Not true. Nikkas have been using heron since the jazz days in the 40s....Ray Charles for example. Jay Z and Raekwon talk about their dads being junkies(shootin that "that's that shyt in his bloodstream". My cousin's father od'd on that shyt. Lot of blac folk got hooked on that shyt when Vietnam happened.
Now pills are newer to blac ppl as far as common use...but opioids in general no
Drug issues go through ups and downs and trends. Just like 80s was crack. 90s were meth and X, and now it's pill popping followed by H once the legal means are cut off. Current popping of pills, usually opiates, is a new phenomenon. It's not the 1940s. It's 2010s going on 2020 and the majority of drug abuse is driven by different factors. Opioid abuse, in the modern era, started as mainly a white issue and the same abuse wasn't impacting black communities at the same level. It started with doctors practicing implicit racism against black patients by giving pain killers mainly to whites who get hooked. Cartels for a time were purposely setting up shop not in black communities but these 98% white areas flooding them with shyt because they knew the market was there. It's everyone's problem now unfortunately though like you said but perhaps, glorifying it and talking casually about in Hip Hop culture should be looked at and discussed and there has been a shift it seems. Maybe I'm just talking
jibberish though.
But despite all that, as of 2019 opioid abuse, in the modern era, is still mainly a white impacting trend even if it's abuse is increasing among black communities.
More opioid prescriptions, overdoses among whites than other ethnicities
I see nothing wrong by the way in addressing, now that it is affecting more black people, at possible ways to curtail, including through maybe messaging in music.