You Better Not Mess With Major Tom

David Bowie died this week.

The Goddess and I were binge-watching "The Man in the High Castle" (highly recommended) late Sunday night/Monday morning, when the item came across my news feed. I thought it was a hoax initially, because I hadn't heard he was sick. Turns out no one had.

I've blogged about it elsewhere at length, so I won't labor the point, but I am a big Bowie fan. His music was the very first I remember hearing.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that he in one of the main reasons I chose music as a career.

So we've listened to a lot of Bowie this week, which in itself isn't that unusual. "Kooks," from Hunky Dory, is the first track on the playlist my sons fall asleep to most nights. I find myself plunking out various songs while sitting at the piano, reflecting on the times I've had with them.

There was a shooting in the neighborhood a couple nights ago, too. Drug-related. The fourth murder in my neighborhood in the last three weeks, all tied to heroin.

I guess I live in the hood. I've never really thought of it that way, and it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. Then again, I stood on my porch last night and watched a car stopping and starting down the street, looking for the right house, before stopping at the corner and dropping a package to a waiting neighbor. I mean, I don't know that it was drugs, but it probably wasn't candy bars.

Heroin and opioid pills are a big thing here in my home state. There has even been a documentary made about the Goddess' small rural county and all the pill usage up those hollows.

Our state legislature and local law enforcement seem mostly useless in combating this. The legislature is in town right now and the only thing they've proposed is drug testing welfare recipients. This, in spite of the fact that the practice does nothing to curb usage and would cost millions of dollars.

The president came to our small city a couple months back to address the issue. More people die from drug overdoses than car crashes every year, and our little state leads the nation. That's pretty depressing.

Like most problems, this one is pretty complex, and I honestly think our public leaders just don't have the energy to address it. After all, it's a moral issue, right? I mean, if these people were just strong enough, the logic goes, they wouldn't have started down this path.

I wouldn't dismiss the issue of personal responsibility, but I think it's much more complex than that. Here are just a few of the issues attending the larger one:

• Many addicts become users through legal prescriptions for pain, sometimes work injuries, like throwing out your back in the mine. Doctors who liberally prescribe the meds and then do not monitor patient usage are helping fuel the problem of addiction. Once they are prescribed no more, they make the jump to pills gotten illegally, or heroin. 
• The problem of "pill mills" in the region is serious — doctors or clinics where one can get easily get meds that are not medically necessary. There have been a few prosecutions on this front, but it's not hard to find one if you ask around.
• Too many "important" people make money from drug abuse. Our own state attorney general has a wife with a lobbyist for drug companies do have flooded our state with pills. It is unsurprising that he has refused to take on these same companies.
• Law enforcement is unduly focused on weed. Despite all the talk about marijuana being a "gateway drug," there is little evidence to support that (correlation is not causation). I honestly just think it's easier for the police to go after stoner weed dealers than gangsters with real weapons. They can pretend they are tough on drugs while essentially doing nothing.
• The state has no real economic opportunity. Our state government focuses nearly exclusively on the fossil fuel industry, which employs only a handful of people in the state. Combine this with an education system like the one in our area, and kids leave school believing they have no real opportunities. And they are right. Hustling ain't easy, but if you're young and poor, it seems like a viable option.

So I've been thinking about all this, along with the death of David Bowie.

Bowie was a junkie for a period. ("Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie," has been playing in my head all week." I think Bowie was more of a cocaine user, though I've heard it said he used heroin, too.) The thing is, if you are rich, you can just take some time off, go find yourself, get medical help, sign up for 17 weeks of rehab, and be hailed as a hero on the other side.

If you're just some poor schmuck, everyone says, "They chose to do that to themselves," and regard you as a criminal.

I don't understand this response. My ex had a cousin who died of an overdose in a Bojangle's parking lot with a toddler and a baby in the back of her car. A young married couple across town overdosed together last year, leaving a baby to be raised by family. These aren't people using drugs "recreationally." These are people in real pain who need help.

I worry about my kids. I worry about the things they will see growing up here. I worry about the kind of place it is becoming.

Those four people shot dead during the last three weeks were all dealers or users. Not my problem, right? Let them kill each other, right?

I'm glad Bowie lived to see 69. I can name a dozen others whose artistic output was cut dramatically short because they didn't beat their demons. Bird is the first one that comes to mind, dead at 34. And if you are a musician, you probably know a few junkies. It makes you wonder about all that we've lost as a culture through poison.

Neighborhoods like mine are easy for politicians to ignore. Most of my neighbors won't vote. They've got no money to spend on elections. It's an incredibly cynical approach to government.

But their lives matter and the lives of their children matter. And I'm getting tired of our leaders pretending they don't.