When Dr. Ashbel Parmlee Grinnell conducted a study of Vermonters' opiate usage, he couldn't believe the results. According to Grinnell's statewide survey of physicians, druggists, store owners and medical wholesalers, the state's population was consuming 3.3 million doses of opiates per month. The University of Vermont physician, professor and dean was so surprised by the results that, initially, he assumed the respondents had misunderstood his query and reported their annual sales figures. But the numbers weren't overstated. Grinnell eventually concluded that the consumption of opiate-based medicines was likely underreported by a factor of five, because many Vermont doctors and pharmacists, suspicious of his motivations, didn't respond to the survey. As the Burlington physician later asserted in a report titled "Use and Abuse of Drugs in Vermont," the Green Mountain State was in the grips of a public-health crisis aided and abetted by the state's medical and pharmaceutical industries. The year of that grim warning? 1900. And Grinnell was only one of several Vermont doctors to sound the alarm in that era, according to Shrewsbury author Gary Shattuck. His article "Opium Eating in Vermont: 'A Crying Evil of the Day,'" published in Vermont History Journal in 2015, describes the widespread availability and consumption of medicines containing opium, morphine, laudanum, alcohol and cocaine in 19th- and early-20th-century Vermont. In 2017, Shattuck, a former federal prosecutor, assistant Vermont attorney general and retired state police commander, published Green Mountain Opium Eaters: A History of Early Addiction in Vermont. Much of that book's narrative could soon inform exhibits and programming at an unusual history museum proposed for Enosburg Falls — one devoted entirely to Vermont's centuries-old struggle with substance abuse. By any measure, the problem continues to this day. In 2015, more than 601,500 prescriptions were issued for opioid pain medications statewide — nearly one for every Vermonter, according to data from the state Department of Health. Abuse of opioids that year resulted in 1,375 emergency-response calls for drug overdoses, 8,600 people seeking opioid-dependency treatment and 76 accidental deaths. Will locals rally behind a museum devoted to Vermont's history of drug abuse? As of press time, few Enosburg Falls residents seemed aware of the project, including several town leaders contacted for this story. The opiate museum is the brainchild of business partners Tim Camisa and Mike Rooney. They own the so-called Spavin Cure Building, a mostly vacant structure on North Main Street in…
When Dr. Ashbel Parmlee Grinnell conducted a study of Vermonters' opiate usage, he couldn't believe the results. According to Grinnell's statewide survey of physicians, druggists, store owners and medical wholesalers, the state's population was consuming 3.3 million doses of opiates per month. The University of Vermont physician, professor and dean was so surprised by the results that, initially, he assumed the respondents had misunderstood his query and reported their annual sales figures. But the numbers weren't overstated. Grinnell eventually concluded that the consumption of opiate-based medicines was likely underreported by a factor of five, because many Vermont doctors and pharmacists, suspicious of his motivations, didn't respond to the survey. As the Burlington physician later asserted in a report titled "Use and Abuse of Drugs in Vermont," the Green Mountain State was in the grips of a public-health crisis aided and abetted by the state's medical and pharmaceutical industries. The year of that grim warning? 1900. And Grinnell was only one of several Vermont doctors to sound the alarm in that era, according to Shrewsbury author Gary Shattuck. His article "Opium Eating in Vermont: 'A Crying Evil of the Day,'" published in Vermont History Journal in 2015, describes the widespread availability and consumption of medicines containing opium, morphine, laudanum, alcohol and cocaine in 19th- and early-20th-century Vermont. In 2017, Shattuck, a former federal prosecutor, assistant Vermont attorney general and retired state police commander, published Green Mountain Opium Eaters: A History of Early Addiction in Vermont. Much of that book's narrative could soon inform exhibits and programming at an unusual history museum proposed for Enosburg Falls — one devoted entirely to Vermont's centuries-old struggle with substance abuse. By any measure, the problem continues to this day. In 2015, more than 601,500 prescriptions were issued for opioid pain medications statewide — nearly one for every Vermonter, according to data from the state Department of Health. Abuse of opioids that year resulted in 1,375 emergency-response calls for drug overdoses, 8,600 people seeking opioid-dependency treatment and 76 accidental deaths. Will locals rally behind a museum devoted to Vermont's history of drug abuse? As of press time, few Enosburg Falls residents seemed aware of the project, including several town leaders contacted for this story. The opiate museum is the brainchild of business partners Tim Camisa and Mike Rooney. They own the so-called Spavin Cure Building, a mostly vacant structure on North Main Street in…