Drugs and the City, Sante/Baldwin Response
February 26, 2018, by Brandon
Both of these readings, Sante’s “Hop” and Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”, both struck a chord with me more than a lot of the other readings we’ve done for class. Perhaps that’s due to my own personal ties to some of the content covered in the pieces but I loved the contrast of the two pieces as well. With Baldwin’s narrative approach that comes from an emotional angle, it’s great to have Sante’s measured historical account. Both are steeped in the drug infused history of New York.
Unfortunately, for a long time, serious drug abuse has been a history intertwined with urban areas. The reasons why drug markets and usage flourish in urban areas clearly have large sociopolitical implications, among other things. One of my favorite moments in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” comes fairly early on when he says, “These boys, now, were living as we’d been Jiving then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ·ceiling of their actual possibilities.” It’s an incredibly poignant line that hints at a much larger issue with urban life that implicates racial tension, poverty, and mental health among other things. It are these that often provoke people towards drug use.
Another moment that struck me in “Sonny’s Blues” is when the narrator asks Sonny’s friend “”why does he want to die? He must want to die, he’s killing himself, why docs he want to die?” It’s a truly harrowing line and as someone who have known people very close to me battle with heroin use, it’s an incredibly accurate and striking sentiment. Beyond that, Baldwin weaves his story perfectly into the city. It is so soaked in details about New York but in a casual and comfortable way. As a reader, we move throughout the city and travel with our narrator in an effortless fashion.
Sante, on the other hand, approaches the drug abuse issue of the city in markedly different mode. He, as aspected, takes the historical route and tracks the movement of drugs into our society. It’s fascinating the way that an issue that we always see as new and present can go back so far and in roughly a similar fashion. The way that Sante accounts the use of pain reliving drugs to treat wounded soldiers during and after the Civil War can easily be related today. The very same concept of pain relief medication turning into a method of addiction in the 1800s is similar today as those who are prescribed opiates after a surgery often become hooked.
Sante makes his way through a plethora of stats on the prices and movement of drugs, from cocaine to opium all over the city. Even more eye-opening is taking a look at the lack of preparedness on the part of the government to tackle the issue, an issue they seemed almost unaware of. For a long time, obtaining drugs was in a gray area and was incredibly easy and it wasn’t until well into the twentieth century that prohibitive legislation was introduced. It makes one think of the same issues with drug prohibition today, as the government also then was quicker to take an all-or-nothing approach that focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation, woefully myopic when it comes to underlying issues.