In the 1970s New York, the Black Panthers and Young Lords injected revolutionary politics and holistic medicine into establishing the first acupuncture detoxification program in the U.S. Local acupuncturists are bringing the film to campus.
The Black Panthers and Young Lords worked to build a movement to heal their communities, facing rising drug addiction, poverty, racist policing and the machinations of FBI’s COINTELPRO to subvert progressive organizing.
Founder and director of the grassroots organization Free Acupuncture Clinic of Asheville, Sam Sumardi, draws a connection between the work he does and the radical historical narrative in the documentary.
“The mission of the clinic is to provide free acupuncture treatment to Black, indigenous and people of color. So that people can be in a healing space that’s outside the dominant culture. For us, detoxification, acupuncture and politics go hand-in-hand. That’s why we’re showing this film,” Sumardi said.
Founding member and UNCA alum, Sarah Nunez said that it is important for students of any discipline to watch this film and learn the history.
“This touches on everything. I think whatever you are passionate about, environment, politics, psychology, this goes into all aspects of our society and poses great questions for our future,” Nunez said.
Nunez also provides traditional treatments and herbal medicines to the clinic through Aflorar Herbal Collective. She discussed that the documentary shows how the now billion-dollar wellness industry originated from the traditional practices and organizing of working-class people of color.
“There’s a lot there to uncover, the film asks us – requires us to ask – a lot more about the healthcare industry, the wellness industry. Who benefits from it? Literal extraction of knowledge, wisdom, indigenous practices to make profits.” Nunez said.
History as a weapon
President Richard Nixon, infamously declared a “war on drugs” in a 1971 news conference, citing Drug Abuse Prevention and Rehabilitation as a top initiative. The war on drugs led to increased policing of majority Black inner-city neighborhoods, marking the beginning of mass incarceration. A comprehensive study by the Sentencing Project reports that in 1973, 368 out of 100,000 Black men were in prison. By 1979, that number rose 47% to 541 out of 100,000 Black men.
As part of this nationwide crackdown, federal and state governments opened clinics for methadone – an extremely potent and long-acting opioid – as a maintenance drug for street heroin. This was not aimed at healing struggling opiate users but to curb a coinciding rise in street crime. Addicted people, eager to avoid the life-threatening symptoms of opiate withdrawal, turned to petty theft to buy drugs. The Black Panthers and Young Lords understood that methadone clinics did not address the root causes of addiction – poverty, racism, and alienation – they even perpetuated it. By 1974, methadone was the cause of twice as many fatal overdoses as heroin, 184 deaths, according to a report published in the New York Times.
From its inception in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense led local and national struggles to challenge the oppression that weighed on the Black community and on all disenfranchised people. A key part of their program was an analysis of and resistance to drug and alcohol addiction, which they called “chemical warfare,” or the plague.
Counter to Nixon’s “war on drugs,” the Panthers created mutual aid programs. By merging political education with providing the material needs of marginalized communities, they sought to alleviate the worst of racism in the US and empower Black people.
The primarily Puerto Rican Young Lords Party took inspiration from the work of the Black Panther Party. Organizing against police brutality, against racist neglect of social services, and for the liberation of Puerto Rico from US imperialism.
In an early climactic scene from “Dope is Death,” the Lords, led by poet Felipe Luciano, take control of the underfunded Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. A large group of unionized healthcare employees stood in solidarity with their actions and were careful not to disrupt patient care. After a 12 hour stand off with the police, city officials agreed to their demands.
The result of this struggle was an unprecedented health care gain for the Bronx community – the Young Lords set up a free holistic health center to treat heroin and alcohol addiction. What the state would never do willingly for the community, the community did for itself.
These programs were grassroots, built by the people living in the neighborhoods they served. The Panthers, along with the Young Lords and other groups known as the Rainbow Coalition, spoke to the conditions that caused people to turn to substances – addicts are not weak or “junkies”, they are part of an oppressed class under an oppressive imperialist system.
“To inspire people to get off drugs, it’s not just acupuncture. It’s the lifestyle, the ideas, feeling empowered as a people, as marginalized,” Sumardi said.
In “Dope is Death,” the organizers reflect on the successes of the programs. They acknowledge that federal and state funding worked to obfuscate the anti-capitalist, revolutionary goals of the first clinics. A bipartisan effort to erode the services started nearly as soon as they started.
In 1981, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, progenitor of acupuncture to treat addiction, was put on the FBI’s most wanted list. The FBI claimed he was the mastermind behind the robbery of an armored bank truck that left two dead. In 1988, he was sentenced to 60 years on racketeering and conspiracy charges.
Many activists have called it a frame-up and political attack on the Black Liberation Army, a Marxist group Shakur was also a part of.
The new war on drugs
On Jan. 3, U.S. special forces illegally kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. President Trump and his administration have declared a new “war on drugs,” citing Maduro, the democratically elected leader of a foreign nation, as a “narcoterrorist” without evidence. Days later, President Trump moved to strip $10 billion in funding from social services and nearly $2 billion from federal grants for community drug and rehab programs.
While overdose deaths have steadily declined from a 2023 peak of over 111,000, they remain high, hovering around 68,000 according to the Centers for Disease Control data from September. The fall in deaths is due in part to a reduction in potency of fentanyl, the main cause of most overdose deaths. Community-led harm reduction efforts to increase access to naloxone, which blocks opioid receptors, have been a major contribution to the drop. Most of these community organizations and non-profits rely heavily on federal and state grants.
For acupuncturist and founding member of the clinic, Nic Melo, it is an all-out attack on the people.
“We are seeing our institutions that have been failing us, really crumbling around us right now. So being able to access this kind of care, building on the legacy of communities who have done this, is empowering,” Melo said.
While social service programs and institutions are life lines for millions of people, they have been under constant threat since they have existed. “Dope is Death” underscores that these services were concessions made by the government in response to the organizing of the Black Panthers, Young Lords and progressive social movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. Co-optation of the programs removed the primary political messaging that was aimed at addressing the root causes of addiction.
“It’s important for us to acknowledge that in grassroots movements, when there is success capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, will try to co-opt it and overtake it, because it is subversive,” Sumdari said.
For the members of Free Acupuncture Clinic of Asheville, the lessons from the documentary and the work of groups like the Young Lords and Black Panthers is more prescient than ever. While overall deaths related to drugs have decreased, drug use remains at historic highs. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports that 47.7 million Americans report some drug use within the last 12 months. 8.2 million of those 12 and older abused opioids at least once in the last year. Rising costs of healthcare and housing, attacks on immigrant and transgender people, police and federal agents killing unarmed people in the streets. “Dope is Death” demonstrates that people turn to drugs not as a defect, but as a response to their material conditions. The film highlights a radical tradition – to organize against incredible odds and not fall victim to despair, to addiction.
“I think now is the time, now there is a need for us to come together,” Sumardi said.
