Jordan McClements is a writer from Dover, who teaches English composition at his alma mater, Delaware State University.
Stop celebrating, Delaware. You are failing 64% of Delawareans who overdose. We went from 30 overdoses a month last year to 50 a month in 2025.
I remember first buying heroin on Loockerman Street in Dover.
When I was a little kid, it wasn’t like that. I used to buy comic books and eat pizza on Loockerman, along with my grandmother, who took care of me at the preschool across the street at Wesley United Methodist Church. What happened? The Great Recession of 2008, which caused the closure of the General Motors plant in Wilmington on July 28, 2009, a plant that had over 5,000 workers in 1985 and 565 when it shut down. This affected Delaware’s economic prosperity. Now, there are many out-of-work blue-collar people during a time of overprescription of opioids. These workers get these prescriptions, and the emotional and physical pain lead them and their families to trauma. Bigger picture: Maybe it was the GM plant closing, but both me and my cousins’ families were in economic despair, with absent fathers, and as boys with absent fathers do, we got in trouble in the growing heroin scene, created further by the overprescribing of opioids. Opioids fizzled out and rushed back. Heroin was dying and prescriptions flooded the market and created many addicts in Dover. It led to a boom in the fentanyl industry, which is where me and my cousin, full of trauma and without fathers, did what boys without fathers do. We got into trouble with the heroin scene in Dover. I’m not trying to say it’s the same story as in MacArthur Park, California; Hopewell, Virginia; St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana; the south side of Gary, Indiana; and Chicago’s West Side, but it’s a microcosm of how a child can go from church day care to overdosing.
Every politician working the overdose crisis isn’t doing enough for the addicted and the homeless citizens of Delaware. We started a meeting and workgroup — which is now the Greater Kent County Coalition, of which I have been a member for over a year — in reaction to busting the encampment next to Delaware State University and to help our city, and no one is moving on anything.
The homeless population has gone through two winters since then. Craig Richards froze to death by the Duncan Center in Dover, and someone took his shoes. I gave testimony and watched others do so. On Feb. 26, during a meeting of the Delaware General Assembly’s Joint Finance Committee, I told the politicians to say his name: “Say his name, Craig Richards. Say his name, Craig Richards.”
“Who cares about zoning laws?” I asked the General Assembly.
“I don’t,” I said.
It’s been almost six months since I first wrote about Craig Richards. The lawmakers know what happened to Delaware. They know what happened to Craig Richards. They know his name. They’ve said his name. How do I know? It’s on record that they said Craig Richards’ name twice. And they’ve done nothing for the homeless since. Let alone in the year since busting the encampment next to DSU. Now is not the time for our city’s cowardice. You want to be a leader? You have to lead.
We are failing 73% of people who overdose in the United States. What does a 27% nationwide decrease in overdose deaths mean to the father who buried his child? What does a 27% decrease mean to a grandfather burying his grandchild? What does a 27% decrease mean to the first responder taking a call to revive someone who overdosed? What does a 27% decrease mean to someone who survived an overdose? What does a 27% decrease mean to a nation still using? It means we’re celebrating overdose deaths decreasing, while overdoses themselves are increasing. What are we going to celebrate when the new cuts of drugs, like medetomidine, are added to the current supply and further increase our overdose crisis? We’re not ready. We’re not handling our overdose crisis now.
The conversation about overdoses is bigger than Donald Trump and his administration’s cuts. It’s a question of why we neglect our nation when it comes to empathy and love. How do I know? I overdosed in 2017 under Trump. My cousin overdosed and died in 2019 under Trump. My uncle overdosed in 2023 under Joe Biden, and I’m taking care of him. The conversation is bigger than all politicians. The conversation is bigger than you and me. The conversation is us.
We have to realize why we don’t pay attention to overdoses and homelessness. It’s painful. And we have allowed our media to hold neither us nor our politicians accountable. Our media have been talking about overdoses and homelessness all year long for the last eight years, and nothing has changed (over 600,000 Americans overdosed from 2017-23, and 300,000 Americans overdosed under the Trump and Biden administrations) because you — yes, you, reader — don’t want change. If you did, you would realize politicians are the last ones to ask about the overdose crisis because they’ve never lived it, and they don’t treat homeless people and drug users with dignity, respect or love, just like our media, who doesn’t interview them.
We don’t talk about the personal politics of the American overdose crisis. We believe that not voting is sacrilege, but neither you nor your party are interested in solving the American overdose crisis. If we don’t work together, how can our politicians work together? We hold our politicians as a mirror for ourselves. Trump’s indifference is the same indifference you see in your reflection. You want the Democrats and Republicans to do your work for you. You have to care. If you don’t care about your neighbors, why would your politicians care about your neighbors? Politicians don’t care about us, just like you don’t care about us. Unless we change it, Trump is our mirror, America. What are you going to do about it, America? We vote by our ideology. Our politics make us forget the reason for our overdose crisis. The hole is in our hearts, not our arms. Read that again: The reason for the American overdose crisis is the hole in our hearts, not our arms. We replace love with politics. Our politics make us forget the treatment of our overdose crisis. Love thy neighbor. We’ve forgotten about our neighbors. We don’t check in on our neighbors.
Why should you care about Dover? Dover is the small town that represents all the small towns across the mid-Atlantic and our overdose crisis. By understanding each other, we can help each other and ourselves. We have to think about each other, so we can realize we’re in this overdose crisis together. We have to fight this thing together, as the mid-Atlantic. You’ve already said Trump isn’t going to help us. So what? We already knew that. Let’s step up and be present together. Come on, Delaware, care. You can’t solve the overdose crisis by yourself. We can’t solve the overdose crisis by ourselves.
This is our mid-Atlantic overdose crisis. We have to save our neighbors together.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
