Inner-city regions witnessed extreme police force when the crack-cocaine epidemic occurred. Obligatory sentencing laws were passed by Congress and states. However, now with present situation on severe problems occurring due to heroin usage in small towns and suburbs, addicts are being treated as addicts and not in prisons.

According to Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, he still remembers the hostility, gangs and empty cities during the phase of crack epidemic. He also reconciles the differentiation made between whites and blacks, who despite their age and innocence were treated as guilt. Yankah added that African-Americans were classified as identical, pathological and unsympathetic group of people. The present condition of empathy is being considered as 'a bittersweet sting that many African-Americans feel witnessing this national embrace of addicts', according to Yankah.

Along with change in the approach towards addiction, mental health problems are also being understood. In addition, the racial demographics associated with the drug usage are also changing. According to a 2014 study published in Journal of the American Medical Association, among the new people using heroin during the last decade, 90% were whites.

Congress now aims to offer treatment to addicts rather than punishing them. A bill was introduced by the Ohio Democrat Brown on February 10, 2016. Another bill was introduced by Republican Senator Rob Portman, following the bills that were introduced in 2015, along with the Recovery Enhancement for Addiction Treatment Act.

"This is a doctor-caused epidemic. And it's killing people -- young white men in particular, notes a deep review of mortality records by the New York Times", said Dr. Tom Frieden, Head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the heroin crisis. It began with Oxycontin after people used their pain-killer prescriptions for their addiction.