I’m a pretty thorough “Downeasterner.” I’m 22 and consider myself quite fit to work a job. I live in Calais and will probably graduate from Washington County Technical College. Nothing would give me more delight than to buy the house that’s for sale about three houses down from that of my folks, settle in, and make a life for myself right here. I would rather do anything than join the thousands of Downeast youth – many of whom feel the same way I do – forced to go elsewhere to find any job that pays enough to feed them and the family they would rather have raised in the relative beauty and peace of Maine.

I hear people championing the character of Calais, and the character of Washington County. Ask a resident what the character of Calais is now and you’ll hear more about a huge countywide drug problem brought on by the dead-end atmosphere in the county than you will about placid forests and peaceful life. Those who can leave escape to opportunity elsewhere, and it seems that those who can’t escape into their own brains, into routine self-destruction that many wouldn’t have dreamed of if they’d actually had something constructive to do. Crime is on the rise. We do not leave our doors unlocked in this town, contrary to myths from away.

Drugs are a massive problem in the Sunrise County – particularly, it seems, in Calais and Eastport – and few of us see any significant help from either the state or (barring our wonderful Customs agents) the Feds. Maybe we missed it. Maybe the state enforcers and the feds are really hot on the trail of the thugs that are trapping young people like me in a vicious downward spiral of self-destruction, but when I worked in Calais there were two problems the business had to deal with – distance of commute for work and needles. Needles, needles everywhere at one time. I hear they’re cleaner now, praise be.

We are in a trap, we youth of Washington County. I have to rely almost entirely on my faith in God to keep me out of it. Boredom and hopelessness leads to escapism, which sadly leads many to drug use, which leads to addiction. With addiction it’s increasingly hard to get a job and very few people get away with it their whole lives. Then they’re caught and they go to jail. With a criminal record, good luck finding a job where there are plenty of people seeking one. We need to break the trap, and to do that we need to convince our elders to think out of the box, get out of their comfort zone a little bit, and help us. We need to be one community combined to clear away our greatest embarrassment and open Washington County more fully to development.

And yet, the impetus in Calais is to “keep things as they are, don’t take chances with anything new.” We must no take risks with what little we have, or we’ll lose it all.

I cannot express with sufficient strength my contempt for that line of thought. Calais is a gas-station town with no industry to speak of. The only thing within the city limits that I’ve ever seen that counts as a “factory” is the Mingo wreath facility. Are we really fighting to remain dependent on the low prices of gas and milk to survive from one week to the next? When they’re both climbing steadily? And we’re doing this while Calais’s sister city of St. Stephen, on the other side of the border, have industry, are open to development, and are bounding ahead? We are better than this; we can become better than this.

Quite often the political impetus is to complain to Augusta, or to Washington, about our problems and then consider our job complete when we get some token support. We sit in Calais and in Washington County like the proverbial man in the mud puddle. Sneezing with cold, complaining of the damp and filth, the man spends his days lamenting falling into the mud puddle, bemoaning the loss of his good suit. Passersby laugh at the man – it’s clear to everyone but the man what he must do to get out of the mud puddle. He must use the muscles God gave him and place a little faith in them. Then he must risk exposing himself to the world and stand up! But that involved risk and the possibility of losing some of his image with his neighbors, so he never dares. He continues to complain, unaware that in so doing he loses any esteem and image he once had.

I’m sure not everyone in Washington County is like this. I’m sure that, given a direction to move in, I could count on a lot of my friends and fellow residents to take up the call and do something about it rather than complain about it. And indeed things are being done and some progress is being made to stem our drug problem. But it must be coupled with an upsurge of jobs, and development, to give these poor people coming out of the drug trap a respite from the hopelessness that flung them into it in the first place. And that just is not happening in Calais, Maine.

I recently had the great honor of being introduced to Gov. Angus King by former state Sen. Vinton Cassidy, through the government class he teaches at the college. It was an awesome experience, and I learned a lot. We got to speak for no less than 15 minutes – a huge allotment of time given the governor’s busy schedule. Until a classmate of mine brought up the drug smuggling issue he seemed genuinely unaware of it. And he’s one man in Augusta that I’d really think was on top of Maine issues. I honestly hope he reads this.

Yes, I’m complaining. I’m whining up a storm over here. I’m complaining with the voice of a young man who doesn’t want to leave. I’m protesting with my elders to give me a chance to remain in this town that I grew up in, a town I love lumps and all. Don’ make me go away to some big city to find a job and raise a family — I want to do all that in Calais, a wish I share with many who have already left.

Don’t deny my chance to remain in the name of “keeping things the way they are.” Please. I speak for Washington County’s latest generation – and if you ignore me and insist on a campaign of stasis in my town, at the rate we’re shrinking, I could well be speaking for the last.

George Peterson lives in Calais.