Vermonters and others are upset about a picture that Rolling Stone magazine is using with a story about heroin addiction and abuse in Vermont. The image shows a man in a red flannel shirt sitting on a stump in the snowy woods shooting up.
It accompanies an eight-page article that takes a long hard look at the story of a woman addicted to heroin who is now in recovery. The story includes interviews with Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (who made national headlines in January when he made Vermont's heroin problem the focal point of his state of the union address), prosecutor T.J. Donovan, Matthew Birmingham of the Vermont Drug Task Force and others.
But the story is not what is being talked about. It is only the picture. Let's not overlook, in the outrage of the picture, the very real and terrible and tragic problem of heroin addiction in Vermont. That Rolling Stone magazine would do something provocative and shocking should come as no shock to anyone. That is the wellspring of the magazine's political capital.
And the image is shocking and provocative but also really, really painful to look at it. It's painful that a tiny, beautiful, progressive state known for maple syrup, green mountains, skiing, left-leaning politics and local food is increasingly known for its terrible heroin problem.
No one likes to see the iconography of their state turned into a horrific picture of a healthy man on a stump in a red flannel shirt shooting up. "State of Vermont - Pure Heroin" reads the wording on the picture, a bastardization of the "Pure Vermont Maple Syrup" wording that graces the state's sweetest product.
Vermont's sugarmakers don't deserve to be profaned as they were by this picture, but neither Vermont's young adults nor any of us deserve to have our lives profaned by this heroin epidemic. Because, ultimately, heroin addiction reaches into all of our lives whether it is via increased crime, social costs, family members, friends, increased costs to try to help addicts and myriad other ways.
Vermont is not alone in rural states facing terrible heroin, methamphetamine and opiate abuse problems. But the terrible problem is what makes that picture so awful. Vermont is a beautiful state with a really ugly and awful problem – and that is painful.
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