Since 1992, the New Hampshire Bar Association’s Domestic Violence Emergency Project has provided free legal services to low-income victims of domestic violence. Scott O’Connell is an attorney from Manchester who drives to a crisis center in Berlin once a month to volunteer his services, working there with local advocates. Donna Cummings is the director of the crisis center where O’Connell volunteers.
Scott: We’ve got really profound problems; people who are facing immediate domestic violence that need assistance with a petition and the much more routine, people who are having difficulty getting benefits from the Veterans administration and other types of thorny things.
New Hampshire has one of the worst prescription drug abuse problems in the country. The state now ranks 5th in the nation for percentage of residents who abuse medications such as percocet, vicodin, and oxycodone, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control. The problem is especially alarming among young people. New Hampshire has the second highest rate of 18-25 year olds who abuse prescription drugs in the nation.
Danielle Fiore , 24, says she was addicted to painkillers for most of her childhood.
"I had fractured my ankle and I was prescribed vicodin and it felt good. I was ten or eleven," she says. "As time went on I would get something else hurt or a toothache or something and I would get more painkillers. I have a bunch of teeth missing because I would complain and get them pulled so I would get pain killers."
Currently New Hampshire has no prescription drug monitoring program. The program, which is up and running in 48 other states, is initially funded through federal grants. The proposal to create a centralized prescription database that doctors and law enforcement could check to track so called "doctor shoppers" has been defeated several times in the state Legislature. A new bill is now being considered this session and its sponsor Senator Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, is hopeful that there is enough support for a statewide prescription monitoring program this time. He cites the growing number of overdose deaths in the state from prescription drugs. In the last decade overdose deaths from these medications have more than tripled.
For those who oppose a statewide prescription drug database privacy is a major issue. Rep. Neal Kurk, R-Weare, says such a program goes against the Granite State's core philosophy.
"This is New Hampshire, this is the 'Live Free or Die' state, " says Kurk. "One of the major reasons this bill has not been adopted is because most people feel it’s the independent philosophy, personal responsibility philosophy that prevails and that government should be small and not interfere with people’s lives."
Many of the state's independent pharmacists are also against a monitoring program because they worry they will end up footing the bill. The database would be drawn from pharmacy records. Rick Newman, a lobbyist for the New Hampshire Independent Pharmacy Association, says the small business people he represents will be end up carrying the burden of the costs of such a database.
"I can’t sit here as anyone with any kind of intelligence and disagree that’s there's a problem with people abusing prescription drugs in this country, of course there is," says Newman. "The question becomes whose burden is that? We can’t pass laws to put the burden on the small business person because they happen to be one part of the pipeline."
Emergency room doctors and those that treat pain say they are often confronted by patients who may be faking symptoms to get narcotics for their addiction or to sell on the street.
"I want people who have legitimate pain to get the proper pain medications that they need," say Dr. David Heller, an emergency room physician at Portsmouth Hospital. "But I don’t want to feed somebody’s addiction and I don’t want to write a prescription for drugs that are going to be sold to my kids or my kid's friends."
Funeral homes are adapting to recent trends of eco-friendliness and personalization in effort to keep the business thriving. We take a look at what consumers are asking for and how the traditional spirituality of a funeral is becoming less common.
The White House is on the road to win public support for its economic policies. President Obama was in Iowa and Arizona yesterday. Today, Vice President Biden visited a manufacturing plant in Rochester. The vice president described what the administration means when it says it wants to give everyone a fair shot at the American dream.
Vice President Biden spoke at Albany Engineered Composites, a company that has been expanding on the Seacoast. That trend fit well with one of Biden’s roles, that of cheer leader for the productivity of American workers.
“We start off as a nation better positioned than any the world to be the dominant economic force in the 21st century as we were in the 20th.”
Vice President Joe Biden visited a Rochester manufacturing plant to tout the administration’s economic policies. Biden was upbeat, saying America is in the best position to continue to be the dominant economic power in the 21st century.
Speaking at Albany Engineered Composites, the vice president said the country should change tax law to reward companies that bring jobs home from overseas operations.
"We're committed to boost the trend," Biden said. "We're not the job creators. And the best way to do that is to shed the policies of the last ten years that have encouraged investment to go abroad. And discourage investment to be here. That's not anti-business. It’s pro-business.”
Just four years ago, Starbucks seemed to be losing its mojo. Howard Schultz, the man who made Starbucks a household name, returned to the company as CEO. He closed hundreds of stores, streamlined operations and set the company on a path to record revenues and strong profits.
Starbucks serves 60 million beverages a week, which adds up to big profits. The company reports its earnings Thursday. In a bid to further expand its consumer base, Starbucks has a new roast and plans to produce more retail products to sell outside of its coffeehouses.
Concerns about a government that can’t work together to solve problems and possible cuts to valuable federal programs were top concerns of about a dozen North Country businessmen who met Thursday with Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R).
“Our whole society and our economy needs greater confidence,” said Peter Powell, a realtor from Lancaster who attended the meeting held by the North Country Council in Bethlehem.
Powell said a serious problem is the “Senate and the House, where many of us have lost confidence in those institutions and are frankly frustrated and sometimes embarrassed by what we are seeing, the stalemates and the grandstanding and the ideology run amuck is really contrary to the best interests of New Hampshire,” said Powell.
With Christmas and Hanukkah wrapped-up, we've officially reached the pre-New Year's lull. This brief respite from the regularly scheduled holiday cheer is when many people take the opportunity to consider their accomplishments and failures over the past year, and resolve to do better in the future. Other people just go to work for a few days and get really, really bored at their desks as they countdown to their next party.
Either way, it's a bit of a restless period, isn't it?
Millions of Americans wake up each morning without a job, even though they desperately want to work. It's one of the depressing legacies of the financial crisis and Great Recession.
NPR and the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a poll of people who had been unemployed or with an insufficient level of work for more than a year. The results document the financial, emotional and physical effects of long-term unemployment and underemployment.
The federal government currently counts 5.7 million Americans as long-term unemployed, which it defines as people out of work for 27 weeks or more. The NPR/Kaiser poll used a slightly different measure, surveying people out of work for a year or more.
