"And the LePage narrative may be even more insidious than meets the eye.

As observed in a Harm Reduction Journal study published earlier this year, “crack” is a word “loaded with unfortunate connotations of stigma and discrimination” and “driven by media depictions of an urban public health crisis primarily affecting Black communities.”

It suits LePage to promote a vision of drug-ravaged inner cities and ignore the reality of rural towns in deep distress. Across the country and nationally, the use of “crack pipe” at best appeals to the villainizing thinking of the 1980s war on drugs. At worst, it perpetuates a racist trope."

Did he use it to smoke crack?

Let's not pretend the PPH didn't know what they were doing.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

Is that why he's been all puffy?

He looks more like Shifty (f)or D-Money

r/theyknew

I can understand the last paragraph, but the second one...is "crack" not the name of a drug in and of itself? Should we use "crack cocaine" instead? The rest of the paragraph looks fine, but it's that part that throws me off.

It's just cocaine. In a smokeable form rather than a snortable form.

What do you think of when someone says "crack" in relation to drugs?

Ah. Well when I think of "crack", I think of the drug, not of black people. I've seen enough anti-drug PSAs from across three entire decades to know better than that.

Let’s not forget that Penguin refused access to Narcan during his awful time in office.

His logic was that people struggling with addiction might learn different behavior by watching their peers die from overdoses. He is a person who doesn’t have compassion for other people. In either case we cannot have awful people like penguin back in positions of trust. Send him back to the bars in Florida.

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We are talking about the guy who blames shifty and d-money for bringing in drugs and banging the white girls. He knows that crack which is far from the drug of choice that’s killing our kids in Maine at historic levels, brings out fear and the image of a black person in a city. Something most Mainers have 0 experience with.

Also refused to obey the law to expand MaineCare (should've been Impeached). Cut nearly every single program in Maine funded by the state government that was put in place to help people in need. Etc, etc, etc.

Paul LePage put the "DIRTY" in Lewiston. He is an obnoxious disgrace.

LePlague puts the "dirty" in anything he touches.

The drug problem in Maine (and elsewhere) is muchmore opioids but using "crack" suggests black people, so he can use it as a racist dogwhistle.

He should put the pipe down and go fishing. Fuck LePage.

Cruelty is his point.

Aww snap he forgot his pointy white hat.

LePage is using is as racism.

I know the article is about his use of the words but I'm choosing to believe it's about him actually smoking crack to the point it's problematic

Crackers gonna crack

Yeah, I figured. Not really surprised given his whole "D-Money and Shifty" comments from years back.

HAHA that’s so funny thank you for that

Exactly.

Who the hell uses the term 'crack pipe' in today's nomenclature to begin with? Keep at it, LeDouchebag, you're only proving yourself to be old and out dated.

He also doesn't understand how addiction works. You can watch your best buddy waste away, it doesn't matter. That absolute NEED to use again will override all sense and reason eventually.

Ah, yes. I could see LePage pulling a page out of Rob Ford's book.

I’ve heard people say “oh he’s a great sociable guy in person.”

But maybe someone who wants to be a public servant, who says downright offensive/racist/moronic things in public should be disqualified from being a public servant

But that would just make too much sense, wouldn’t it?

“ … according to campaign advisors Shifty and Smoothie.”

It'd make me hate him slightly less at least. Being cracked out would at least give him a reason for being like this aside from just being an awful person.

I suspect that Penguin actually does understand how addiction works, because he seemed to have a serious alcohol problem last time he was in office. You may recall that he left a drunken, threatening rant for Legislature member Drew Gattine that made Maine look like a third world regime.

I wish it were a lack of understanding. I think it’s actually intolerance and hate.

Put down the pipe, Paul

I was going to say. Sounds like LePage should stop doing crack.

Visiting from WI currently, gave some $$ to the Mills campaign in lieu of asking you guys a buncha annoying questions. We obviously have our own troubles (our shithead GOP gubernatorial candidate lives in Connecticut and wants to completely dismantle the Milwaukee public school system, among other things), so, you know. We feel for you.

White people smoke crack too. It's racist to automatically correlate crack to black people, as you and the Portland press Harold have done.

It's not racist to recognize that the history of crack is intertwined with black people because systemic racism relegated black people to poverty, living in ghettos, and other vulnerable situations. So that when the drug lords (with the help of the CIA) flooded the ghettos with cheap crack cocaine, desperate people in desperate situations got addicted.

Then you had a big racist moral panic about "crack babies" in the media.

But again, the much more significant issue in Maine is opioids, so why is LePage bringing up crack?

He apparently has a problem with taxpayer funded crack pipes. What does race have to do with anything? Unless your the kind of person who racially stereotypes

Taxpayer-funded crack pipes (which I don't think anyone is promoting currently) is a better solution to addiction than criminalizing the problem.

Needs to go along with free addiction treatment, though, to be effective.

If there's anything we should have taken away from the crack epidemic (and the opioid epidemic), it's that criminalization of drug use only causes more problems and doesn't solve any.

As far as race, it's easy to say that race has nothing to do with anything...if your race is considered the "default" by society and you have never faced any systemic issues due to your race. Other people have different experiences.

LePage is a bigot and was not a good governor for Maine. I hope he loses.

Not supplying taxpayer funded crack pipes would be considered free drug treatment

>It's racist to automatically correlate crack to black people

Yes, thes the problem.

Conservatives spent a lot of time and money specifically correlating blacks to crack.

It is literally racist. Which is why LePage - a racist - is using the term despite crack usage be incredibly small in Maine.

Also an interesting read is the conservative US Government's relationship to (allegedly) importing crack specifically into black neighborhoods.

No, because them not having crack pipes doesn't stop them from smoking crack - which leads to exacerbated health problems which costs the government money.

All incredibly basic things that we've known for decades when you can learn about once you grasp basic literacy.

All of which is irrelevant because of how poor Maine's drug addiction social services are thanks to - you guessed it - people like you and LePage.

Also Maine mostly fucks overwhelmingly with opiates. And Mainers mostly mess with meth over cocaine, and rarely use crack.

I'm to blame for the drug addicts? Lmao It's not like I'm going around giving out free crack pipes or something

Nope, but you're blamed for not wanting to help them.