Vtlozano

“Yes the fact was that, coincidentally or not, this change of heart was happening among conservatives just as opiate addiction was spreading among both rural and middle-class white kids across the country, though perhaps most notably in the deepest red counties and states. Drug enslavement and death, so close at hand, were touching the lives, and softening the hearts, of many Republican lawmakers and constituents. I’ll count this as a national moment of Christian forgiveness. But I also know that it was a forgiveness that many of these lawmakers didn’t warm to when urban crack users were the defendants. Let’s just say that firsthand exposure to opiate addiction can change a person’s mind about a lot of things. Many of their constituents were no longer so enamored with that “tough on crime” talk now that it was their kids who were involved. So a new euphemism emerged—“smart on crime”—to allow these politicians to support the kind of rehabilitation programs that many of them had used to attack others not so long ago.”
― Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic