Law Enforcement in Vermont Has Cracked Down on Heroin. How Did That Work Out?
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Last December, in Northfield, Vermont, three people poured gasoline over a young couple and lit them on fire in an attempt to obtain crack cocaine.
Twenty-two-year-old Brittany Burt died and her boyfriend Efren Serrano, 26, was treated for severe burns at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He survived, but his face was burnt beyond recognition.
Serrano told medical personnel that the people broke into his apartment before pouring the gasoline on him and Burt, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). A neighbor told state police investigators that he heard screaming from Serrano’s apartment. That neighbor opened the door to see Serrano on fire, and called 911.
State Police arrested three Vermonters: 45-year-old Tammy Wilder, 33-year-old Jonathan Zampieri and 32-year-old Howard Hoisington. A confidential source, according to the ATF affidavit, told investigators that the three “went to that house last night to rob them,” and that they were planning to steal drugs. Court documents stated that Wilder, Zampieri and Hoisington were looking for crack cocaine.
The day after Christmas, 28-year-old Brooklyn resident Obafemi Adedapo was shot several times on a crowded street in Burlington, Vermont. He was carrying crack cocaine. Police say Adedapo is known by the New York Police Department as a member of the Cashford Crips, a gang based in Brooklyn, and that he most likely was a crack dealer.
He and other law enforcement were puzzled that media weren’t paying much attention to crack cocaine. But since January 2014, Governor Peter Shumlin has been focusing heavily on opioid problems. He famously designated his entire 2014 state-of-the-state address to the issue, which he said was gripping Vermont.
Since then, treatment, law enforcement and media have been concentrating on heroin. At the time, Vermont had the highest rate of heroin use per capita. According to Vermont State Police, heroin-related problems have only increased since Shumlin’s speech.
John Merrigan of Vermont State Police’s Narcotics Investigation Unit says that he began to notice crack making a huge comeback in the summer of 2015. (This is difficult to confirm objectively because crack doesn’t often lead to overdose, so measures such as calls to poison control aren’t reliable).
But here’s how crackdowns on any given drug can actually make drug-related problems worse.
“There’s a well described and common phenomenon called the ‘balloon effect,’ where enforcement in one area doesn’t get rid of a problem, it simply simply moves it elsewhere,” says Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst for Transform. “It’s a characteristic of drug enforcement across the world. The displacement can be geographical, or it can be between drugs. What history shows is that demand for drugs, and the incentives this creates for criminal profiteers it creates can’t be eradicated with enforcement. The market just mutates and finds a new equilibrium. At best enforcement is futile, but more often it actually makes things worse.”
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