the pandemic exacerbated the spread of opioid addiction among Black Americans. Their story focused on St. Louis, bringing to light a new consequence of the coronavirus and racial injustice, major themes of the past year, showing that the pandemic accelerated a trend that was already in the works: The spread of opioid addiction from mostly rural, white communities to more urban, Black neighborhoods.
Demetrius Poindexter, 40, holds his head in his hands in St. Louis, May 22, 2021, after talking about being shot during a drug deal gone bad. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Pastor Marsha Hawkins-Hourd, a community leader in St. Louis, drives past a man standing on a sidewalk in a neighborhood known to locals as a gathering spot for drug use, May 18, 2021. Hawkins-Hourd describes the vacant buildings in the neighborhood as a symbol of addiction and a community thrown away. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
During a visit to a harm reduction mobile unit in St. Louis, May 21, 2021, Jamilia Allen, 31, talks about how she has been beaten down by the streets, raped and assaulted in her effort to make money for drugs. “I’m not going to let this kill me, and if I can help anyone else,” she said, “then that’s one less person like me.” She was once an honor roll student and the captain of her high school cheerleading squad, and back then she judged people desperate for drugs. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Lynda Brooks speaks during an interview on the porch of an addiction recovery house in St. Louis, May 19, 2021. One day last summer, Brooks went into a bathroom to smoke what she thought was crack. She felt strange, sat down and remembers only darkness. Once she was revived from a fentanyl overdose, she wondered if she’d been in hell. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Lynda Brooks, center, stands with others on the porch of an addiction recovery house in St. Louis, May 19, 2021. Brooks, a 55-year-old grandmother, had been addicted to crack for decades. She was often homeless; she was assaulted, spit on, her husband died. So she took more drugs to escape feeling sad or scared or worthless. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Lynda Brooks, left, hugs Amy Ford in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Brooks has been in recovery now for several months, and prays that she remains scared of the drugs. She has a job and an apartment, and proudly keeps her new keys dangling from a shoelace around her neck. Her family told her they are proud of her; she said that feels like heaven. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A sign painted on the side of a corner store reads, “Drugs… the new Slavery!” in St. Louis. May 21, 2021. As the COVID-19 pandemic intensified America’s opioid addiction crisis in nearly every corner of the country, many Black neighborhoods like this one suffered most acutely. – AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
The reporting placed this trend squarely in a history of drug addiction in America that has long discriminated against Black people, and described how even today, the best drug abuse treatment is more accessible to white people than to Black people. As one doctor put it, the soaring death rate from drug addiction has become a civil rights issue as pressing and profound as any other.
The story was sensitively told in text, photos and video, with poignant details, including one mother fearing her son’s overdose death for so long that she paid for his funeral in monthly installments. The care taken in telling this story was rewarded with AP’s second-highest reader engagement metrics of the day.
