Vermont’s drug trafficking problem is getting worse. The two-sided debate over what to do about it shows that both parties are right — and both ignoring the pieces that don’t fit their argument.

by Compass Vermont

Part 1 of a two-part series on Vermont’s drug trafficking pipeline.

A Springfield teenager gets caught selling fentanyl out of a house in East Barre. She has cocaine, fentanyl, and two loaded guns around her. She gets out, comes back, and gets caught again — this time with more drugs and a stolen handgun. She serves six months and goes home to Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, the neighbors in East Barre are holding community meetings about how to keep their kids safe.

That case — the sentencing of Dynasty Tatiana Wright in February — has become a flashpoint for a growing number of Vermonters demanding the state get tougher on drug trafficking. A Change.org petition calling for mandatory prison time for traffickers has gathered over 200 signatures so far. A group of state representatives has introduced legislation to make that happen.

The frustration is justified. Vermont has a drug trafficking problem that is real, documented, and getting worse.

But the fight over what to do about it has become a debate between two sides that are both partly right — and both ignoring the pieces that don’t fit their argument.

The Business Model That Makes Vermont a Target

Vermont doesn’t make drugs. Not fentanyl, not cocaine, not heroin. Every dose sold in the state gets here from somewhere else — mostly up Interstate 91 from Springfield and Holyoke, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, and New York City.

The reason is money. A bag of fentanyl that costs $4 to $6 in Springfield sells for $20 to $30 in Vermont. A dealer who drives north from Springfield with 1,000 bags for a weekend can pocket $15,000 to $20,000 in profit. That same dealer would make about $2,000 selling the same product at home. Springfield Police Superintendent Lawrence Akers has called this the I-91 pipeline — a long-running corridor where drugs flow north and Vermont’s guns flow south.

The people running these operations don’t move to Vermont. They send young recruits — often teenagers from Springfield or Hartford — to make the trip, sell the product, and bring back cash. Some set up for a few days in Airbnbs or short-term rentals. Others use a tactic called “cuckooing”: they find a local person struggling with addiction, offer them free drugs, and take over their home as a temporary base. When the product is sold, they drive back south. The person whose home was used is left with the mess.

Former U.S. Attorney Nikolas Kerest put it plainly: drugs sold in Vermont fetch a higher price, and the people trafficking them understand basic economics. Governor Phil Scott has said the financial incentives outweigh the risks. A Brattleboro police chief told federal investigators that dealers simply know Vermont is where the money is.

This is the part both sides agree on. Where they disagree is what to do about it.

The Case for Getting Tougher — and Where It Falls Apart

Supporters of mandatory prison time argue that Vermont’s courts have gone so soft on trafficking that the state has become a playground for out-of-state dealers. They point to cases like Wright’s — caught twice, served six months — and ask how that could possibly discourage the next teenager from making the same trip.

They have a point. Law enforcement officials across the state have said, consistently, that when a trafficker treats arrest as a minor inconvenience — a cost of doing business — there is no leverage to get them to cooperate with investigators. If a mid-level dealer knows the worst outcome is a few months of jail time, they have no reason to tell police who sent them. That means investigations stall at the street level and never reach the suppliers.

The research on what’s called “focused deterrence” — the most evidence-backed approach to shutting down drug markets — confirms this. The strategy only works if the threat of consequences is credible. When the expected penalty for trafficking fentanyl with a firearm is six months and probation, there is nothing credible to work with.

But here is where the mandatory minimum argument runs into a wall: the people Vermont can arrest are not the people running the operation.

The wholesalers making the decisions — the ones in Springfield and Hartford who recruit the teenagers, supply the product, and collect the profits — are in another state. Vermont courts have no jurisdiction over them. The only people Vermont can sentence are the runners, the mules, and the teenagers at the bottom of the chain.

And those people are replaceable. Drug market researchers have studied this for decades. When you arrest a street-level dealer, a new one shows up. The profit margin guarantees it. A $15,000 weekend is too much money for someone without other options to walk away from, no matter what the prison sentence might be. The RAND Corporation calculated that mandatory minimums cost roughly eight times more per unit of drugs kept off the street compared to treatment — and twice as much as regular policing at normal sentence lengths.

Vermont already has the legal tools to impose serious sentences. State law allows up to 30 years for fentanyl trafficking and up to 10 years for transporting even small amounts into the state. Judges have that discretion now. The question isn’t whether the law allows tough sentences — it’s why the judiciary isn’t using the authority it already has.

The Case for Treatment — and Its Missing Foundation

On the other side, opponents of tougher sentencing argue that locking people up doesn’t solve addiction. They point to Vermont’s nationally recognized treatment system — the Hub-and-Spoke model with 9 regional hubs and over 100 office-based treatment sites, the free Narcan distribution, the syringe service programs. Overdose deaths in Vermont fell from 244 in 2022 to 183 in 2024. Lives are being saved.

They’re right about that. And they’re right that criminalizing people struggling with addiction is neither effective nor humane.

But the petition signers aren’t asking to lock up users. They’re asking why someone caught twice — with fentanyl, cocaine, and guns — is treated the same as someone caught with a personal supply. The distinction between the person selling poison in East Barre and the person buying it is not a fine line. It’s a chasm. Conflating the two, as both sides sometimes do, muddies a debate that Vermonters deserve to have clearly.

The most frequently cited alternative to enforcement is “Housing First” — giving people stable housing as a foundation for recovery. The evidence behind Housing First is strong. But in Vermont, that argument has a problem so large it deserves its own examination — which it will get in Part 2 of this series.

Vermont Can’t Enforce What It Can’t Staff

Any sentencing debate is partly theoretical when the state lacks the capacity to make arrests and prosecute cases.

Vermont State Police has been operating with 48 to 56 vacancies out of roughly 330 sworn positions — a 16–17% vacancy rate that officials have described as double the normal level. Fifty-one of 70 other law enforcement agencies across the state are also trying to fill positions. As of late 2024, all barracks were experiencing reduced staffing with increased call volumes.

The prosecution side is equally constrained. The fiscal year 2026 budget requires Vermont’s 14 State’s Attorney offices to absorb $649,126 in “vacancy savings” — meaning positions must stay unfilled to meet fiscal targets. Since State’s Attorneys handle 99 percent of Vermont’s criminal cases, this means that even if police make more arrests, cases pile up in a backlogged system.

Mandatory minimums are an output of the justice system. If the inputs — investigations, arrests, prosecutions — are throttled by a 16% vacancy rate in state police and mandatory budget cuts to prosecutors, longer sentences for the few cases that make it through cannot compensate. You cannot sentence someone you cannot catch.

Meanwhile, the state’s opioid settlement fund is earmarked entirely for prevention, treatment, and harm reduction — zero for enforcement. State spending on substance misuse prevention grew from $11.7 million in FY2024 to $16.8 million budgeted for FY2026. The system can save people who overdose. It cannot meaningfully disrupt the supply that poisoned them.

What Would Actually Make a Difference

The evidence — from criminology, drug market research, federal enforcement operations, and Vermont’s own experience — points to approaches that neither side is fully embracing.

Go after the money, not just the mules. The pipeline exists because the profit is worth the risk. Aggressive seizure of vehicles, cash, phones, and any assets connected to trafficking changes the math in ways that prison terms for runners cannot. A dealer who loses a $30,000 car and $15,000 in cash feels it immediately. So does the next person thinking about making the trip.

Push for more federal resources, not just state sentencing changes. The most effective trafficking disruptions Vermont has seen — Operation Fury Road’s 82 prosecutions, the 2025 Springfield arrests — were federal operations that reached into source cities with cross-state jurisdiction. Vermont needs a permanent joint task force presence, not a debate over whether state prison terms should be three years or five.

Fix the enforcement capacity crisis. Investing in staffing and investigation capacity would produce results that longer prison terms for the few cases that make it to court cannot. You don’t need mandatory minimums if you have enough troopers to make arrests, enough prosecutors to bring cases, and enough investigators to follow the money back to Springfield.

Keep saving lives — and close the treatment gap. Vermont’s harm reduction work is working. Deaths are down. But three-quarters of Vermonters who need substance use treatment still aren’t getting it. Every person who moves from active addiction to recovery is one fewer customer for the pipeline. That is the only way to permanently shrink the market.

What Vermonters Deserve

The communities living with this pipeline — East Barre, Brattleboro, St. Johnsbury, the Northeast Kingdom, parts of Burlington — deserve an honest conversation. The trafficking problem is real. The frustration is legitimate. The demand for a response is reasonable.

What those communities don’t deserve is a choice between mandatory minimum sentences that imprison replaceable teenagers while the pipeline flows on — or alternatives that depend on infrastructure Vermont doesn’t have.

And about that infrastructure: the most prominent alternative to tougher enforcement — Housing First — requires something Vermont has spent 55 years preventing itself from building.

That contradiction, and who is responsible for it, is the subject of Part 2.

Next: You Can’t Have a ‘Housing First’ Drug Policy Without Building Housing — Vermont’s Land-Use Rules Undermine the Alternative to Tougher Trafficking Enforcement