The Slate post Here Are the Charts Showing Vermont's "Full-Blown Heroin Crisis" illustrates the problem with using quotation marks in headlines. Instead of seeing the marks and thinking, "that's a direct quote from Shumlin," I thought, "this post is going to try to refute Shumlin's focus on VT's drug problem using some visual analytics." Sadly, no, we really just have a serious problem with heroin in VT.
Part of the miscommunication is my own cynical generation's continuing love affair with sarcasm, but part of it is also a failure on the part of the headline writer to understand that you can't use direct quotations in a vacuum. I already knew about Shumlin's comments, but didn't recognize "full-blown heroin crisis" as a direct quote from his speech. Better to leave off the quotes entirely.
My wild guess, based on the skyrocketing rate of abuse in the 25-34 crowd, is that the people who are most at risk are those coming out of college and not finding jobs in VT.
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