A Call to Arms on a Vermont Heroin Epidemic

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/us/a-call-to-arms-on-a-vermont-heroin-epidemic.html

RUTLAND, Vt. — Block by block, this city in central Vermont has been fighting a heroin epidemic so entrenched that it has confounded all efforts to combat it.

On Cottage Street, the foot traffic is heavy in and out of No. 24 ½, a red two-story cottage set back from the street, where visitors stay less than a minute.

“We know what they’re doing in there,” Victoria DeLong, a longtime neighbor, said of the house, which the police say is owned by an absentee landlord and is a haven for drug dealers. “It’s like shopping at the Grand Union,” Ms. DeLong said. “In and out, in and out.”

Long visible at the street level in towns and cities across the country, the extent of the opiate scourge in rural Vermont burst into the national consciousness last month, when Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State message to what he said was a “full-blown heroin crisis.” Much of New England is now also reporting record overdoses and deaths.