Frustrated residents say state’s focus on treatment has failed to stop supply of drugs devastating communities, where dealers are using short-term rentals as drug houses.
A growing number of Vermonters say they’ve had enough. Across social media platforms and in online petitions, residents are voicing frustration that the state’s decade-long emphasis on treating addiction over prosecuting dealers has turned Vermont into what they’re calling a “soft target” for out-of-state drug traffickers.
“Vermont families are being torn apart by out-of-state drug traffickers who see our state as easy money,” reads a Change.org petition circulating through Vermont Facebook groups. “Lives like Jefrey Cameron and Katelyn Grant have been stolen by this poison flooding our communities.”
The petition, which has gathered hundreds of signatures, lays out a stark case: Vermont’s courts are giving dealers “slaps on the wrist” while traffickers exploit vulnerable Vermonters through tactics like “cuckooing”—taking over people’s homes and cars using crack cocaine as payment. The petition also points to Airbnbs being used as temporary drug houses in Vermont neighborhoods, creating a sense that the drug trade has become brazen and visible in ways that didn’t exist even a few years ago.
“Anyone else think it’s time Vermont stopped being a soft target?” the petition organizer wrote. “What would you want if this was happening in your neighborhood?”
The Burlington Safety Letter and Visible Frustration
The sentiment isn’t limited to individual petitions. The “Burlington Safety Letter,” a document that first appeared in late 2023 and has gained renewed support through 2025, represents what its signers call a coalition of residents, business owners, and community members who say they’re living with “brazen disregard for the law” in Vermont’s largest city.
The letter’s demands are comprehensive and reflect deep frustration with what signers see as a broken system. They want revised retail theft and car theft laws to address repeat offenders who face minimal consequences. They want mandatory minimum sentences for mid-to-high-level drug traffickers. They want more police officers and more spending on stopping drugs from entering Vermont, not just treating people after they’re already addicted. They want expanded treatment courts that combine accountability with recovery. And they want the city to have power to take action against landlords who allow trafficking on their properties.
“The petition argues that harm reduction alone is insufficient to address the crisis because it does not address the supply side of the equation,” the letter states, pointing specifically to the influx of high-potency synthetic drugs like fentanyl, methamphetamines, and xylazine.
The letter raises a question increasingly heard across Vermont: Why is the state spending millions on prevention and treatment when traffickers keep flooding communities with drugs that undermine recovery?
What Vermonters Are Seeing on the Ground
The frustration stems from what residents describe as a disconnect between official statistics and what they witness daily. Petition signers point to discarded syringes in parks, open-air drug use, persistent shoplifting by people clearly funding drug habits, and a sense that the same individuals cycle through arrest and release with no meaningful consequences.
The petition specifically mentions Vermont’s car theft law, currently prosecuted as “operating without owner’s consent,” which many residents view as too lenient for what they see as professionals stealing vehicles to support trafficking operations. The retail theft piece is equally personal for business owners who’ve watched organized theft rings walk out with merchandise repeatedly, knowing there’s little meaningful deterrent.
The social media posts driving the petition movement also raise concerns about funding and political influence. “We also need to look at who’s funding our lawmakers and whether dark money is keeping our drug laws weak,” the petition organizer wrote, suggesting some Vermonters believe there are forces actively working to maintain the status quo.
The Policy Response: House Bill 780
State legislators have heard the message. On January 27, 2026, a group of primarily Republican representatives—along with Democratic Representative Bram Kleppner—introduced Vermont House Bill 780, titled “An act relating to establishing mandatory minimum sentences of incarceration for retail theft and drug trafficking.”
The bill represents a direct legislative response to the themes circulating in the petitions. For years, Vermont has moved away from mandatory minimum sentences, favoring judicial discretion and rehabilitative approaches. H.780 would reverse that trend for the specific offenses that residents say are destroying their quality of life: professionalized retail theft and drug trafficking.
The petition movement has been clear that H.780 is “a start, but it doesn’t go far enough.” Signers want maximum penalties for traffickers, “especially when their poison kills or seriously hurts someone.” They want enforcement that makes Vermont a high-risk environment for dealers, not the low-consequence jurisdiction they believe it’s become.
The bill is currently in the House Judiciary Committee, where it will face scrutiny from lawmakers who must weigh public demands for safety against Vermont’s decade-long commitment to treating addiction as a health issue rather than primarily a criminal justice problem.
What Vermont Actually Spends—And the Frustration It’s Causing
One of the core questions driving the petition movement is straightforward: How much is Vermont actually spending on stopping drugs from coming in versus treating people after they’re addicted?
The answer helps explain the frustration. According to a January 2026 report from the Vermont Department of Health, the state has significantly ramped up its prevention spending. In fiscal year 2024, Vermont spent $11.7 million on substance misuse prevention efforts. By fiscal year 2025, that rose to $14.4 million. The budgeted amount for fiscal year 2026 is $16.8 million—nearly $5 million more than just two years ago.
These funds support school-based services, community-based programs, and tobacco control initiatives. But for the petition signers, this spending misses the point. They’re not opposed to prevention and treatment—many explicitly support treatment courts that combine recovery with accountability. What they’re frustrated about is the emphasis on downstream interventions when they believe the upstream problem—the actual supply of drugs—continues unabated.
“These dealers aren’t just selling drugs—they’re taking over people’s homes and cars,” the petition states. From this perspective, spending millions to help people recover makes little sense if traffickers are simultaneously working to get them re-addicted.
The Budget Reality and Prosecution Bottleneck
Governor Phil Scott’s proposed $9.4 billion budget for fiscal year 2027 is approximately 3 percent larger than the previous year, but he’s characterized it as “disciplined” and “lean” due to the loss of one-time federal COVID-19 relief funds. The budget includes $105 million in property tax relief, but that allocation means less money available for new enforcement initiatives.
A critical problem exists in the prosecution system itself. The fiscal year 2026 budget narrative for Vermont’s State’s Attorneys shows that the offices of the 14 elected prosecutors must absorb “vacancy savings” of $649,126—meaning positions must stay unfilled to meet fiscal targets. Since State’s Attorneys handle 99 percent of Vermont’s criminal cases, this budget constraint means that even if police make more drug trafficking arrests, the cases may simply pile up in an already backlogged court system.
This creates exactly the kind of circular problem that frustrates petition signers: arrests without consequences because there aren’t enough prosecutors to handle the cases, which reinforces the perception that Vermont is a “soft target.”
What’s Actually Being Done on Interdiction
Vermont does have drug interdiction infrastructure, though petition signers clearly don’t believe it’s sufficient. The Department of Public Safety’s Narcotics Investigation Unit oversees the Vermont Drug Task Force (VDTF), which comprises state troopers, local police, and county sheriff’s officers dedicated full-time to enforcing drug laws.
The task force focuses strategically on mid-to-high-level dealers trafficking for profit—exactly the kind of operators the petition movement wants to see targeted. The VDTF’s effectiveness depends heavily on federal partnerships through the DEA’s State and Local Task Force Program, which allows state and local officers to be deputized as federal agents so they can target major cartels like the Sinaloa and Jalisco organizations responsible for most fentanyl entering the United States from Mexico.
The Department of Public Safety also operates the Vermont Intelligence Center and dedicates members to FBI task forces focusing on transnational organized crime. But for residents watching drug activity in their neighborhoods, these regional and federal partnerships feel distant from the visible problems on their streets.
Why the Drug Supply Has Changed Everything
Part of what’s driving the frustration is that the drug crisis Vermont faces today is fundamentally different from the one that prompted the creation of the Hub and Spoke treatment system over a decade ago. That system, which earned national recognition, was designed primarily to treat opioid addiction—helping people transition from pills or heroin to medication-assisted treatment.
But according to state officials, the drug supply in 2026 looks nothing like it did in 2015. Fentanyl remains the dominant opioid, but it’s frequently mixed with methamphetamines, cocaine, and the non-opioid adulterant xylazine. Xylazine, a veterinary sedative, is particularly alarming because naloxone (Narcan) cannot reverse its effects, and it causes severe necrotic skin lesions.
The rise of methamphetamines creates a specific problem: Vermont’s Hub and Spoke model is largely ineffective against stimulant use disorder. The medications that work for opioid addiction don’t work for meth addiction. This creates what officials call a “gap in care”—people want help, but the treatment system wasn’t built for the drugs they’re now using.
From the petition movement’s perspective, this evolution of the drug supply validates their argument. If the drugs are more dangerous, more complex, and harder to treat, doesn’t that make the case for focusing more resources on stopping them from entering Vermont in the first place?
The 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment from the DEA confirms what Vermonters are seeing locally. While national overdose deaths decreased by 25 percent in the 12-month period ending October 2024—dropping to approximately 84,076 provisional deaths—the DEA still seized 47 million fentanyl pills and 10,000 pounds of powder in 2025, representing 369 million lethal doses. Mexican cartels are using social media and messaging apps to sell fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills directly to users, creating distribution networks that bypass traditional dealer structures.
The Statistics That Don’t Match What People See
A core source of frustration is the gap between official data and lived experience. The 2025 Report to the Legislature on Overdose Prevention Center Evaluation shows Vermont experienced a 12 percent decrease in resident overdose deaths in 2024, totaling 214 fatalities. Counties like Addison saw a 50.4 percent decrease in overdose death rates, while Bennington dropped 66.5 percent.
State officials point to these numbers as evidence the system is working. But petition signers point to different metrics: Chittenden County, home to Burlington where the safety letter originated, saw no improvement—64 deaths in both 2023 and 2024. Burlington also reported increases in drug-related incidents, calls for service, and motor vehicle incidents related to drug use.
Critically, even as overdose deaths fell in some areas, visible drug activity didn’t. People still see syringes in parks. They still see people using drugs openly. They still see the same individuals shoplifting repeatedly with no apparent consequences. For residents, a statistic showing declining mortality doesn’t match the reality of declining public safety in their neighborhoods.
The report also showed troubling trends in rural areas: Lamoille County’s overdose death rate per 100,000 people increased by 118.4 percent between 2023 and 2024. This suggests traffickers may be shifting operations to less-resourced rural counties, making the problem more geographically dispersed just as residents are demanding action.
The “Drug Holiday” Label and What It Means
On social media, some frustrated Vermonters have started using the phrase “drug holiday capital” to describe their state. It’s a bitter play on Vermont’s actual tourist-destination reputation—suggesting that the state has become a vacation spot for traffickers who face minimal consequences.
The phrase is deliberately provocative. In medical terminology, a “drug holiday” simply refers to a structured pause in medication to assess its effectiveness. But in Vermont’s social media space, it’s been repurposed as shorthand for a state that’s seen as too permissive, too focused on compassion, and not focused enough on consequences.
The label reflects a loss of public trust. Residents who supported harm reduction and treatment-first approaches a decade ago now feel those policies have been exploited by trafficking organizations. They see Vermont’s judicial discretion and emphasis on rehabilitation as creating a business environment where dealing drugs is high-profit and low-risk.
What Residents Want Beyond H.780
The petition movement has been explicit that H.780 is only a starting point. Signers want maximum penalties when traffickers’ drugs kill or seriously harm someone. They want transparency about campaign financing and whether any political interests benefit from keeping enforcement weak. They want landlords held accountable when properties become drug houses. They want the ability to use local zoning or business regulations against Airbnbs that become temporary trafficking locations.
Perhaps most fundamentally, they want recognition from Montpelier that the current approach isn’t sufficient for the scale of the problem. The petition’s question—”What would you want if this was happening in your neighborhood?”—reflects a feeling that decision-makers in the State House don’t personally experience the daily reality of drug-related crime that residents in places like Burlington face.
The Burlington Safety Letter’s call for a “holistic approach” that supplements harm reduction with “public safety strategies of increased enforcement and prosecution” represents an attempt to find middle ground. Signers aren’t necessarily demanding Vermont abandon treatment and recovery programs. They’re demanding that enforcement and prosecution be treated as equally important components of the response.
Treatment Courts as Potential Common Ground
One area where the petition movement and state officials seem aligned is the expansion of treatment courts. The Burlington Safety Letter explicitly calls for the state to “recommit to and expand treatment courts to combine accountability with recovery.”
Governor Scott has proposed expanding the accountability court established in Burlington in 2025 to other counties. These specialized courts use evidence-based practices like random drug testing, home visits, and cognitive-behavioral programming—similar to successful models in places like Olmsted County, Minnesota.
Treatment courts represent a hybrid approach: people face real consequences and accountability for criminal behavior, but they also receive structured support for recovery. For petition signers frustrated with what they see as a revolving door of arrest-and-release with no deterrent effect, treatment courts offer consequences. For treatment advocates worried about simply incarcerating people with addiction, the courts offer recovery support.
The model’s success will depend on adequate funding for specialized personnel, which may be difficult in Governor Scott’s constrained budget environment.
The Housing Crisis Connection
The petition’s mention of “cuckooing”—traffickers taking over people’s homes using drugs as payment—points to another dimension of Vermont’s crisis: the housing shortage. Governor Scott’s administration has acknowledged that stable housing is a “fundamental pillar of recovery,” but Vermont’s severe housing shortage makes long-term sobriety extremely difficult.
Without a stable place to live, people in recovery remain vulnerable to exactly the kind of exploitation the petition describes. And the shortage of housing units prevents expansion of recovery housing programs, creating what officials describe as a bottleneck in the treatment system.
H.780’s inclusion of retail theft provisions alongside drug trafficking penalties reflects the economic link between the two problems. Professional theft rings steal merchandise to trade for drugs or sell to fund addiction. This visible crime—combined with graffiti, discarded needles, and property damage—creates the sense of disorder that drives the petition movement’s anger.
For residents, a store closing because of repeated theft isn’t just an economic loss. It’s a visible sign of decline that reinforces the feeling their communities are being taken over by drug-related crime.
What Happens Next
H.780 now sits in the House Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers will wrestle with whether to reverse Vermont’s decade-long movement away from mandatory minimum sentences. The committee will hear from law enforcement, prosecutors, public defenders, treatment providers, and—likely—petition organizers and Burlington Safety Letter signers who want their voices heard.
Several factors will shape the debate:
The bill’s sponsors will need to address how increased enforcement and mandatory minimums fit within the state’s tight budget constraints. The State’s Attorneys’ offices are already understaffed; without funding increases for prosecution, more arrests may simply mean more cases languishing in backlog.
The evolution of Vermont’s drug supply—particularly the rise of methamphetamines and xylazine that existing treatment models don’t address well—will inform whether treatment-focused advocates acknowledge gaps in current approaches.
County-level data will be closely monitored. If Chittenden County’s flat overdose death rate persists while visible drug activity increases, and if rural counties continue to see rising deaths, pressure will build for a statewide enforcement response.
Governor Scott’s proposal to expand accountability courts offers a potential middle path, but success depends on funding that may compete with property tax relief and other priorities Vermonters care about.
Public testimony during the legislative process will be crucial. If petition signers and Burlington Safety Letter supporters pack hearing rooms and share personal stories about how drug trafficking has affected their families, neighborhoods, and businesses, lawmakers will feel pressure to act. If treatment providers and civil liberties advocates push back effectively on mandatory minimums, the bill may be modified significantly or fail.
The fundamental question facing Vermont legislators is whether they believe the petition movement represents a genuine shift in public sentiment that requires a policy response, or whether it’s a vocal minority that doesn’t reflect the state’s values. The answer will determine not just the fate of H.780, but Vermont’s broader approach to addiction and crime for years to come.
For the Vermonters signing petitions and sharing their frustrations on social media, the message to Montpelier is clear: What we’ve been doing isn’t working against the powerful drug supply we face now. It’s time to try something different.