poli psy
Drug Crimes
SEVENDAYSVt.com 01.29.14-02.05.14 SEVEN DAYS
t goes without saying that in devoting his entire State of the State address to the “crisis” of opiate addiction, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin was changing the subject. “The state of our state is strong and growing stronger,” he said. Jobs are coming back; house prices are up; unemployment is low. “Most people” he meets “are hopeful and optimistic.” In fact, Vermont is in a stubbornly sorry state. Yes, jobs are coming back, but largely in low-wage sectors such as service and retail. Housing is unaffordable to many, so homelessness is rising. Unemployment is down because workers are giving up looking for jobs and dropping out of the labor force. Optimistic? You tell me. It’s understandable that the chief of state would like us to think about something else. But if you’re going to drag attention from the sickly elephant in the room, you’ve got to choose your distraction carefully. You must win not just the minds but the hearts of the public. You must, in short, scare the bejesus out of them. Your plague of choice must be big and growing. A 770 percent increase in this, a 250 percent rise in that — Shumlin ticked off the statistics. To solve the puzzle of a massive problem that almost no one has noticed, you should describe the scourge as clandestine — opiate addiction is “bubbling just below the surface.” Besides invisible, it must be stealthy and tenacious. “Addiction comes at people insidiously,” the governor said. Before you know it, recreational drug
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Dr. Fred Holmes, featured in The Hungry Heart, with Katie tanner and Nicky Hayden, LPN
taking “devolves into an uncontrollable, unrelenting addiction … a lifetime battle,” sometimes to the death. Incomprehensible, amoral, stronger than human will, the enemy must strike at the innocent and defenseless — “our children,” “Vermont families” — and strike indiscriminately. At his speech, Shumlin showcased Dustin Machia, a recovered addict and prominent subject of The Hungry Heart, Vermont filmmaker Bess O’Brien’s doc about St. Albans pediatrician Fred Holmes and the opiateaddicted kids he treats. Dustin is the handsome son of a loving farm family. The governor also mentioned Will Gates, a University of Vermont science major and skier, “born to opportunity,” dead of
an overdose. Heroin — in a phrase that could have been plucked from Reefer Madness — “stole Will.” But the most important criterion for a politically profitable crisis is this: Culpability cannot reside anywhere near you or your policies. Among blame-free catastrophes, natural disasters can’t be beat. Terrorism and pedophilia run close seconds. But for reliable bipartisan panic production, you can always count on drugs. Drugs are firewater to the Native Americans, syphilis to the upstanding soldier, a moral and physical contagion smuggled into Eden — from “Boston, New York, [and] Philadelphia,” said Shumlin. Drugs are the Other. They are
not “our” fault — or, if you’re the governor, not my fault. Or so he’d like us to think. To begin with, as Seven Days reporter Mark Davis wrote recently, that galloping epidemic is hyperbole at best. The nearly eightfold increase in addicts showing up for help in getting clean is “attributable not just to a surge in demand … but also to an increased supply of treatment” in the state. In plain numbers, the doubling of heroin deaths in 2013 — from nine to 17 — is matched by an almost identical drop in prescription opiate fatalities, from 46 to 39. And all those break-ins and thefts, the crimes addicts commit to fund a fix? These, too, “have steadily declined in Vermont since 2008, according to federal statistics.” As for dealing and possession, Max Schlueter of the Vermont Center for Justice Research told Davis that drug arrests reflect enforcement activity: “They aren’t a measure of actual crime.” In fact, national and global data show that if there are now more prescription painkillers on the street, they’ve simply replaced other drugs. Heroin gives way to cocaine, crack to meth. And over the long term, the percentage of addicts in a population remains steady, closely correlated with mental illness. Opiate addiction is not a gangsta-mobile from Philly parked outside the barn. According to a 2006 report from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, in virtually every category of illicit drugs, abuse among rural people ages 12 to 25 equals or exceeds that of their urban counterparts. Less educated and unemployed youth turn to heavy
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