Greetings From Vermont: No Billboards, Plenty Cocaine

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Greetings-From-Vermont-No-by-Carola-Von-Hoffman-100322-224.html

In bumper sticker speak, I heart Vermont. I lived in the Green Mountain State for periods in the 1960's and 70's and still visit often. The border is fairly close to the part of upstate New York where I now live. Crossing it brings the eyeball impact of Vermont's no-billboard policy. Scenery? Every rapture ever written is true. I follow Vermont news via the Internet and buy its newspapers when possible. Most often the Bennington Banner, Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press. I'm moved by Christopher Kimball's odes to Vermont in Cook's Magazine. If only the socially cohesive, rural small town life he describes were the sole reality...

Another reality: Vermont consistently ranks upper echelon in studies that rate states for per-capita drug use. And it's not just old hippies sucking weed. A study released in 2008 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, a division of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, ranked Vermont number two for per-capita use of all illicit drugs (excepting marijuana) by 18-to-25-year-olds. The state comes in fourth for cocaine use in the same age group. National Substance Abuse Index stats from 2007 on substance abuse treatment admissions in Vermont, show cocaine and crack as the most prevalent addiction for rehab participants aged 25-to-40. Heroin addiction looms large with people under 30. Marijuana rehab is crowded with 12-to-17-year-olds. Even assuming some kids get dropped into addiction programs after being caught with a joint, the numbers speak to level of use by the ultra young.

With Vermont's heavy drug use comes the violence and corruption that goes with heavy traffic.
Allegedly Torching The Hand That Allegedly Robs You


More at the link --

[Flaneur]

1. Ooh, all those teenage marijuana addicts in Vermont!

You are right: Many of those teens--more than half--in treatment for pot are there not because they are "pot addicts," but because they were ordered there by the courts. SAMSHA's Treatment Episode Data Sets (TEDS) provides the raw data.

[rox63]

2. There are a lot of rural areas in VT with few jobs or opportunities

I love the state, and sometimes wish I could live there. But I have family from the Northeast Kingdom, and they've filled me in on the economic depression in rural parts of the state.

[cali]

4. I live in the Kingdom. There is certainly economic depression here but

there's also a revolution in food and organic growing happening. There's long been a very active arts scene. And there's very little violent crime.

[cali]

3. ridiculous. violence? we have the lowest rate of violence in the country, I believe

We had more frickin' snow machine deaths this winter than murders. (I think there were 5 for all of 2009)

Yes, there are a lot of post smokers in VT and a fair amount of coke use. And we are a state with a big porous border with Canada, but violence? Um, no.