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The next two pages feature a pull quote from a Montgomery County deputy sheriff. Then there’s another pull quote from Bruce Langos, a former Teradata executive and now director of the Montgomery County Criminal Intelligence Center. There are photos of grieving mothers and girlfriends and of people overdosing on sidewalks, outdoor decks and in living rooms.
The magazine goes on like that for 60 pages. The entire issue is devoted to the toll opioid addiction takes on communities.
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Time doesn’t ignore the toll of drugs in other cities. There are photos and stories about people — addicts, physicians, law enforcement and others — in Boston; San Francisco; Manchester, N.H.; Rio Arriba County, New Mexico; Huntington, W. Va.; and elsewhere.
But a cursory look through the issue shows that photographer James Nachtwey spent a good deal of time in and around Dayton. He appears to have gotten plenty of access to sheriff’s deputies in and around homes, kitchens, hotel rooms, on roadways and in jails.
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“In 2016 alone, nearly 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses — roughly as many as were lost in the entire Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined,” editors say in a note prefacing the issue. “The U.S. is the world’s richest country, and yet its life expectancy declined in both 2015 and 2016.”
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“I don’t think I met one user whom I would consider to be a bad person,” Nachtwey said in a postscript. “No one wants to be an addict.”
Recently, the National Council for Home Safety and Security ranked Clayton, in Montgomery County, as one of the safest cities in Ohio for 2018.
Clayton is ranked 24th of 166 Ohio cities. Dayton is at 160, the Dayton Daily News reported.
The National Council for Home Safety and Security identifies the safest cities by viewing the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Reports with the groups own own population data and internal research, according to the group’s website.
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