Paula Routly: Vermont's Drugs-for-Guns Trade

Remember Joe Sexton? He’s the former New York Times and ProPublica reporter now living in Vermont who penned “The Loss of Grace,” the shocking exposé of the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center that Seven Days published last October. While that piece has been shaping public policy and collecting journalism awards, Sexton has been chasing his next must-read local story.

He’s found a few in the past 12 months, one of which is on this week’s cover: “The Straw Man” shows how Vermont has become the unwitting host of a booming drugs-for-guns trade. Building on the Bennington Banner‘s extensive coverage of the murder of a 17-year-old drug runner, Sexton connects the dots between the state’s libertarian gun laws, insatiable appetite for opioids and criminal justice reforms that Gov. Phil Scott says make Vermont vulnerable to out-of-state drug traffickers.

The piece is being published simultaneously by The Trace, an online news site wholly devoted to “journalism that shines a light on gun violence.” The nonprofit has commissioned some of the hardest-hitting reporting on corruption and self-dealing within the National Rifle Association — investigations that have measurably weakened the powerful lobbying organization.

Sexton has published with The Trace before. In November 2022, the site ran his story about how cops killed a mentally ill man in Rochester, N.Y., two months before George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. Vividly told and meticulously substantiated, it might be the longest work of journalism I’ve ever read online.

This piece, while shorter, took Sexton six weeks to research and write. Our editors and news reporter Derek Brouwer read his draft, and we all agreed this important story should be in Seven Days.

“The picture that emerges is: Drug dealers come to Vermont and enlist people to buy weapons here, where they are easily obtainable. Those weapons are turning up at crime scenes elsewhere,” news editor Matthew Roy said. “There’s no end to gun stories, but this activity has become a factor in the drug trade in Vermont.”

Sexton connected Seven Days and The Trace. Roy already knew editor in chief Tali Woodward from a prior discussion about a potential gun story. Before her Trace gig, and the one she has teaching at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she was a news reporter for the alternative weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Village Voice of the West Coast. Oh, and one more thing: She’s the daughter of the famous journalist Bob Woodward, who broke news of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post. His latest book, War, contains new allegations about former president and candidate Donald Trump.

Roy and Tali Woodward both edited Sexton’s story. By copublishing it, we’re guaranteeing that the piece reaches a wider audience. At least from our perspective, such partnerships between nonprofit newsrooms and local newspapers are a bright spot these days in American journalism.

Meanwhile, Sexton is working on another story for us that is “steeped in opioids and their damage in Vermont cities,” as he put it. He’s also turning his recent opus for the Marshall Project, “The Hardest Case for Mercy: Inside the Effort to Spare the Parkland School Shooter,” into a book. The man never sleeps. He just sees stories and wants to write them.

Vermont is fortunate to have such an experienced, generous journalist living in our midst, keeping an eye out. Seven Days is grateful for the opportunity to publish his compelling work.