Track marks

But the county is not insulated from the flow of heroin and other opiates that have made their way into the state, and crimes associated with the drugs are on the rise. Police, lawyers, treatment providers, and opiate users in and out of recovery are reporting that hard drugs are around, and more people are committing crimes in order to help fund their habits.

Opiate use and related crimes have received more attention in other parts of the state, and Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux said he is frustrated that state and federal resources for dealing with criminals and treating addiction go to bigger, more populated cities.

“My frustration, although I understand it, is we cannot put a sustained effort in this county on drug-related issues, but how can you make a case for Lamoille County when you have Rutland and Burlington going crazy,” Marcoux said last week. “We sort of get lost, here in Lamoille.”

Eric Breyette, of Hyde Park, recently celebrated his 11th month clean and sober, the same day he was in court for a status conference in a case he’s working through while trying to work on his sobriety. He agreed to tell his story to the Stowe Reporter, he said, for much the same reason he speaks to anyone about opiate abuse: “Trying to clean up the wreckage I’ve caused.”

As a former user with a couple of attempts at sobriety before this, Breyette has seen the flow of drugs into rural areas. He said the reason is simple economics.

“If everybody’s going to Burlington to sell the same thing, their sales go down. They can pick up their business and go anywhere, and as long as they can find a couple people to deal with, those people will do the selling,” Breyette said. “I have a son who’ll be 3 in January, and the thought of the county going the way it is, that’s the stuff my kid has to deal with? If it’s heroin now, what comes next?”

Marcoux spent years in the Drug Enforcement Agency and did a stint with the Stowe Police Department before that. With the DEA, he spent the late 1990s in Haiti, investigating drug trafficking and homicides, and then he came home to Hyde Park, where he was first elected sheriff in 2001.

“When I first got here, we had some major heroin dealers here in this county, and we decided we’d really deal with it,” Marcoux said. “We drove heroin underground and people started using prescription drugs, which had the same desired effect but were a lot easier to get. Now, the pendulum’s starting to swing back to heroin.”

Much of the heroin and pills coming to Lamoille County could be entering through Waterbury. Waterbury Village Police Chief Joby Feccia said the town is a veritable way-station in the rural drug trade, with major state highways — Routes 100 and 2 and Interstate 89 — running through town, and with the train coming north from New England cities.

Like Marcoux, Feccia is frustrated knowing there is a flow of drugs into the area that cannot be properly staunched with his department’s current staffing levels.

“I have no doubt that large quantities of drugs and cash are moving through Waterbury on a weekly, if not a daily basis,” Feccia said.

Drug-related crimes

Marcoux said the increased number of thefts and burglaries over the past few months could be chalked up to opiates, with users looking to score some cash or valuables to support their drug habits. He said they start by stealing loose change, than burglarizing unoccupied houses, then occupied ones.

Lamoille County State’s Attorney Joel Page said his office is prosecuting more illegal prescription drugs cases than heroin cases, particularly Suboxone, a synthetic opioid prescribed to patients trying to kick heroin and other opiates. The latter drug featured prominently in Vermont filmmaker Bess O’Brien’s documentary, “Hungry Heart,” about prescription drug addiction in St. Albans. The film has screened in more than 30 Vermont schools and towns.

Page said the increased amount of Suboxone has resulted in a kind of black market for the drug.

“People are carrying around their own personal drug store, where they can choose between the alcohol or the opiate or the marijuana and mix and match depending on what mood they’re in, what day it is,” he said.

Stowe Police Chief Donald Hull said many of the thefts reported to police this year were probably drug-related. He said drugs often come into theft investigations.

“I don’t know if it’s an up-tick, but it hasn’t declined,” Hull said of thefts in the area.

Help for addicts

Breyette volunteers at the North Central Vermont Recovery Center in Morrisville. He said he’s not doing it by court order, but rather because it makes him feel good. And he’s not alone. According to Stefani Capizzi, the center’s executive director, more than 1,000 people a month have signed in this year, compared to 300 a month when she started in early 2012.

The Morrisville center is one of 11 recovery centers that make up the hub part of the state’s “hub and spoke” system, with the state providing them with resources like counselors trained to help with opiate and prescription drug addiction. The regional centers then reach out to smaller communities. The Morrisville facility provides spaces for groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous to meet. They also help people find work and housing.

“Oftentimes people who have problems with drugs have problems with other aspects in their lives,” Capizzi said. “And it’s a pretty huge need.”

Two of the center’s most popular programs are GYST (Get Your Stuff Together), a mentoring group aimed at helping men roughly 17 to 24 years old; and “GYSTpync,” a similar group aimed at young women. Capizzi said GYST has been running for a year now and has blossomed into “a pretty amazing thing.”

Breyette has been involved with GYST from the beginning, Capizzi said, and now serves as a mentor. That support has been reciprocated. Breyette said more than 20 people from his circle of supporters — “my fellowship,” he calls them — showed up at another recent status conference in his case, a 2012 violation of an abuse-prevention order.

Said Breyette, “I would never have imagined back in the days of my drinking and using that I’d have that support from my community.”