Last month, after being away for 10 days, I was back in my downtown Toronto neighbourhood and going about my business. Went to the supermarket, stopped at the liquor store, cut through the park on my way to a lunch meeting. Usual stroll.
Being away, even for a short time, gives you a fresh perspective on where you live. You see the familiar through brand-new eyes, for a while anyway. What occurred to me after a few hours on the streets was this: "There are way too many people around here who are high." It had unnerved me. Not just the occasional person seen collapsed in a doorway. There were others. A couple, best described as a hipster guy and his girlfriend, swaying on the street, wild-eyed and giggling, emerging from the park in midafternoon. They were high, not drunk. And they weren't the only ones.
A few weeks after that, I was paying some attention to the New Hampshire primary. That is, like many people, I was curious about what the locals there were raising with the candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties. Turns out, a huge issue, often the basis for the first question to a candidate, was heroin addiction. The word "epidemic" was being used about the state's problem. I read that in Manchester, N.H., a small city of 110,000 people, there had been 50 heroin overdose deaths since Jan. 1.
Frontline: Chasing Heroin (PBS, 9 p.m.) is a searing two-hour look at what the heroin "epidemic" means. In the first few minutes we're told that overdoses from heroin and other painkillers kill 30,000 Americans a year. And the first person we meet is Kristina, a white, middle-class woman in Seattle who, at age 21, is seven years into her heroin addiction. She's been living on the streets for three years, Over the two hours we get a deftly painted picture of the situation. We hear the individual stories that are disturbing and heartbreaking. Kristina's is not the most shocking. The most astonishing is that of Cari, a suburban mom whose spiral downward was long and bizarre, and eventually led to her leading a double life as a heroin dealer and head of the local PTA.
You want to lay blame? It can be laid everywhere. Big Pharma gets a pounding. Especially over the introduction and marketing of OxyContin. We get the background on the decision by Purdue Pharma, in May, 2007, to pay more than $600-million (U.S.) in fines and other payments to settle a charge of misbranding OxyContin. But the program also allows space for other issues, including the notion that, in general, the United States has had a "puritanical" approach to pain. This, it is suggested, led to a furtive approach by those who truly needed relief from chronic pain. And that in turn led to a lack of research and discussion.
And then there are the Mexican drug cartels. We're told that, in essence, these guys are shrewd at spotting an opening in the market. They know when and where there has been a crackdown on prescription painkillers and they proceed to flood the market with cheap heroin. Their customers are middle-class and white. They know how to open up a market and sell to college kids.
The point is made clear – calling the situation an "epidemic" is not overstating it. A college student overdoses in the washroom of a McDonald's and the parents are both stunned and mystified. They're also mortified. Many don't want anyone to know how their child died. Only now, with the situation out of control, are politicians hearing from voters who want answers about what can be done. And many of those voters don't want to hear about "the war on drugs." They want to hear that the heroin problem is a public-health issue, not something that cops and SWAT teams deal with.
And yet we are shown evidence of the vicious cycle of hypocrisy. Near Seattle, where the problem is spreading from the big city to the suburbs and neighbouring towns, a local council wanted a methadone clinic installed. The backlash from many citizens was vocal and vicious.
This brings the story full circle to politicians and New Hampshire. In 2015, according to the state medical examiner, 414 people in the state died of drug overdoses. More than one a day. But, even as most of the politicians passing through the state were asked about the crisis, many had nothing to offer except platitudes. They are wary of solutions that might upset those whose eyes remain closed to the crisis.
Meanwhile, in my neighbourhood, nothing has changed. You get used to it. Only fresh eyes look around and realize, yeah, there are way too many people around here who are high.