Dr. Andrew Kolodny, director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University, says doctors prescribe opioids to fewer black patients for a few reasons. Studies show doctors are less sensitive to a black patient’s pain, and some may worry that black patients will become addicted to or sell the medication. This form of racial stereotyping has had a “protective effect” on black Americans, he says. “The black patient is less likely to become addicted to opioids because they’re less likely to be prescribed,” he says. “And they’re also less likely to have opioids in the medicine chest where family members could become opioid-addicted.” When asked if black Americans are being prescribed alternative pain medications instead of opioids, he says their pain more likely remains untreated but he’s not aware of research on this subject. If a doctor subscribes to stereotypes of what an addict looks like — nonwhite, from a low-income community — the physician may assume their white, middle-class patients are immune to addiction, he says. “Rather than recognizing that addiction is a disease that can happen to just about anybody who’s repeatedly exposed to a highly addictive drug,” he says, “they may just assume that addiction is something that happens to those people.”