In recent decades, drug overdose has become a more common and significant issue in the United States. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, from 1999 to 2020, approximately 800,000 deaths in America were caused by drug overdoses. One reason why drug overdose has become a crisis in the United States is due to the stigma surrounding drug use. The lack of awareness and discrimination against substance use and addiction hamper drug users’ access to healthcare, which aggravates the overdose crisis, leading to high death rates and healthcare disparities. Examples of stigmatization against people with substance use disorders include prejudice from healthcare professionals, the high rate of incarceration, and the lack of legal policies on harm reduction, all of which are obstacles to assessing adequate care. 

In healthcare settings, patients with drug problems may face discrimination from healthcare providers because they may be treated as less deserving patients. A study conducted in New York City with 32 self-identified people who inject drugs demonstrates the stigmatizing behaviors of healthcare professionals towards patients with drug use. 71.9% of participants reported that they were treated with dismissive attitudes by healthcare practitioners when seeking help in hospitals. Sophia, a 30-year-old woman who injects drugs, describes her experience at a local hospital when she visited a physician in the outpatient care unit for a knee injury. In the beginning, the physician provided adequate service; however, when she saw the trace marks on Sophia’s arms, her attitude completely changed. The physician turned Sophia away and told her 

to visit the emergency room instead. Another patient, Carla, also encountered similar discrimination when the doctors assumed that she was injecting drugs at the hospital. As a result, Carla decided to transfer to another hospital. Many drug users stop going to hospitals for their needs as they are often dehumanized when receiving care, which could cause them to internalize the stigma and damage their self-esteem and self-worth. The preconceptions that healthcare professionals have towards drug users negatively impact the quality of care that the drug users receive, resulting in healthcare disparities. 

The criminalization of illicit drug users is a pattern of stigmatizing behavior since people are incarcerated for their disorders. Criminalization undermines drug users’ physical and mental health and causes drug users to go through long periods of imprisonment, probation, and the burden of fines and debt instead of receiving rehabilitation treatments. According to Human Rights Watch, every 25 seconds in the United States someone is arrested for the accusation of drug possession. A former inmate from the Hood County jail in Texas, who was sentenced to 15 years for possessing a small amount of methamphetamine, claims that “because of my drug addiction, they just keep punishing me. They never offered me any help.” The prison system in the United States lacks medical treatments for inmates who struggle with substance use. In a report from Health and Justice Journal, only 7% out of 538 state prisons provide all types of medication for withdrawal management while the majority of care only includes behavioral counseling and detoxication without any follow-up treatments. As a result, former inmates face high risks of accidental overdoses after they are released from jail. Therefore, addressing the  problem with punishment instead of care may bring more harm than good and worsen the opioid crisis. 

Moreover, the rejection of harm reduction policies due to misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about drug use also exacerbates the overdose crisis. In the United States, public funds prioritize enforcing drug laws. Since 1971, the United States has invested around $1 trillion in drug policies. However, relatively minimal initiatives are taken to provide safe injection practices and disease intervention, which increases the risk of bloodborne diseases among the population that injects drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveys that fewer than one-third of people who inject drugs have access to HIV intervention resources. As a result, 1 in 10 people who inject drugs are diagnosed with HIV in the United States. Providing legal injection sites could be considered ineffective and counterintuitive. In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill that allowed supervised injection sites in Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. Senate GOP Leader Scott Wilk agrees with the veto and claims, “People struggling with addiction need help, not a legal place to shoot up.” Some believe that the injection sites would become “sanctioned drug dens” that would create “misery and chaos for the residents and businesses forced to be next to these sites.” Although supervised injection sites are proven to reduce overdose deaths and prevent infectious diseases, the bias and stereotypes against drug use from authority figures impede people’s access to safety measures.