If journalists went around trying to predict the future impact of their stories, then tiptoe away at the first sign of anything that might one day prove controversial or offensive, we’d never write anything and would be rightfully condemned. The point is this: If you have the story nailed with solid reporting, then run it.
That’s what I did.
Perhaps the question then really ought to be why all the people I’ve spoken to are wrong. I’ve spoken to drug counselors, Skid Row cops, homeless shelter managers and workers, E.R. docs, addicts and recovering addicts, on and on — people all across the country, all saying the same thing, recounting the same story. Why are they wrong?
They’re seeing the impact of this meth in eastern Tennessee, rural and urban Oregon and New Mexico and in many places in Kentucky; in Houston, rural Northern California, southern Virginia, Columbus, Boston, Phoenix, Louisville and Nashville. They’re seeing it in areas of very high-priced housing like Los Angeles and Portland and in areas where housing prices are low — Bernalillo, N.M., Clarksburg, W.Va., southern Indiana.
“We don’t see a guy who lost his job, lost his place and ended up on the street,” a homeless shelter director in Clarksburg wrote to me. “We see folks afflicted with methamphetamine. And housing costs are lower here than the rest of the country.”
Why should their analyses, opinions and comments not be taken seriously? These are people with profound personal and/or professional experience in the issues of drugs, mental illness and homelessness. I’m happy to catalog in later responses, if you wish, what they had to say.
I’d add that one reason I was able to see this story, break this story, is because of long years reporting on drugs and drug trafficking in the United States, combined with a knowledge of Mexico that came from 10 years and two books, living in that country as a freelance journalist.
So my reporting in “The Least of Us” adds the Mexico trafficking story, which is essential to the discussion of local homelessness, yet which few across America involved in that discussion — advocates, policymakers or even many journalists — really understand. But the last few years should make clear to anyone who may have had doubts that changes in the Mexican trafficking world have had monumental impacts here in the U.S. Fentanyl is one example. Meth is another.