Segregation in the Post-Civil Rights Era and Abuse of Painkillers

Segregation in the Post-Civil Rights Era and Abuse of Painkillers

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Season 1, Episode 15

  • Feb 27, 2015 7:00 am
  • 1:44:27 mins
Download the BYURadio Apps Listen on Apple podcastsListen on SpotifyListen on YouTube

Segregation in Post-Civil Rights Era  Guests: Jacob Rugh, BYU Sociologist  Douglas Massey, Sociologist in the Office of Population at Princeton University  We’re more than 50 years beyond the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also ended segregation in schools and public places and a follow-up act four years later ended the practice of housing discrimination. However, new research shows high levels of racial segregation in hundreds of cities across the country.  “There is a connection between the size of population and the presence of segregation,” says Rugh.   “In general the West is less segregated, but it doesn’t fall cleanly along regional lines,” says Massey.  Painkiller Abuse  Guests: Anita Gupta, Medical director of the Division of Pain Medicine and Regional Anesthesiology at Hahnemann University Hospital and Drexel University College of Medicine.  Jo Ann Petrie, Research Development Specialist for BYU’s FHSS and the MRI Research Facility  More people die from prescription drug overdoses in the United States each year than die in auto accidents, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The vast majority of those drugs are prescription pain killers. The CDC has termed painkiller abuse the “worst drug addiction epidemic in the country’s history, killing more people than heroin and crack cocaine.”  Late last year, the government enacted new rules attempting to curb access to the drugs that contain highly-addicted “opioids.” We explore the nature of the painkiller abuse epidemic and the challenges in stopping it.  “This discussion is about how powerful these drugs are,” says Petri, a mother whose son passed away from a heroin overdose. “When we did find out, it was 2-3 years before he actually died. He died on a third relapse and that is the problem with addiction, it’s relapsing.”  “The main issue is these drugs are extremely powerful. They have a right place,” says Gupta. “We need to que