COMING CLEAN ON HIS ADDICTION

I was born and raised in New York City's Spanish Harlem. My father was
a heroin addict who served six years in jail, and many of my friends
never lived to adulthood. It could have been my fate as well had I not
left it all behind in search of another life. Where is the sympathy
for the pain born of poverty and inequity? Or is socially inflicted
pain somehow less debilitating? A right-wing talk-show host claims
back pain, and letters of support flow like rain. An inner-city kid
goes looking for an escape and spends the rest of his life in a
revolving prison door. Whether it's the difference between cocaine
snorters and crack addicts, or bootleg and prescription drugs, the
result is the same: privilege talks and poverty "perp-walks."

Raymond Rodriguez

Miami, Fla.