This point is especially clear when comparing the government’s differing responses to the crack and opioid epidemics. As reported by Netherland and Hansen: “The primary policy response to crack was to lock up hundreds of thousands of black and Latino people for possession and sales. To date, we have seen no move to similarly criminalize white suburbanites for their illegal use of prescription opioids and heroin, even though the scope of this epidemic far exceeds that of crack in the 1980s and 1990s.”