Wonderful and current reference information on the epidemic
NH1 News Investigates: Taking back NH from the drug crisis
Lawrence and Holyoke Ma is where 90% of the heroin comes from in the Surrounding Hinsdale area.
American politicians often campaign
with promises to send troops to the Mexican border.
Donald Trump has, infamously, called
for building “a great wall” and making Mexico pay for it.
But now Jeanie Forrester, a New
Hampshire state senator and gubernatorial candidate, has a different kind of
idea: troops to protect the Granite State from drug dealers from Massachusetts.
Aiming to fight the scourge of
opioid abuse and staunch the flow of heroin, Forrester said she would consider
deploying the New Hampshire National Guard to patrol the state’s southern
border with Massachusetts, according to the
Concord Monitor newspaper.
Mike Dennehy, a senior strategist
for the campaign, told the Globe Forrester wasn’t available to chat Friday. He
said her original idea was to deploy the New Hampshire Guard, with other states
and federal approval, to the Texas-Mexico border.
But he said Forrester wouldn’t
hesitate to use the National Guard to support law enforcement in their
interdiction efforts with drugs coming in from other states.
Jeanie Forrester, a New Hampshire
state senator and gubernatorial candidate.
“The bottom line is that Jeanie
takes this issue very seriously and is thinking outside the box,” he said. “The
same old politicians coming up with failed ideas that
Yep, same old response from politicians for a unprecedented crisis. NH is the hot bet of heroin nationwide. Did I hear it right, if the NH rate was the same nation wide we would have a death rate of 100,000 a year.
aren’t working won’t cut
it, especially in Manchester where they are overwhelmed. The drug issue in New
Hampshire is a crisis and needs to be treated like a crisis. And she will be
the governor who begins the rollback and end to our present drug crisis.”
But one of Forrester’s top opponents
for the GOP nomination for governor brushed aside the idea of sending troops to
the border with Massachusetts.
“I don’t think that’s a well
thought-out plan,” said Ted Gatsas, the mayor of Manchester, the state’s
biggest city. “Putting National Guardsmen on the border — are you going to stop
every car coming from Massachusetts? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Gatsas said he’s tough on drug
dealers, proposing increasing penalties. But he also supports other approaches,
such as instituting a seven-day initial prescription limit on opioids, similar
to a law passed this year in Massachusetts.
So what does Massachusetts Governor
Charlie Baker think of the idea of a neighboring state’s chief executive
deploying troops to the common border to protect the Granite State from
opioids?
Baker spokesman Brendan C. Moss wouldn’t
say. But in a statement Moss noted that Baker recently led a group of almost 50
governors in signing a compact about fighting opioid addiction, “calling for a
coordinated approach between states to combat the opioid epidemic, including
collaboration with law enforcement to end opioid trafficking.”
A spirited campaign for governor is
underway in New Hampshire, which elects its chief executive every two years.
Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, is running for US Senate so the
gubernatorial race is for an open seat and has drawn several Republican and
Democratic candidates.
The primary is Sept. 13.
Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com. Follow him on
Twitter @jm_bos and subscribe to
his weekday e-mail update on politics at bostonglobe.com/politicalhappyhour
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