| Submit your comments on this article |
| Economy |
| America's poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs |
| 2015-11-17 |
| [The Guardian] Karen Jennings patted her heavily made up face, put on a sardonic smile and said she thought she looked good after all she'd been through. "I was an alcoholic first. I got drunk and fell in the creek and broke my back. Then I got hooked on the painkillers," the 59-year-old grandmother said. Over the years, Jennings' back healed but her addiction to powerful opioids remained. After the prescriptions dried up, she was drawn to the underground drug trade that defines eastern Kentucky today as coal, oil and timber once did. Jennings spoke with startling frankness about her part in a plague gripping the isolated, fading towns dotting this part of Appalachia. Frontier communities steeped in the myth of self-reliance are now blighted by addiction to opioids -- "hillbilly heroin" to those who use them. It's a dependency bound up with economic despair and financed in part by the same welfare system that is staving off economic collapse across much of eastern Kentucky. It's a crisis that crosses generations. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #8 Perhaps we should start sending the High School graduates to Yale and Harvard. Now that would be diversity. Oops, wrong flavor. |
| Posted by: Sgt. D.T. 2015-11-17 21:49 |
| #7 Obama outlawing coal is part of the problem but it's hard for me to feel too sorry for people who are content to sit around drinking and taking dope all day. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2015-11-17 16:07 |
| #6 Obama outlawing coal is the cause. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2015-11-17 14:22 |
| #5 |
| Posted by: regular joe 2015-11-17 09:43 |
| #4 I have read that domestic meth manufacturing is doing just fine in those almost abandoned places. Maybe some of these places are better off as ghost towns. I have a beautiful Windows 10 theme featuring Bodie, California. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2015-11-17 09:23 |
| #3 NAFTA at work. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2015-11-17 08:03 |
| #2 I've done a fair amount of work in coal-mining country in WV, Eastern, KY and southern Virginia. Contrary to say a Detroit, the poverty in these areas is long-standing. In Detroit, good neighborhoods often become blighted because of increasing poverty in these areas. Recently, I had occasion to visit relatives in northwest Ohio. Traveling through small towns, I was struck by the blight in many of these small towns. Industry has moved out. Manufacturing has gone to China or just ceased. Many of these small towns are dying whereas 50-60 years ago they were economically vigorous and self-sustaining. They supported most who lived in these towns. And yes, poor whites in this country far exceed the number of poor blacks. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2015-11-17 07:13 |
| #1 There are more poor whites than blacks in America. However, due to their race, they don't get the 'victim' card for the power game. Springer folk don't invoke sympathy for their self inflicted choices they make in life. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-11-17 05:11 |