Many of the poor in North America are addicted to opiates and the opiate epidemic is a very real problem in society.
The question now is with the proliferation of opiates, are opiates themselves becoming the opiates of the people sedating the poor such that they are not in a position to politically mobilize? If so, the tragedy is that opiates are now the opiate of the people.
To close, as Jesse Jackson said, "we need to start putting hope in our young peoples brains and stop jamming dope in their veins"