But the Trump administration, despite its generally get-tough posture, does have a soft spot for one group that has technically violated the law: those addicted to opioids. At the launch of the president’s task force on opioid abuse in March, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is leading the task force, likened drug addiction to cancer, heart disease and diabetes, saying addiction is a disease that people should not be ashamed to talk about. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the states facing the highest rates of death from drug overdoses are West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio. Three of those states — Kentucky, New Hampshire and West Virginia — have smaller black and Latino populations than the national average. The opioid problem has hit heavily white areas of America, and some experts say that explains why it has not led to the type of tough-on-crime policies that came amid the crack epidemic in black areas in the 1980s and 1990s.

Obama had an opioid task force too, so this is not an issue where Trump is helping a group that was previously ignored. But Obama’s whole administration was pushing toward a more lenient approach to drug use, while Trump created this task force even as his attorney general has sharply criticized the growing use of marijuana.

In political terms, Obama was finding a way to reduce the degree to which drug enforcement adversely affected black people, and Trump seems to be doing the same for rural white people.