Apr/21/2010
Rob Williams is a Vermont resident, a professor at Champlain College and a firm believer in the politics and ideas that formed the republic of the United States of America. So it may seem ironic to learn that since 2005, Rob Williams has been the editor and publisher of Vermont Commons, the state’s largest secessionist newspaper, and a proponent of Vermont’s peaceful retirement from the union.
Rob’s revolutionary streak began with the conclusion of the 2000 presidential election, which for him, “was the first inkling that things were getting weird.” The election raised a few important questions for Rob, in particular the possibility that the electoral process has been undermined by a troupe of electronic voting machines, and that the foundation of our republic, and thus our republic itself, were in grave danger.
If the 2000 election roused his suspicions, then the events following 9/11 hammered them home like a fat, proverbial hammer. To Rob, 9/11 was a “lever” that the U.S. government used to justify, “dropping the bomb in Afghanistan, invading Iraq, and beginning to clamp down on civil-liberties with the U.S.A. Patriot Act.”
Finally, the “so called” election of 2004 cemented Mr. Williams’ sneaking suspicion that the United States was no longer the republic it had once been.
“You basically had two, millionaire, Yale, alum candidates,” says Rob, “John Kerry and George Dub. I realized at that point just how limited the range of choices there were in terms of viable presidential candidates.”
It was in that same year that Rob attended a conference in Middlebury, VT sponsored by a man named Kirk Patrick Sale, a person who according to Rob is, “a longtime, left leaning writer/activist.” The conference was attended by about fifty people, all of who were discussing the curious idea of secession, of which Rob admits frankly, “…sounds kind of crazy when you first hear it.” While at the conference, Rob kept himself busy by taping interviews of people at the conference, and asking his fellow Vermonters what motivated them to secede. Sometime during the conference, Williams was introduced to Thomas Naylor, the co-founder of the Second Vermont Republic, a secessionist think tank located in Charlotte, VT and author of the 2008 book Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire.
These conversations, coupled with his background in U.S. history led Williams to creating the Vermont Commons in the spring of 2005. Today, the Vermont Commons pushes out 10,000 copies to 200 locations in Vermont, six times a year. That’s not including the Vermont Commons web site, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blog, which features twelve writers from across the state.
“We like to say we’re Vermont’s only statewide, independent newspaper,” Rob says with a smile. He also goes on to comment on Vermont’s Commons having one of the most overtly stated biases. “We are very clear that we are not objective. We are subjective; we have a point of view.” says Rob,” as used to be the case in the early days of the U.S. republic. Every newspaper was partisan in the sense that it had a point of view. We think we ought to bring that back, rather than pretending that we are objective, when any intelligent reader understands that no newspaper is objective. That’s ok, as long as it’s stated upfront.”
What Rob is stating up front is that the United States no longer operates as a functioning republic, but as an, “out of control empire.” Williams cites the prodigious amount of U.S. military bases located around the world, what he describes as “rampant militarism,” as well as voter fraud and the fact that the average congressional district size is as large as the population of Vermont, which he says, “is in no way democratic.”
Today, Rob keeps himself busy trying to live the life of an independent businessman, a trait Rob believes that all Vermonters should strive to embody in the quest for an independent state, and independent living. In addition to managing affairs at Vermont Commons, Williams keeps busy by teaching in the communication and creative media department at Champlain College, as well as by rearing Vermont's only domestic Yak herd at his Waitsfield ranch.
"I'm a businessman," says Rob, "and it's hard. We want people to understand that we're not trying to build a wall around Vermont, but our first plank is Vermont's financial independence. We want to stimulate entrepreneurialism, we want to stimulate small business's, we want to stimulate people's ability to be commercial."
Rob Williams' quest, and the quest of all Vermont secessionists is an unquestionably hard one. It's not difficult to understand why many people question the viability, both ethically and pragmatically, of secession as an answer to Vermont's problems. Vermont, like any other state, currently enjoys federally funded highways, military protection, federal services and relies on the U.S. dollar for commerce and trade. So it would seem unlikely, even in the face of what many Vermonter's feel to be a moral prerogative in the face of an uncaring, imperial power, that secessionists will ever enjoy the popular sentiment, or political clout required for secession. However, that doesn't seem likely to deter Rob Williams, whose secessionist rhetoric seems to be unceasingly accompanied by a sly smile, betraying the obvious satisfaction of a man who feels he is doing the right thing.
More Methadone
Mar/30/2010
"On May 18, 2000, the governor of Vermont signed into law Bill S.303 that legalizes long-term methadone treatment, ending a long debate between the legislature and the governor on how to respond to the alarming increase in heroin abuse in the state. The first long-term methadone clinic is expected to open in Vermont by the summer of 2002."
Portsmouth Herald, 01/11/2000
For just shy of a decade, Burlington has been home to one of Vermont’s two methadone clinics. Methadone is a drug used to block withdrawal symptoms and combat addiction in opiate based narcotics. It has proven to be safe and effective. When medically supervised, long-term methadone treatment causes no adverse effects to the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, bones, blood, brain, or other vital body organs. Methadone withdrawal is also much slower than it is with heroin. The result of which makes it possible to maintain an addict on methadone without harsh side effects. This is fortunate, because the nature of heroin addiction can sometimes make it necessary for patients to remain on methadone treatment for many years.
Furthermore methadone maintenance is highly cost-effective. According to the New York Academy of Medicine one year of methadone treatment costs about $5,000 per patient. The Office of National Drug Control Policy also stated that methadone treatment costs about $13 per day and is considered a cost-effective alternative to incarceration. This seems especially frugal considering the $109,000 lifetime Medicaid cost for each injecting drug user with AIDS.
Most importantly, methadone treatment makes living without addiction a possibility for many people. The National Institute on Drug Abuse found that outpatients receiving methadone treatment decreased their weekly heroin use by 69%. The Office of National Drug Control Policy states, "This decrease in use allows for the individual's health and productivity to improve. Patients were no longer required to live a life of crime to support their habit, and criminal activity decreased by 52% among these patients and full-time employment increased by 24%."
However, despite the drug’s effectiveness, its availability is generally limited. Vermont itself only recently legalized the use of methadone, and today has only two clinics. One is located in Brattleboro; the other is located at the University Health Center in Burlington. This is all well and good, or at least it would be if Vermont was more akin in size to Hawaii, or Rhode Island. While Vermont is not notably large in terms of population or geography, it is none the less of sufficient size, regardless of its infamous weather, that spanning Vermont on a daily basis can be described as a universally undesirable task. Unfortunately, this is exactly how methadone clinics operate, on a day to day basis.
Instead of receiving their medication on a weekly or monthly basis, patients must resign themselves to appearing at their assigned clinic on a regular, and strictly observed schedule in order to receive their daily dose. Although methadone treatment is more effective, and presumably more desirable than incarceration, the scarcity of clinics in Vermont leaves many people driving several hours, and hundreds of miles a day to receive their medication. This can be especially problematic in a state like Vermont, which in the winter months is frequented by notorious ice and snow storms.
Anyone trying to hold a job, maintain a car or just save their money can understand the predicament of driving across state to make a meeting; a fact made more or less frustrating considering the meeting itself often takes as little as five minutes. The cost in transportation alone could prove financially crippling, and the balancing act of meeting a methadone appointment and fulfilling ones work obligations is taxing, and often impossible.
Another problem that occurs with having only two clinics in the state is that those cities which have clinics become veritable Mecca’s for recovering drug addicts. Many of these people will be helped by the program, but many of them will relapse. In fact, many people receiving treatment at the University Health Center are court appointed. They go there because they prefer drug treatment to incarceration, and may have no intention of quitting the drug they were convicted of using. Of course these people cannot be considered recovering drug addicts, but simply drug addicts, who by their very nature impose a criminal element on the city. Even the intent to quit does not preclude a person from the selling the drug, or providing connections to other users. By housing one of only two clinics, Burlington is also become the daily venue of conventions for drug users from the across the state.
Statistically speaking, methadone clinics help a lot of people cure themselves of opiate addiction. From a large scale perspective, it seems as though the whole process is working just fine. However, from the human perspective, methadone treatment can sometimes prove an insurmountable task in and of itself.
Burlington's New Addiction
03.16.2010
In January 2002 the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) released a report listing heroin as the primary drug threat to the state of Vermont. The Vermont Drug Task Force reported that the availability and abuse of heroin was, at the time, increasing in the cities of Brattleboro, Burlington, Montpelier, Newport, Rutland, and St. Johnsbury. The Burlington Police Department (BPD) stated that they too considered heroin as their primary focus. Today, while the chemical threat is nearly identical, that being opium, the form is radically different.
"It was about ten, fifteen years ago that we got hit hard by heroin," says Lt. Scharland, the Lieutenant in charge of detectives at BPD, "but that has since moved on. I don't want to say that it's no longer available, because it is, but currently the primary drug threat in Burlington is crack cocaine and pills."
While crack cocaine is an obvious and known drug threat, the term "pills" is less understood. Here Lt. Scharland is referring in large part to opioids, or narcotic analgesics such as Darvon, Opana, Demerol, Kadian, Ultram, and the most common, Oxycontin. Like heroin, prescription narcotic analgesics share opium as their main active ingredient. The human brain's neurons had specific receptor sites for opiate drugs: opium, heroin, Oxycontin and morphine. Opiates operate by locking onto the endorphin-receptor sites on nerve endings in the brain, resulting in a succession of events that leads to euphoria or analgesia. The end effect is euphoria, and relief from pain (analgesia).
Narcotic analgesics are commonly prescribed for the treatment of chronic pain as a result of anything from invasive surgery and broken bones, to extracted wisdom teeth and bad headaches. They are the direct descendant of what was once known as the "drug of mercy", morphine. However, like those who used, and still use the forefather of today's drugs, patients of modern narcotic analgesics commonly suffer from another potent side effect. During the civil war it was called "soldiers disease". Today it is known simply as addiction.
"I don't think it's limited to Burlington," says Stuart "Mickey" Wiles, director of the Turning Point Center of Chittenden County, a recovery center that provides group support and free sober environments for people with addictions ranging from cigarettes to heroin. "From my understanding prescription drug addiction is the fastest growing in the country, and a lot of it has to do with availability."
Aside from its administration, prescription pills are among the most reliable narcotics available on the street today. Produced not by criminal cartels, or in basement laboratories, prescription narcotics are constructed by legitimate commercial manufacturers. This results in prescription pills, as opposed to other illegal drugs, having consistent doses and consistent ingredients. In other words, while heroin found on the street can have anywhere from 30% to 80% purity, every single Oxycontin, aside from its size, which generally comes in 40-80mg pills, will be chemically identical to the next. This consistency generally leads to a safer product, devoid of unwanted chemicals that are often "cut" into other drugs in attempts to increase profit. However, this same level of relative safety inherent in prescription pills, as well as the manner they are often obtained has led many users to the conclusion that prescription pills are a different class of drug as compared to other illegal narcotics.
"One of the biggest things you'll see with cocaine is that you're buying it from the street, and you're buying it from generally unreliable sources. So, the worst thing for an addict is for them to call their dealer and find out that they don't have anything. Because people often obtain prescription pills through legal channels, it has a different perception. The reality is that if you are prescribed one Oxycontin every three hours, that one every four hours is your prescription. If you take four every three hours, then those extra three become as much of a recreational drug as cocaine."
As a result of this discrepancy in the perception of prescription pills when compared to typical illegal drugs like crack cocaine and heroin, so too exists a discrepancy in the perception of the typical drug addict and . While no local surveys have been conducted that explore the extent of prescription pill abuse in Burlington, numbers are more available within a broader context. Prescription Drug Abuse Information website states that prescription drugs are the second most commonly abused category of drugs, just behind marijuana, but ahead of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs. The National Institutes of Health estimates that nearly 20 percent of people in the United States have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons. In 2008, 2.5 percent of 12th grade males and 0.6 percent of 12th grade females reported taking the drugs in the past year. In 2000, about 43 percent of hospital emergency admissions for drug overdoses, nearly 500,000 people, happened because of misused prescription drugs.
"I was (speaking) in a class at Champlain College," says Lt. Scharland, "and it was made up of half sociology students, and half law enforcement students, and I said, 'hey look, I'm just interested, not asking anymore but, who here uses drugs?' and I was shocked to find that almost every person in the room, including law enforcement students, raised their hand. Then I asked, 'what is the prevalent drug of choice on campus, right now, for Champlain?' and everybody agreed, pills. Oxycontin, pills."
This isn't to say that Oxycontin is unavailable through illegal channels. Like cocaine and heroin, Oxycontin is often obtained from the larger cities surrounding the state of Vermont. In cities like New York, Boston, or Hartford opiate based pain killers can be purchased cheaply on the street, and in Vermont sold for as much as four times what they were obtained for, and drug dealers aren't the only ones cashing in.
"I've seen 80 year old women trying to meet their bills," says Lt. Scharland, " and so they start selling off their medication as a way to make ends meet."
In Burlington, Oxycontin is priced at around a dollar per milligram. With pills generally coming in 40-80mg doses, this leaves a single pill costing as much as $80.00. While new users will often divide the pill to be used over the course of several doses, a person who has become heavily addicted to Oxycontin, or other narcotic analgesics can go through as many as three 80mg pills per day. As a result, addicts will often turn to crime as a means of providing for their expensive drug habit.
"This is just my estimate," said Lt. Scharland, "and I've been a police officer in the city for 22 years. I would say that the majority of what we respond to here, in terms of property crimes, larceny, burglaries, retail theft, financial crime, passing bad checks, forgeries, and violence too, assaults, home invasions, the majority of those things we respond to is a result, or has some connection with drugs. Usually our property crimes, financial crimes, eight times out of ten those folks are committing those crimes because they're fulfilling their drug habit."
As Lt, Scharland stated, heroin has moved on from Burlington. It's here, but not in force. However, that does not mean that the threat heroin once posed has simply evaporated. Instead, it has changed its form. Cleaner, more available and easier to administer, pills like Oxycontin have risen in popularity to become the primary drug threat in this city, if not this nation. However, despite the nice veneer coated on prescription pills, Oxycontin is a powerful, expensive and highly addictive narcotic drug, whose only significant variance from other illegal drugs is not chemical, but psychological. Like the difference between imperialism and globalization, the perception of heroin and crack cocaine is different, and worse, then the perception of prescription pills. The reality is that the drug isn't important, it's suffering addiction that matters, and Burlington is addicted to pills.
