The Heroin Pipeline That Linked New York to Vermont
The opening scene is heartbreaking.
An 18-month-old girl is crawling on her sleeping father, the kind of silly game that any parent who has ever tried to get five minutes of rest can relate to. But he doesn't wake up. He has overdosed on heroin.
As my colleague Benjamin Weiser reports, that ending has become familiar to many families, too.
For the past several years, Ben has been reporting on a heroin network that stretched from the Bronx to Vermont for a 4,750-word project with the headline 'How a Single Overdose Unraveled an Empire of Heroin.'
The story begins in Rutland, Vt., with the death of David Blanchard III, 28, who overdosed in a motel room, with his girlfriend and their young daughter nearby. The article describes how a particular type of heroin, sold under the brand name 'Flow,' ensnared users, dealers, prosecutors and bystanders in a tangled weave of destruction across hundreds of miles.
Fentanyl has taken the spotlight in the war on drugs, but the article shows how heroin fueled a crisis in Vermont just a few years ago. In 2012, Blanchard's heroin overdose was one of 50 opioid-related deaths in Vermont, Ben reports. By 2016, overdose deaths had doubled, to 106, and five years later, they had doubled again.
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