CAPE COD RIGHT NOW: Life saved with Narcan in the midst of a flourishing heroin epidemic… and dying economy… are we doomed or is there hope?
HYANNIS – Police and rescue rushed to the residence of an unresponsive overdose patient last evening.
Moments later, at about 10:25pm, a patrolman announced Narcan had been administered and the patient had a pulse.
There was life!
Hyannis Rescue workers secured the patient on a stretcher and loaded him into an ambulance.
The male was approximately in his early to mid-twenties. Thanks to the Narcan, he appeared cognizant of his surroundings, at one point staring directly into my camera. (It was the best picture I’ve taken in a very long time… and one you’ll never see…)
The Narcan did its job. A life had been saved. A young man now had a second chance.
But will he use his second chance to rally and turn his life around?
Hyannis News has seen it go either way. Some survive, while others either find themselves imprisoned… or else dead.
It’s a complicated issue, one worthy of our energy and best resources.
But is the issue simply heroin addiction? Or is it something much deeper?
Now that all political races are said and done, HN looks forward to reporting on positive leadership addressing the very real issues facing our families and children.
(HINT: “Climate change,” and other peripheral interests, are not our most pressing concerns at this point in our history. So let’s get real.)
Everyone reading this has likely known someone who has overdosed on heroin or pills. We all want the epidemic to end and go away. But how will that ever happen?
Some are attacking the heroin epidemic at the street level, while others are considering its underlying causes. By addressing the underlying causes, the fertile soil for addiction, our region will enjoy less crime, along with more health and prosperity.
(Ignore it and our “tourism brand,” business interests, and investments will predictably continue to reflect inevitable and catastrophic diminishing returns. Nobody will ever be completely insulated or exempt from this problematic reality… and it will continue to impact all of us in ways we cannot foresee or imagine.)
Much of the solution will involve local government moving aside in order to facilitate the influx of private enterprises wanting to profit from our untapped work force.
For example, not long ago in the Maritimes of Canada, many cities needed to attract healthy and productive young families to an otherwise dying economy. Some small cities made ‘doing business’ more attractive to internet/technology related businesses. Businesses such as call centers which serviced anything from cell phone companies to processing health insurance claims were drawn in from overseas. For example, in the city of Moncton, New Brunswick, these centers provide a large number of decent entry level jobs that pay a liveable wage. Jobs which help young families thrive. Click here to learn more about Moncton and it’s presentation to prospective enterprises (Moncton is way ahead of us, but in resources, aside from their railways, we are very similar…)
Just one 24-hour call center typically employs between 500 to 1000 souls.
The declining fishing villages now had honest employment opportunities. Which helped many turn away from booze and daily drug use.
How many times have you called for assistance with some product you own, only to find frustration while speaking to a detached individual with emerging English skills in some obscure and far off land? The reality is the customer service portion of what you spend is not going to the people in your community. It’s going way overseas and you will never see the secondary benefits of your spending…
(…and to add insult to injury, detached overseas customer service almost invariably sucks.)
The key is to make it easier for those jobs to return to our area.
And why would entry-level job rich enterprises choose to move to Hyannis? Because we have an untapped entry-level workforce. And, most importantly, because we (hopefully) see the value of making it real easy for those businesses to relocate and thrive, realizing of course that getting more of the workforce productive, healthy, and paying taxes again will far exceed the cost of whatever breaks and incentives we give these prospective job rich enterprises…
There are likely numerous other productive ideas out there that will help improve our region. But it’s time for leaders in both the public and private sectors to provide room for those ideas to flourish. It’s time to encourage discourse that goes beyond the limited tourism model.
Don’t get me wrong. When I say encourage, I am most definitely not talking about socialism or government handouts. Ultimately, it will be up to private enterprise to provide and make improvements. Government’s role will be to facilitate those endeavors and then get the [bleep] out of the way.
We have a workforce that right now is sitting on its ass taking drugs. Wave some honest livable wages and careers in front of potential ‘ass-sitters’ and you will see improvements.
In the call center example, people are not likely to become rich. But they are be able to feed themselves and survive on just one job. They have benefits and paid vacation time. They have retirement plans and sick time. They have livable wages. This is in stark contrast to our existing few jobs at the local shopping centers… or the proposed seasonal “pirate museums” that have been bandied about during discourses about Cape Cod economics…
Seasonal “tourism” jobs are well and good, but they only tend to employ a relatively small percentage of our workforce. Seasonal tourism jobs should be for those who typically need seasonal work. The truth is most people in ‘HyTown’ and Greater Hyannis need year-round careers.
It’s time for our leaders to go big! Start talking about attracting businesses that will employ young families. (The thought of developing young thriving tax payers might even be something that appeals to those in government bureaucracies… Because ultimately, handouts and a dormant drug addled workforce won’t cut it.)
So, will attracting a more job rich economy, one quite possibly the opposite of Patti Page’s vision of “Old Cape Cod,” help reduce our local heroin epidemic?
Yes.
And it certainly will look better than what we are seeing now.
Those hellbent on sticking with the narrow minded limited ‘tourism model’ will be facilitating our eventual descent into growing high crime ghettos, like the ones you see surrounding other declining tourist “hotspots.” There is no reason why we cannot have a tourist industry thriving alongside other workforce driven industries. And if the public sector continues to grow while the private sector continues to decline, there will eventually be no difference between us and any other third world hellhole.
I’ve lived in third world hellholes and this place is starting to remind me of parts of Southeast Asia… or Mexico… the only difference is that those places have occasionally shown historical moments of economic promise and brilliance.
What has Cape Cod shown lately? Aside from more spouting miniature golf course whales, talks about seasonal museum jobs, and other job poor enterprises catering to beach goers and tourists. We need more than that.
The Cape Cod dream is dead when members of your family are dying from smack.
Every night, while driving through Hyannis neighborhoods, it’s easy to miss the untapped potential between the illuminated blue squad cars and red rescue vehicles. But the potential is there. Cities similar to Hyannis have made changes and turned themselves around as the right leaders came forward. And if “wealth” and “profits” are the driving forces behind those leaders, then so be it. Those are not bad words in an American society.
The ass-sitter culture needs something better to do. They know it and you know it. And private industry is the only thing that will meet their needs.
The potential is there.
Meanwhile, HN will continue to report on the valiant and noble efforts of first responders, and others, desperately placing band-aides on the opiate abuse symptoms of a suffering depressed township frantically attempting to anesthetize itself.
We now have seen Hyannis at its worst; we fondly remember it at its best; an informed and focused community is empowered to decide which direction it wants to take from this point forward.
Business leaders and entry level careers welcomed…
Government handout industries, although we have unfortunately needed you during this time of poor planning and leadership, I would love to see you all laid off someday… (with most of you eventually switching over to the private sector… no hard feelings.) … because at the rate we’re going, Hyannis is becoming one giant outpatient ward.
11/8/2014
Robert Bastille,
P.S. – Today's HyTown Vignette is brought to you by Sysyphe... [Play it and meditate on stretching your brain...]
