Writer says Vermont is Amerca's heroin capital

Heroin use is on the rise in rural America, and Vermont, one of the most rural states, might be able to claim the title of heroin capital. The problem has gotten so bad that Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire annual address last month to the issue, noting that heroin use is up 770 percent in the state since 2000, $2 million worth of the drug is brought into the state each week, and 80 percent of state inmates are in jail for drug crimes, Gina Tron reports for Politico Magazine. (Boston Globe graphic)

Gina Tron

The problem, Tron writes, is that the rest of America has an idyllic view of Vermont straight out of a fairy tale, but the reality is much different. Tron, whose family moved from Long Island to Vermont in 1992 when she was an adolescent, says she saw heroin coming when states cracked down on abuse of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin. She says one addict told her, “You’re pretty much doing heroin anyway, and it’s much cheaper than doing Oxys.”

Tron said her family wasn't received with open arms when they moved to Vermont, and "It didn’t take long for me to understand why: Vermont draws lots of out-of-staters who move there thinking it’s some sort of promised land of maple syrup and covered bridges," Tron writes. "Vermont is beautiful—the view from our house was breathtaking, with rolling hills stretching for miles, full of grazing deer in the morning and howling coyotes at night. But the state is also more complicated than its reputation. . . . My mother taught GED classes to troubled kids in Queens in the late 1980s. She claimed the problems she witnessed there paled in comparison to what she saw while teaching in rural Vermont," tales of child neglect and sexual abuse.

"There were a lot of secrets and a lot of boredom," Tron writes. "Kids would get wasted out on the cow pasture, mostly by drinking and smoking weed. But while some of my peers in high school took opiates like OxyContin, heroin was still frowned upon," Tron writes. That all changed in recent years, especially with the crackdown on prescription-drug abuse. (Read more) A documentary by Green Rivers Pictures details the heroin epidemic in Vermont. To view the video click below or here.