New Hampshire has a major heroin problem. The 'tsunami of drug overdoses and deaths' has swallowed countless lives. Mike Barnicle shines a spotlight on a grim issue that's on the minds of so many voters in the Granite State.
In The Daily Beast, he writes:
Even though the city has nearly collapsed under the weight of all the politicians who come here seeking the presidency, Lt. Jessica Wyman was not thinking about any election as she sat in her office at Nashua’s Fire-Rescue headquarters. She has been a paramedic since 1991 and on the job in this city of about 85,000 people for the past 15 years.“The youngest?” she was saying. “Sixteen.”“Oldest?” she was asked.“In their 60s,” she replied. “They’ve been using all their lives." ... Heroin goes for five or ten dollars an envelope. The drug trail starts in Mexico, winds through this country, lands in struggling cities like Lawrence, Massachusetts, a few miles from the New Hampshire border, where it is cut and often laced with the synthetic narcotic fentanyl which only adds to its addictive nature and availability. Then it is shipped to places like Nashua, Manchester and anyplace else where it can be sold and that happens to be anyplace at all. Overdoses pay no attention to zip codes.
For the full article, read here.