| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| melody |
Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 08:16:15 AM
Newspaper headline this morning about a huge drug bust just down the street from our home. I drive by that little house every day to take DS to school. It's a little nondescript house, with a well kept yard and right next to a church which is then right across the street from a school...Not anything you would imagine a drug house would appear to look like. It's in a quiet neighborhood on a quiet street.
Although I wasn't surprised to hear about the bust,it did shake me because it was relatively close to us. I have always thought, albeit naively so, that our little community would be spared the influx of drugs, drug dealers and crack houses that seem to dominate so many cities and towns, at least for a while, but I was wrong. Times indeed are a changing in my little corner of the world.
Melody
Farmgirl #525 |
| 13 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Oggie |
Posted - Apr 02 2012 : 5:33:21 PM
I live very rural like you do Melody. I was born and raised in the Land of Hiawatha, not in the Northwoods though, and now I live in Northern Maine. We are 60 miles from the nearest stoplight, and 100 miles from the nearest highway, mall, airport, and yet we have a huge drug problem. Our town's population is only 2300 people and we are the County seat. The County has only about 32,000 people but the County is full of drugs, mostly bath salts, oxycodon, and meth. My DH runs our County jail so I am well aware of the under belly of our society here and I can tell you a few reasons why.
The first one is there are no jobs here so people have way to much time on their hands and no money to leave. The second reason is education. Many people grow up here and their parents only encourage them to become fisherman or lobstermen, just like they are. They don't encourage education. Maine's highest export are our educated children. Those with educations leave for good paying jobs and to get away from the drugs. But some of these folks have never left the State of Maine, possibly never leaving the County. When I say educated, I'm only talking high school grad. When my DD was in 1st grade we went to a school play and my DH told me who in her class he'd see in jail by the time they were out of high school and low and behold, he was right. We watched roughly the same 36 kids grow up together and you could tell by their parents who would make it or not. It's a great place to raise your children as long as you teach them right.
Our drugs come in from Canada, not the South, and we are no where near an interstate. But when you have high unemployment like most rural areas do, you will have high drug usage. It use to be alcohol, but now it's bath salts which has to be the worst! Bath salts make people completely insane and very dangerous. They are called that because they look like "bath salts", they really aren't.
People always think that because you live in the Country it is nice and safe but it's not. Most folks don't lock their homes & they leave their keys in the cars, and they should lock up! Because with drug use comes theft to pay for that drug use. My DH tells me to always lock everything no matter where we are, home, the grocery store, a friends, because you never know when someone may take your car or break into the house. I even lock the door on one side of my house if I'm outside in the garden on the other side of the house. But then living with my DH I may be over paranoid. We have had our lives threaten over the years.
Where we live we also have to deal with "people from away" who have come and purchased all of the ocean front land and built big expensive homes there and then leave them for half the year empty. They are ripe for thiefs. In fact one State Trooper told me that a "ring" of thiefs around here were women who cleaned these rich homes and then went back and stole stuff, not necessarily to sell, but to have in their own homes. What a surprise to learn that! Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against "people from away" as I am one myself but I don't leave my house vacant for 6 months, we live, work, and raised our family here. My DH is from here. These folks mainly retire to here.
Another misconception is city folk who come to the Country and think it's safe, and it's "wide open". They don't grasp that every inch of land is owned by someone and they are tresspassing. They also think we are all either really stupid like the druggies or just ignorant. And they don't grasp that we all know each other and so when there is someone "new" in town, we know it! Like I said earlier, my daughter started pre-school and graduated high school with roughly the same 36 kids! We know who the druggies are and we know who the strangers are.
The flip side of course is we also have a lot of highly intelligent, educated people who aren't druggies and overall it's a wonderful place to live and I'd never want to leave. It is a community and they help each other and watch out for each other. If someone needs help, we rally around for them. For me, the good out weighs the bad and I just couldn't imagine living in a city 50 feet from my neighbor, taking an hour to get to work in bumper to bumper traffic, and not knowing the people helping me at the store, gas station, hardware store, etc...
That's my two cents on the subject. I'll get off my soapbox now, lol!
Ginny
Farmgirl #2343
www.thedewhopinn.com
www.etsy.com/shop/cybertiques
"I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whomever I'm with."
"Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it." Both by Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart) in the Movie Harvey
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| FebruaryViolet |
Posted - Apr 02 2012 : 09:49:25 AM
Yeah, I figured it would pass--seemed like all reps were on board. I get it, I really do, but it's already a hassle to buy it, even at Target--there, I have to give my drivers license to the check out girl (not even the pharmacy) and it's for drugs WITHOUT pseudophedrine. They're limiting it to 3 a month or something. At this rate, I'll simply buy the gigantic package (like the methheads will) and get 2 months out it.
"Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile..."
The Only Living Boy in New York, Paul Simon |
| nubidane |
Posted - Apr 02 2012 : 09:36:40 AM
Jonni
I heard the radio spots for this; I was sure this would not go through. That is just plain ridiculous.
In OH, we just have to sign for it, & are allowed a certain amount per month.
Can you get it in OH?
(I'm assuming this is the pseudophedrine that is in the good Sudafed?) |
| FebruaryViolet |
Posted - Apr 02 2012 : 09:13:00 AM
In Kentucky, they just passed a law restricting the amount of allergy medicine I can buy OTC each month. What kills me most, is that I actually NEED this medicine, I'm not an addict, and I refuse to go to the Dr. to get a prescription with my very high deductible ($6k) that I have to pay out of pocket. It's frustrating to me (and this may sound callous, so I apologize in advance) that good people, law abiding people, are going to be completely inconvenienced by people who will, in all likeliehood, be in jail or dead of an overdose in the next 6 months. I feel for addicts, I do, but not when it makes my life more difficult!
"Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile..."
The Only Living Boy in New York, Paul Simon |
| Room To Grow |
Posted - Mar 30 2012 : 3:40:19 PM
7 yrs ago we were in Rantoul IL and this was so shocking to me that the farmers had to bolt down the fertilizer that they sprayed there crops with. People would hook up the whole thing and carry it off and then make meth out of it. I am so shocked what they are making this stuff with. No wonder the people that are doing this drug are looking they way the do. Not even heroin addicts that have been doing that drug for yrs dont look as bad as some that have only been doing meth for only 6 months. My husband was helping with an organization that helps people on meth and he saw and heard alot...
Deborah
we have moved to our farm...and love it |
| pennyhenny |
Posted - Mar 30 2012 : 10:58:16 AM
It really is so sad. Where I moved from I had a friend who was 87 years old and I would visit her 3 times a week to help her in her flower garden well the week before I moved the house directly behind her was busted for having a meth lab. My friend was so frightened even after the police assured her they had removed everything form the house. She told me she lived there 61 years and that house behind her had the best neighbors for well over 50 years and then this bust just shook her to her core.
Even the drug store are starting to keep OTC medicines locked up....so sad that we have to even deal with such people that could hurt is all!!!
hugs,
-missy-
Sisterhood Member#4003
Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower.
John Harrigan |
| natesgirl |
Posted - Mar 30 2012 : 10:32:18 AM
I live in a small town too. There was a major meth bust just 4 blocks from the police dept! I couldn't believe it! I'm thinkin of movin to a very rural area and then buyin every field that comes up for sale around us. Thus creatin my own little buffer, or commune, away from the rest of the world.
Farmgirl Sister #1438
God - Gardening - Family - Is anything else important? |
| ddmashayekhi |
Posted - Mar 30 2012 : 08:13:43 AM
I find it a very sad fact that the rural areas have been used for decades to transport and deal drugs. Then again that's how bootleg was transported during prohibition. There is hardly anyone around and very little police protection, which is why the dealers target the country side for this garbage. My oldest son is a policeman in a very poor and drug infested town. He said it is so sickening to see that he can't understand how anyone can get sucked into it.
Dawn in IL
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| rough start farmgirl |
Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 10:07:37 PM
I'm not sure it is all that new...I remember those kind of houses in the small town I grew up near in the 70s. Although, I agree everything has gotten worse. I mean, we didn't have meth back then.
Marianne |
| goneriding |
Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 8:20:37 PM
Very sad, Smiley.
In the largest town closest to me, meth is the big problem. Out where I live, 30 miles from town, not much is going on (as far as I know...). Out here, if you are doing something, someone is bound to see you and the whole neighborhood will come out in force. In town, it's sort of like a given that meth is there, it's made and that's that. People raise or grow medical marijuana but they keep to themselves. Meth is the bad stuff this area is known for, it seems like.
Yup, sad.
My website: http://antlersantiqueswindchimes.weebly.com
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| smiley |
Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 7:05:40 PM
It's sad isnt it? |
| FarmDream |
Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 2:21:58 PM
I've experienced some of that small town drug problem as well. It's already been 7 1/2 years since we moved from the small town with a population of 5,000. It was rampant since there was a highway nearby. We'd find cookware in our yard occasionally, I guess from the neighbors cooking drugs. We had people try peeking in our windows to see if we were home or they could break in. Even a local pharmacist was carted off to jail.
~FarmDream is Farmgirl Sister #3069
Live Today, Cherish Yesterday, Dream Tomorrow
http://naturaljulie.etsy.com
http://julie-rants.blogspot.com |
| FebruaryViolet |
Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 08:25:29 AM
They've been changing for the past 2 decades, Melody--lots of rural communities have suffered from crack and heroin addiction for the last 20 years, especially around the I-75 corridor. The drugs come up from Florida, are distributed in large cities and then permeate through to rural communities. Usually the cheapest most addictive forms of the drugs.
Around here, now, it's meth--there are counties that are completely overwhelmed with meth production. Gosh, about 12 years ago, there was an Amish community near Brown County that had huge caches of heroin and the younger men were dealing left and right.
"Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile..."
The Only Living Boy in New York, Paul Simon |
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