It’s no secret that heroin is to be found just about anywhere in the region. The governor of Vermont devoted most of his state of the State speech to the epidemic; a national magazine infamously had a cover story about it complete with a front-page picture of a Vermonter shooting up heroin as the replacement image on what would have been a can of maple syrup.
In a small state like Vermont, it quickly gets close and personal. Heroin is not ghettoized into a specific community or group here. It’s less than comforting when your children are attending the funeral of a friend who overdosed or live across the street from a smack house. A friend told me that his high school aged child couldn’t get away from the stuff – it was in school, it was at work, it was at play. Another friend sent their child, recent college graduate, across the country to get away from this drug infested environment.