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GA Senate Candidate Says Opioid Crisis Treated Differently Because It’s ‘White and Suburban’

WOW.

With the American political world now focused intently on a pair of Senate races in the state of Georgia, the candidates involved are finding that their on-the-record comments from the past are coming back in a big way.

This is especially true of Rev. Raphael Warnock, who this week was revealed to have a strangely racial view of the opioid crisis in America.

During a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2019, Warnock claimed that America treated the crack epidemic and the opioid crisis differently because the opioid primarily affected white Americans.

Warnock said, “At least it was a war when the drug was crack. And the bodies were black and brown … But now that we are talking about opioids and meth and the faces of the human tragedy are white and suburban, suddenly we have a public health emergency.”

[…]

Warnock’s comments were received with applause at the church.

Warnock continued his analogy, noting that the crack epidemic was treated as a “war,” with “enemy combatants, prisoners of war,” and “militarized weapons of war on civilian streets.” In contrast, Warnock said that the opioid crisis has “patients.”

Warnock has recently received criticism for other historical views that he’s held, including a fondness for marxism and a reverence for controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright.

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