Heroin has been a specter looming over this city for as long as I have lived here and it amazes me how long it has been allowed to continue without public outrage. Our young people die at rates that never cease to astound me. I am not trained to deal with substance abuse, my training is in general adult psychiatry, but every day a significant portion of my time is devoted to dealing with the walking dead. I cannot stand to keep my silence any longer.
This city is of moderate size, about 100,000 if one included the outlying suburbs, two hours away from any truly large city and quite industrial although the surrounding areas are quite rural. Much smaller than my hometown of closer to two million, but wracked by a heroin problem like I have never seen anywhere else. Not even in much larger cities have I seen this. Too small and naive to understand the problem and too underfunded to fight it, the epidemic grows like a cancer in our youths, mostly high school aged and early 20's who are too young to know any better. Before they know it, they are enslaved to the big drug dealers in Brooklyn and Philadelphia who supply them with their so desperately needed hits. Desperate to fund their addiction, they turn to trafficking themselves and go into the high schools creating more and more addicts to fuel the fire.
The problem, I am told, is of recent origin. Many of the mountain towns in this area were founded by the railroads for the purpose of supporting the westward movement of the railways, some time in the late 1800's. Entire towns were built for this purpose and the entire economy was dependent on the railroad. The emergence of the high reliability diesel engine which replaced the high maintenance steam engine guaranteed the loss of a lot of those jobs. Further job losses due to environmental safety concerns and robotic repair facilities left an indelible mark on the community, and the companies that once built the city, seemed to have turned their back on it, leaving the economy in a shambles.
These cities appeared to be the perfect place to build a series of drug rehabilitation facilities and halfway houses to send court ordered addicts from Philadelphia and New York. They were miles away from any large city, and surrounded by conservative Amish and Mennonite communities. It seemed the perfect way to keep these people out of mischief. The cities themselves facing soaring rates of unemployment and a faltering tax base jumped at the opportunity to bring new jobs and money into the area and allowed these facilities to be brought into what was otherwise a quiet community, one by one.
But they bit off more than they could chew. Court ordered rehab does little to solve a problem when the person ordered to treatment does not wish to change. AA members will be fast to remind you that the "geographic cure" never works as the addict has to take him/herself along. Not to mention the fact that while the city may be a few hours drive from Pittsburgh, interstates are the major route of travel of the drug traficking trade and this city is on an interstate.
I have been told that within the past fifteen years, this area has gone from a quiet working class community to one of high crime, drug gang warfare and urban blight....
to be continued
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