Abstract
In the context of narcotic drug epidemics, racist logics can shape policy deliberation and delimit uptake. While critical public health scholars have situated the U.S. opioid epidemic as demonstrative of such logics, in rhetoric the opioid epidemic has failed to register as an important deliberative context for representational contestation regarding race and racism. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’ (1985) steering mediums (steurungsmedium) and Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s (2015) racial formation theory, this essay analyzes the U.S. Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and Purdue Pharma executive J. David Haddox’s testimony before Congress to show the extent to which racial hegemony saturates juridical engagements at the federal level. Where wide-scale opioid use is concerned, this analysis demonstrates that disparate policy outcomes are largely a reflection of structural and representational inequality along racial lines. This essay thus invites scholars of health and medical rhetoric to consider how processes of controversy and medicalization function to preserve racial hegemony.
- Journal
- Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
- Published
- 2023-01-09
- DOI
- 10.5744/rhm.2022.6005
- CompPile
- Search in CompPile ↗
- Topics
Citation Context
Cited by in this index (0)
No articles in this index cite this work.
Cites in this index (0)
No references match articles in this index.
Related Articles
-
Written Communication Apr 2025Brian Hendrickson; Rebecca Farias; Louis Fusaro
-
Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Jun 2023Feature on Teaching and Technology: Teaching MBA Students Business Report Writing Using Social Media Technologies ↗Payal Mehra
-
Research in the Teaching of English Feb 2023Denise Dávila
-
Research in the Teaching of English Feb 2022“Our Community Is Filled with Experts”: The Critical Intergenerational Literacies of Latinx Immigrants that Facilitate a Communal Pedagogy of Resistance ↗Alicia Rusoja
-
Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2021Self-Contradiction in Faculty's Talk about Writing: Making and Unmaking Autonomous Models of Literacy ↗Olinger, Andrea R.