The effects of race and class on community-level stigmatization of opioid use and policy preferences

With opioid use and overdose rates continuing to plague minority communities in the U.S., we explored whether a geographic community's racial composition and social class affect how opioid use in the community is stigmatized and what policy preferences arise in response.

We use case vignettes in a randomized, between-subjects study (N = 1478) with a nation-wide survey. The vignettes describe a community where opioids are harmfully used, varying whether the community was (1) wealthy or poor, (2) predominantly Black or White and (3) facing prevalent use of painkillers or heroin. We tested how these variables affect public stigmatization of opioid use (measured with ratings of responsibility, dangerousness, sympathy, concern, anger, and disappointment) preferred levels of social distance from communities with opioid use (measured with responses to questions about living, working, and interacting in the community), and policy preferences for responding to opioid use (measured with levels of support for providing a safe-consumption site in the community, treating drug use in the community punitively, treating drug use in the community as an illness, and funding drug treatment in the community through income redistribution).

Compared to wealthy communities with opioid use, poor communities with opioid use were less stigmatized in terms of responsibility, sympathy, concern, anger, and disappointment; they were also met with less support for punitiveness, more support for treating drug use as an illness, and preferences for greater social distance. Compared to White communities with opioid use, Black communities with opioid use were less stigmatized in terms of responsibility, and they were met with stronger preferences to not live and work there and with reduced support for using income redistribution to provide drug treatment for people in the community. Poor-Black communities with opioid use were also perceived to be more dangerous than both poor-White and wealthy-Black communities with opioid use.

These results point to class- and race-based territorial stigma affecting how communities with opioid use are judged and whether policies for providing communities with treatment are supported.