It is very easy to point a finger at Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for the alarming rate of heroin over-doses in his state in part due to his refusal to accept federal funding for the health care of the most needy under President Barrack Obama`s ACA brand new Health Care law. After all, Heroin addiction is a health-care case issue at its worst. His silence so far on this heath issue is compounded with his Mental Health facilities under fire for the alarming rate of suicides at that institution.
A parent`s worst nightmare since Scott Walker became governor - never before seen in this state of Wisconsin has become a real life sobering wake-up call. Their chilren, "who know not`what they do" - have joined the march to heroin addiction and ultimate over-dosed death in numbers that have eclipsed the numbers of Cocaine fatalities in Wisconsin for the past year, according to this report that has Wisconsin suburbanite folks in panic.
So far, at this writing, the Scott Walker Administration has stood by silent as the flames
of alarm within communities are begining to burn out of control as our young people - are being felled into their graves by this epidemic without health care safe guards. The interesting issue for the most part, victims are young whites and live throughout his political base in the suburbs, with perhaps the exception of one young lady in Milwaukee that I include in my first link above to this diary.
Olivia Marmolejo, 21, included among the top group died May 17 of an apparent drug overdose. Although investigators are still waiting for toxicology results, Lisa said she's certain heroin played a role in Olivia's death. Lisa is Olivia`s sister and lives in Milwaukee. This over-dose case in only one of what has come to be an alarming heroin epidemic among our young children in Wisconsin. It is not being treated as being the result of Melon-sized calves burros bringing heroin to our kids. These are cases of home-grown addicts and dealers at best without adult health care supervision in this state of Wisconsin.
It's not happening just in Milwaukee County. Waukesha recorded 13 fatal heroin overdoses last year, compared with five in 2011 and two in 2010. Racine and Washington counties had five heroin overdose deaths in 2012. Ozaukee County had one heroin overdose death in 2012 and 2011, and already this year, heroin is suspected in two deaths.
So what are parents to do? Well, since its our own kids, let change the laws. Help our addicted children with treatment. No more jail.
Help our children with Treatment? Any strung-out heroin user surely would laugh at the response coming from Scott Walker`s republican lap-dogs, one who has been victimized
by the heroin crazy wave.
Republican law-maker confronts his own daughter`s heroin addiction by introducting legislation in her name.
Republican lawmaker confronts daughter's heroin addiction, seeks new legislation
Cassie Nygren, in the Marinette County Jail in Marinette, shows a tattoo that reads: âBy His wounds I have been healed.â She has been in and out of treatment programs and jail because of her heroin addiction
This jail photo and text above of Cassie Nygren goes back to October 2013 taken while she sat in a Marinette County jail prior to the developments over Heroin use in the White-suburbs of Milwaukee that prompted this diary. What is known, she is one of the lucky survivors (barely), of the long reach of death by overdose to heroin. Her father`s support weighs heavy.
One could fairly say that many folks have used Heroin in Wisconsin and other drugs in the suburbs, but by the same token one has to also say that such an opiate abuse had never been plaguing white communities as we see today. One has to wonder what`s going on? Can this be the melon-sized calves from drug running white suburbanites that has Repblicans in Wisconsin in total panic?
Her case and others not so lucky, has brought Wisconsin legislators and specifically Republican law maker John Nygren, her father, to introduce what he calls the HOPE Agenda, for Heroin Opiate Prevention and Education. He also appears in videos for a Wisconsin Department of Justice heroin prevention campaign called The Fly Effect.
While witnessing this deadly Heroin epidemic swallow entire neighbhoods of young and old folks of color to their graves in Milwaukee in all the years I have lived in Wisconsin I wonder, and I am not alone asking "why panic now?". Black Milwaukee Journal Sentinal columnist James E. Causey wrote the following quote also.
Quote: "But when I hear of summits in the suburbs to focus on drug use and strategies to address a growing heroin problem, I`m taken aback. Where were these efforts when heroin was destroying Milwaukee`s inner city?"
In all fairness, Mr. James E. Causey`s question requires a stunningly true response. On the other hand, this epidemic killing young white drug users here in my own backyard is a sad and rude awakening. As a father myself, I can feel the pain of this law maker when he witnessed and read what his daughter said of her struggles to addiction to Heroin and other Opiates.
By no means is this a Republican or a Democrat`s nightmare alone. However, never before have I seen law makers face this Opiate killing machine requiring legislation after losing one of their own to this Heroin Terminator. This killing machine has sucked Wisconsin`s suburb white youth and is oozing into this metropolis Gotham-like-City of Milwaukee:
""I wanted to get very high" ," she said. "I remember cooking it in the spoon. And I remember sucking it into the syringe. Beyond that, I don't remember."
She overdosed. The people who were with her began to flee.
Her mother, who came home to shut the windows because of a late-afternoon storm, ran into a young man on the front sidewalk. He had been with Cassie. Amy Harris says she raced into the house, found her daughter passed out, called her ex-husband and then called 911.
John Nygren rushed to the scene. He saw his daughter on the bathroom floor, a needle in her arm and her face turning purple.
"I tried to clear her airway and help her breathe," he says.
More than four years have passed since the overdose.
Cassie Nygren has lived to tell her horror stories of Heroin addiction. For Parents and others of the not so lucky panic has settled in. What I have learned in this life what I write today I can safely assert, that Heroin addiction, no matter the enviornment it infests is akin to a run away train. It can`t be stopped. It is indeed a lethal poppy-field flower disguised to kill. Nevertheless, any legislation to combat all type of Opiates is welcomed -- I would assume.
Any law or rule enacted governing the fight of Heroin abuse will be too little too late for our young and old men and women who succumed to the viciousness of Heroin. It is an ongoing decease that no cure has yet to be found. Not even anti-drug abuse medications such as Narcan can stop or hold back to long reaching tentacles of a Heroin habit -- and ultimate overdosed death. A strung-out heroin user takes Narcan only to clean self up for the next high. A long standing saying, that: "once an addict, always an addict" has come home to roost in our back yards.
A real bad health issue needs medical care, now. Scott Walker refuses to implement Obama`s Medicaid for the most needy -- and who else is more needy today here in my state of Wisconsin?
Let us ask Laura Pulsifer and her husband, another Milwaukee suburbanites family what they think and how Heroin in their midsts have affected them.
Laura Pulsifer vividly remembers the night her son, Luke, told her he used heroin.
This is the senior portrait of Luke Pulsifer of Elm Grove,
who lost his life to a heroin overdose.
Pulsifer woke up at 3 a.m. March 12 and realized her 19-year-old son hadn't returned home from visiting a friend. She texted him. Minutes stretched by. She sent another text. Finally, she called him.
"I did something really stupid, so stupid," Luke said. He was crying.
He told her he was at the Greenfield Municipal Center.
When she picked him up, she saw the bandages on his arms.
"What is all of this?" she said.
"I'm so sorry, Mom," he said. "It was heroin."
It was the drug that would kill the Elm Grove teen three months later.
Heroin summits are being held in Waukesha and Ozaukee counties as I write this diary. Although planned separately, both aim to bring together parents, law enforcement, business leaders, treatment providers and others to develop a strategy to address what many describe as a growing epidemic.
Across the state, heroin and opiate abuse is plaguing communities of every size. Last year in Milwaukee County, there were more deaths tied to opiate overdoses than there were homicides.
In Milwaukee County, the majority of fatal drug overdoses in 2013 were caused by opiates, and 48 of the 180 drug overdose deaths — about 27% — were attributed to heroin. Those numbers are preliminary and will fluctuate because some 2013 death investigations are still pending.
As noted above a state committee recently sent three bills promoted by a lawmaker whose daughter is seen in a jail photo in this diary, a heroin addict, to the Assembly. These bills, I can safely assume, are the product of the panic mentioned in my diary`s title.
The Pulsifers, shocked that heroin was in their community, wanted others to know about it. After Luke's death, they reached out to Chris Guthrie, one of Luke's teachers from Brookfield East High School, to see how they could help the school create programming.
With their alarming questions, the rush to stop this menacing heroin monster was triggered and suburbanites have launched another war on drugs. One that I can safely say will also fail. I hope I am wrong though.
2 Heroin Summits set:
Heroin summits that will bring together parents, law enforcement, businesses, treatment providers and others will be held this month in Waukesha and Ozaukee counties:
What: Waukesha Heroin Summit, "It's Not My Kid, Or Is It?"
Who: Open to all parents and community members
When: 6:30-9 p.m. Jan. 22
Where: Sharon Lynne Wilson Center, 19805 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield. Registration is free at itsnotmykid.eventbrite.com
What: Ozaukee Heroin Summit
Who: Open to the public and youths ages 12-17, who are encouraged to attend with their parents
When: 7-9 p.m. Jan. 29
Where: Ozaukee County Pavilion, W67-N890 Washington Ave., Cedarburg
"For they know not, What they do"
Users can never be sure what they are going to get.
"If the old heroin of the '70s came back, that heroin was maybe 3% to 5% purity. It was injected. It had the stigma of being a back-alley, inner-city drug. But now with high-purity heroin, you can snort it," said David Spakowicz.
Snorting heroin has always been the favorite to some. But today, young addicts mix the deadly heroin with other drugs or booze. That is a dealy combination that results in instant over-doze.
Heroin is highly addictive because of its interaction with the brain. Mixing with other drugs or opiates and liquor has long been seen as a no-no among old drug users.
What ever the outcome of this new drug war being waged in Wisconsin by politicans and specificafly parents, nothing calls for less as hope for success, for the sake of our children.
By the way, in real life this epidemic involving heroin use by our children is not even close to the Television series these same politicans cheer we know as "Breaking Bad" where the villian is a cocaine manufactoring machine seen as a hero by some who watch this program.
It appears that cocaine is now seen in the rear view mirror for getting high, as Cassie Nygren just wanted to get real high. Unfortunately, other have gotten real low and deep -- in their graves.