Drawing on 147 news accounts and five policy documents on the heroin and opioid crisis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania published between 2016 and 2018, our analysis highlights how media portrayals of opioid users as both tragic victims and public nuisance prompted a schizoid governmental response that draws on rhetorics of treatment and harm reduction to legitimate more punitive interventions. By describing how the state’s quasi-medical responsibilization strategy devolved to fold criminalization into its broader response, we argue the effort to wage a kinder/gentler war on overdose invests in familiar tropes of a recalcitrant drug user class that is a threat to public health. In doing so we provide a basis to critique how drug users are governed in this time of fiscal austerity, resource hoarding, and perpetual, continually evolving drug crises.

我们的分析利用2016年至2018年间发布的147个新闻帐户和宾夕法尼亚州费城的有关海洛因和阿片类药物危机的五份政策文件，突出显示了媒体对阿片类药物使用者的描述既是悲剧性受害者又是公共骚扰，是如何促使政府对类似精神分裂症的反应采取了修辞学合法减刑措施的治疗和减低危害。通过描述该州的准医疗责任化战略如何将刑事定罪化为更广泛的对策，我们论证了对用药过量发动一场更温和/温和的战争的努力投资于对顽固性吸毒者阶层的熟悉比喻，这对公共卫生构成威胁。为此，我们提供了一个基础，可以批判在紧缩财政，资源，积以及持续不断发展的毒品危机时期如何管理吸毒者。