I need your help. As a CEU Provider and Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor, I tend to see a lot of the same issues emerge: Family toxicity, trauma, self-medication, and socio-economic circumstances (SECs). However, what isn’t talked about, is how our larger community plays a role in developing an addiction. To be specific, when people talk with me either about their own or their loved one’s addiction, they rarely talk about the two “taboo” subjects: Politics and Religion. The thing is, however, that both contribute to the more common issues. It’s just that people often don’t recognize them as contributors.

They are though. For example, I was recently discussing the growing Fentanyl problem within a local junior high school in Santa Fe and the person with whom I was talking started crying about how much she hates drugs and wishes her kids didn’t have to attend that particular school. But, she said, she couldn’t afford to send them to a private school and she was working two (2) gigs just to get by. While poverty and social circles are known SECs that contribute to drug abuse and addiction, what no one really talks about with me is how they voted in the last local election. That may seem random, but to me, it isn’t.

Santa Fe tends to have low voter turnout in local elections, yet there appears to be a lot of anger directed at our local elected officials. I get it – we don’t really have industry here, other than Tourism and Government. Also, Santa Fe’s elected officials have demonstrated a history of aligning with their own ends and not really those ends that affect our community (as an example, Former Mayor Gonzales attempted to use his office to further his political career. He rarely sold Santa Fe on his National TV appearances – he mostly sold his own story). So the anger and subsequent apathy distances the average Santa Fean from our political process. The problem, though, is that our elected officials do create policy that impacts the community and when we don’t vote, we allow someone else to dictate those policies.

I asked the woman with whom I spoke how she voted in the last local election. The question immediately dammed up her tears and she looked confused. Through her confusion and suddenly stopped sobs she said, “I didn’t.”

So, here was a woman who hates her SECs that keep her from being the parent she desperately wants to be, but doesn’t vote. She is way under-employed and under-educated (high school diploma) yet doesn’t participate in our political process. If she did, perhaps she could use her vote towards someone who understands her situation and will empathize and attempt to develop an actual economic policy that will allow her to only work one job. Or, maybe she could use her vote on someone who understands that they are community servants, first and foremost, and won’t look to build their political career off of our vote.

Here’s where your help comes in: Fentanyl is a very powerful opiate that leads to accidental overdose. Scummy drub dealers and selling them as Percosets in order to speed up the addiction process. Our kids are dying because of this and we need to stop it. What I’m hoping to get is some ideas I can present about the relationship between our local government and our growing opiate problem (especially on the South Side). ANYTHING you offer will help me develop a workshop through which we could all dialogue about how to improve our beloved Santa Fe.

So, please help me – we need to engage in our City;s development. If we don’t, the disconnect and divide that exists between our local elected officials and the community will only get worse and in worsening, our kids will succumb to the trauma of their SECs. (I’ll discuss Religion in another post).