>> that's a lot of taffy. >> yeah. this stiff isn't that -- eat as much as you want. >> is it gluten free? >> it's all natural. >> that's what i thought. atlantic city will never die. good is, indeed, good forever. and atlantic city will be great again. asberry park, camden, all of my home state. i'm convinced when the tide has come and washed all the greed heads away, we'll once again many magic.

i hope i'm there to see it. >> this is where i bought my first bag of heroin. it was 1980. i was 24 years old. but in a lot of ways, my whole life up to that point was leading to this address. western massachusetts, the unlikely new frontier of america's war on drugs. where heroin has become an exploding problem that's begun to touch nearly every family.

♪ >> there's nothing like the north atlantic. it's majestic. i love the beach. pretty much had my first everything on a beach. you name it, first time i did it, beach. i was miserable in love, happy in love, alternately, as only a

17-year-old could be. this is where i lived. very happy summer in the early 70s, and that was my room on the left. that's an amazing spot, if you think about it. a bunch of knuckle heads working as dishwashers and pizza servers. we could live on a beach like this, happier, stupider times. i can still hear the play list, the brothers johnson. if you put on marvin gaye right now, i'd burst into tears. what do you do? you're young and go to the beach. you get laid and you get high. it was here all the way out at the tip of cape cod, province town, massachusetts where the pilgrims first landed, and it was where i first landed. 1972, washed in a town with a head full of orange sun shine and a few friend. province town, a wonderland of tolerance, long-time ra

tradition of accepting artists, writers, the badly behaved, the gay, the different. it was paradise. >> the joy that can only come with a certainty that you're invincible, that none of the choices you make will have any effect on your later life. we didn't think about those things. i don't know what i thought i was going to be. at that point, i didn't think i was going to be a cook. i don't know what i thought i was going to be. i was just hanging out in a beautiful place. >> a golden time. i look back on those fuzzy memories, and they seem golden. first love, and then me. johnny was sort of a central figure in all of our lives. >> my name is john yingling,

this has been here since 1971. province town is a special place. we all did drugs, acted young and crazy. tony was wilder than some but not as wild as others. i always liked him. >> and you let me sleep on top of the walk in. >> i remember that. >> i cannot tell you how frequently i dream about this pizza. i'm walking down commercial street, and there's a sense of dislocation and a loss as i stumble around this dream scape of 40 years ago. i was still here and living in hope. unbelievable. many of the old places in p-town are gone. but the lobster pot is still going strong all these years later, and still has what i want and need, the essentials. my friends worked in the kitchen here, starting the tradition

among my set that cooking work was noble toil. at that point, i never intended a career as a chef. >> it was great to be a cook. >> i was getting to that. >> yes. >> this is homemade portuguese kale soup, made on the premises. >> a p-town version of what i remember, kale, chorizo, kidney beans, potatoes? . >> i missed you bad. that was precisely what i loved about the food, the portuguese things. dishes like this stuffed cod with bread crumbs stuffed with scallop and crab, some red sauce. >> i hadn't been working for a while. i was a deadbeat. i was scarfing off everybody else, and paul comes home from work and says our dishwasher didn't show up today. you're our new dishwasher, and i

said really? the next day i put on the apron, and i didn't take it off for 30 years. i'd wake up. we'd go to the beach until 2:00 or 3:00. >> it was fun. >> roll into work. work all night. drinking, getting high, drilling out food. you got all the food you wanted, all the lick ere you wanted. >> all the sex you wanted. >> yeah. and you were still an essential part of the economy. >> it was fun. i remember. >> the flag ship, it's where i started washing dishes and started having pretensions of culinary grandeur. who else got to live like that during that time? you had to be in a band. here, we were dishwashers. >> you get older and realize you have to pace yourself a little bit. >> otherwise we still wouldn't be here. many of our friends from those days didn't make it. >> yeah.

many of my friends didn't. yeah. >> keep drinking, keep drinking. >> thank you, tony. >> this place has been here forever. >> used to be the back room. >> still there. >> it's all falling into place again. >> yeah. it's not that much different. >> it's early spring, but come memorial day, it gets crazy and doesn't stop until labor day. province town was always gay friendly. and the atlantic house known as the a house is america's oldest operating gay bar. everybody has come through these bars, most notably, tennessee williams. >> everybody got seasick and started tripping. now that it's even, they all say have a cocktail so i can get my

sea legs back. >> really? >> yeah. >> april kobral owns the joint, taken over from her father, a forward thinking dude, if there ever was one. >> it was built in 1798. >> how long in your family? >> over 75 years. my father, he had billie holiday appeared, elle a fitzgerald. >> how has it changed? in 1972, my feeling was that this is a gay town and that i was here at the pleasure of somebody else. which is sort of the opposite of everywhere outside of here at that time. this was a largely catholic, portuguese, mission community, but it was also hell town. >> right. >> they sent their rejects here. >> that's not kidding. province town, i think always

had the fixture of the bohemian people and the fisherman and the pirates, the writers, drunks, all that. >> anyone with a lifestyle outside the mainstream was welcome here. >> whatever floats your boat. you know? it's all good. ♪ to over one hundred of the web's leading job boards with a single click. then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list. and now you can use zip recruiter for free. go to ziprecruiter.com.

>> over a century ago, province town was a hard-working fishing village with multigenerational families of fisherman. >> my name is beau griben.

my father fished, and i was pretty much raised here my whole life. where's where i'm from. it's who i am. it used to be two out of three families were fishing families. most of them are gone now. we're a minority. now it's a homosexual community with a fisherman home. >> they arrived in 1840. the main families created a community built around fishing and lived around the industry into the 20th serccentury. it persisted even when i was here. these days, however, there are fewer and fewer boats to bless. >> i am scott rowe. i'm a commercial fisherman, fourth generation. started when i was five.

it was cool back then. it was like 70 or 80 boats. they were five or six deep. now it's down to seven or eight. it's a part of my heritage. this is my office. i would never do anything else. i'm going to do this until i can't move anymore. >> we roll into town like clock work, 2:30, 3:00 in the morning. it's quiet. the town's been ripped up all night long. we come down here, hit the water. what could be better? >> good timing to be here and nice weather today. >> a little breezy. might be a little nautical. a little bit. >> i'm sure i'll be fine. i've watched the deadliest catch. i'm ready. >> time to press the fun button. >> clear. all clear. >> used to be that this was the

best thing in the world. it was the greatest thing about fishing, you were kind of, like, the cowboy, a pioneer. you could go out, and as hard as you could push, competition was welcome. we were fiercely independent. that's little by little taken away. >> is there a limited number of them out there? >> there's a total allowable catch. >> and the pay off ain't much. a good day brings in 9,000 bucks. from that 9,000, take away 3,000 for the lease, 1,000 for fuel and split the remainder among the crew, and it's a crap shoot. many days there's nothing to catch. >> then why do you do it? >> we love to do it. we say it all turns to [ bleep ] once we get back. once we get out to there, we feel like we're at home.

>> like i said, it ain't easy. today, according to beau, scott, and zeb, this was just a little breeze. >> how rough does it have to be when you say i'm not going out today? >> it starts blowing like 30, 35. we like days like this because the competition says in. >> my dad used to say when you're dry, you're not making any money. >> we're fishing. >> so it's not going to snap and fly back? >> not too often. >> i hate when that happens. >> it's a bummer. in the summer, you can smell the coconut. the guys decided they like this part of the beach, so they're

all out here nude sunbathing so i pick up my glasses and tell them wow, look at the breasts on that girl. you give it to them and they see something they weren't expecting to see. works every time, though. i can't believe you didn't cook nothing. i can't believe it, man. >> what? >> anthony bourdain is on deck, and we don't have anything to eat. >> the best part of it is the anticipation to see what's in there. every toe, i'm just like i can't wait. you're looking and like what's going to be in there. sometimes it's a disappointment, but a lot of times, it's a disappointment. >> how many did we get? >> got a few. >> is there? all right. we're out. that's why it's fishing and not

catching. >> yeah. >> they'll taste all that much better. >> this place had been here forever when i rolled into town. >> a long time. >> i think this is the only place in town unchanged. >> are these paintings of customers? >> how long do i have to drink up here to get my face up there? >> a couple years. >> when i grew up,his place, the old colony, it's the only one left. >> i recognize these. >> you guys eat scallops? >> as hard-working men of the sea, we deserve these beers and oysters. >> these are fantastic. wow. what a treat. is there going to be a next generation of fisherman in the

family? what happens after you? >> the next generation of fisherman that are coming onto our boats, they're opportunists for the income. it's not for the love of the water. >> this is the end. the fishing is going to die. cheers. >> all right. >> thank you, guys. >> cheers. >> this is going to end badly. >> cheers. ♪ >> it's a nice house. i mean, it just feels like i never left in a lot of ways, but, of course, it's 40 years later, almost, and that was the soddom and ga mor ra of the sea over there. i was an angry young man. it came as a rude surprise to me when i turned 30 because i

figured i'd be dead by then. i was still quite some time from my first bag of heroin, but, you know, in a lot of ways, it was a foregone conclusion. my whole life was leading up to my first bag of dope.

i left province town with restaurant experience, a tan, an

ever deepening relationship with recreational drugs. today i'm staying in massachusetts, heading to the western part of the state, one of the most boueautiful areas o the country. mill towns, deeply felt, new england values. norman rock well america where something unexpected has happened. >> it's a new mecca for heroin use. >>over dosed. >> dealing with crimes being committed that never happened before. >> detectives are working around the clock. >> not new york or baltimore, or l.a., or chicago, but rural towns like this one are now statistically ground zero for the heroin epidemic. >> what happened? the next couple of years, if this heroin use trend continues

to grow, it may be beyond getting a handle on. i'm a detective with the greenfield police department, and my focus is under cover narcotic investigations. this is a well-known area to us. very active. >> heroin use, the past year, it's just increased to a level i've never seen any other drug come into an area. people that are in it are all affected. it hasn't topped out yet. >> someone you've known or went to school with or work with. >> so, sonny crock et gets a ferrari. what's wrong with this picture in. >> i wanted a lexus. >> it's been reported an explosion of heroin use, heroin-related crimes, overdoses. how does that happen? >> i think once this area realized we had a heroin problem, we were already behind

it, trying to play catchup. we are on the 91 corridor. rout 91 has been dubbed heroin highway. it's a widely used road to go north and south. for a little money input, they get a high profit. that's the typical heroin packaging. 50 bags here. >> $80 for ten. >> it's one dose per in. >> they'll do from three to five bags at a time. up to 30 bags a day. and the current economics of the town, i am the only one assigned to the narcotics position. >> how many heroined addicts do you think are walking the streets? >> high hundreds. >> wow. >> it's hitting every age group, economic household. it's out there. >> we don't have gang members

taking over motel rooms. the person selling you dope, more likely to be familiar than a stranger? >> we're going to meet a past distributor. i've known for several years. >> we meet a powerful local dealer turned police informant out in the woods. >> how did you get into it? >> i needed the money to support my family. i couldn't get a job. >> how easy was it to get to the dope business? >> not hard at all. it's cheap. >> was there money in it? >> oh, yeah. >> it's make may berry out here. who's using it now? >> kids. >> kids. >> today's heroin epidemic is different than the one that raves through america in the 1970s in a few ways. back then, heroin was mostly seen as a poor people problem. somebody else's problem. the sort of thing that musicians

and criminals got into. marginal people, far from the white main streets of may berry usa, but those people did to themselves, well, it was unfortunate but not our problem. until somebody broke into your house. today it's absolutely the reverse. the new addicts are almost entirely white, middle class, and from towns and areas like this. >> how do you think you make it better? >> you don't. you don't? >> no. there's going to be more robberies and killings. one person off the street, two more come in. >> at peak, how many customers did you have? >> probably all of greenfield. >> what happened? how did the kid next door along with mom, pop, and grandmother too become users of hard core illegal narcotic drugs, the worst drug with the worst hepation?

well, maybe start here. >> once you've found the right doctor, and have told him or her about your pain, don't be afraid to take what they give you. often, it will be an open yoid medicati medication. this was sent around to doctors and encouraged them to prescribe the latest most wonderful drug for long term pain management, oxycontin. . >> some people are afraid. less than 1% of patients taking these become addicted. >> sales of oxycontinue con tin skyrocketed to $3.1 billion in 2010. that same year, purdue tweaked

the way they were making it in an attempt to, they said, limit its addictive qualities. finally the government and law enforcement took a harsh look at the drug, and it became harder to get legally which sucked for the thousands and thousands who by now had a serious habit. >> i'm ruth, i'm a family physician in greenfield, massachusetts, and i grew up here. my dad was a small-town doctor. i'm a total generalist, but for the last four and a half years, a lot of my practice has been focussed on addiction. >> i can get a bag of heroin easier than a joint. >> once they start, they just slip down that rabbit hole, and maybe they make it out. that's our goal is to get them out and live healthy again. we've created this mess we're in now.

>> in downtown greenfield, the people's pint. an eco conscious pub that brews its own beer, and composts the leftovers. it's where i meet up with dr. poti for dinner. >> who's doing dope? >> everybody starts with pills. no nobody goes from marin to heroin. there's an inbetween step. it's always pills. pills that people get from their doctor. particularly the young people, had an injury, a sports related injury, and they felt awesome on the drug and they were like how can i get more of that. after three to four months of looking for it, they couldn't find it, and then they jump. >> who's fault? who made a mistake? >> i think it's complicated. i'm not going to say there's one entity here responsible, but there was a lot of money to be

made by promoting the treatment of pain to the highest level. big pharma made a lot of money in this. and i was taught you give people as much pain medicine as they need. get them them out of pain. we were also told these medicines aren't all that addictive. we started handing out pills like crazy, 100 million americans have chronic pain. we did a disservice as doctors and as prescribers. we took data that was bull, and then we went forth and side prescribe it to everybody. we didn't know what we were doing.

your loving touch stimulates his senses and nurtures his mind. the johnson's scent, lather, and bubbles help enhance the experience. so why just clean your baby, when you can give him so much more?

>> a few miles down the road. sundays, church and picnics. saturday nights, sox games, beer and bowling. this bowling alley is where time seems to have stopped. first opened in 1906. this is the second oldest bowling alley in america,

dedicated to old school pin bowling. the crowd of people who grew up in shell born, and this is a reasonable expectation to kick my butt. they've been playing here since the 50s? . >> i was never allowed to come near the bowling alley. my aunt did not think this was a good idea. >> it's a tiny ball. >> this looks really hard. >> it's very different, i grew up here. very different. people don't know each other as well as everyone used to know each other. >> when i grew up in greenfield, everybody had jobs. i worked when i was 13. if i had to go back there now, i don't believe in drugs. i don't have anything to do with them, but what choice would i

have, standing on the corner, i probably would get into a business. what's a good well-paying business. imsz. that's where we are. >> yes, it used to be a very different world, towns like this one. and there were many. but like everywhere else, it seems the mills, the factories closed down and with them a certain kind of social contract with the people who work there. >> my name is ed gregory, originally from churn us falls, born and brought up here. my father was an employee of the mill as was my grandfather. during the heyday, there were three paper mills, a cotton mill, a silk mill, a foundry. it was a beehive of activity. >> back then, the company took care of you. they built and provided homes for their employees, schools. the river provided energy. the company provided nearly everything else. >> the heyday is gone.

people are definitely struggling to find work. the town just kind of died during the 80s. >> when the folks came to work, there were immigrants. >> attracted by the manufacturing? >> right. maybe the possibility of owning a home in a decent part of the county here. so my father was here, a mill wright. they're a jack of all trades. >> you could work in a mill, live in a nice home, send your kids to home and make a living on a mill's salary. >> you bet. >> what happened to business? >> things are going to other countries but not coming back to the united states. >> it's redundant? >> correct. >> again, again, all over the country i keep running into situations like this, where

industry has died or fled or relocated. i meet people like charles, hometown heros who for some reason, though they could probably go anywhere, take their skills and return to where they grew up. shady glen diner, today's special, the new england boiled dinner. >> i hear rumors of corned beef and cabbage. >> every week we have it. slowly cooked corned beef, steamed potatoes, cooked b cabbage. >> i grew up here. it came up for sale, and i decided to give it a shot. >> who are your customers? >> most of them are retirees who have been coming here since they were 30. >> and this you don't see so much anymore. homemade pies, and lots of them. all baked on premises.

>> raspberry cream for me. this is not something that we see a lot of. old school buy like that, and this number of them. >> they're all made here, and they're all the original recipes. the index cards are all faded yellow. >> this is exotic for me. >> the drug problem has started to really get rampant. took over may 1st, 2012,, and by the end of the year, i was broken into four times. it was multiple businesses. i came in one time. i had a guy behind the register. he pulled out a knife. >> i think what you're doing is terrific. a man can come get a good sandwich and a good slice of pie, it's a beautiful thing. af, listerine® total care helps prevent cavities, strengthens teeth

and restores tooth enamel. it's an easy way to give listerine® total care to the total family. listerine® total care. one bottle, six benefits. power to your mouth™. and for kids starting at age six, listerine® smart rinse delivers extra cavity protection after brushing.

i'm a mother of three. the two older kids experienced my addiction. my addiction started with pills. i started sniffing heroin. i shot up for the first time, and shortly there later, i found out i was pregnant. i had my daughter. she was in the hospital for six weeks because she was addicted to the methadone, and i had to watch my baby go through withdrawal. my son was four, and my daughter was six weeks when they were taken away. i lost my kids for 33 days shy of two years. i became serious about my recovery. >> so is this the bad part of town, or just a place where you're unlikely for people to find you in.

>> just a place people are unlikely to find you. i wouldn't say there was a bad part of greenfield. i mean, it's probably pretty spread out bad, i guess you'd say. >> what would you do? come here and shoot up? >> yeah. we'd go down here and hang out down there. i'd bet if we walk down here, we'd find needles and bags. >> so you'd come down here and shoot up. >> just sit down and hang out, or hang out under the underpass on a day like this. >> not exactly la vida low ka. >> it's dirty and gross. there's probably people who live down here. >> really? >> yeah. there's a lot of homeless people in greenfield. >> what do you think now when you see somebody who is clearly junk sick on the street?

>> it gives me a sick feeling, and it scares me. it remind me why i don't want to be out there. it's scary. a friend of mine overdosed january 1st of this year. and my brother-in-law overdosed in a wendy's bathroom and they found him and brought him back to life. he was dead in the bathroom. so this is my for a can. i carry this around. i have one of these in my house, and i have one in my car. i have a fear that my husband is going to relapse and i'm going to find him dead. you put this in here and squirt i'm up their nose. >> in most cases, the way i understand it, nay snap out. >> and instantly sick. >> you walk to the bathroom and there's somebody blue there, you saving that life some. >> absolutely, and then kicking their ass.

>> better now? life better now? >> absolutely. my kids have been home three years. you know, i no longer have to watch my back. i live a pretty straight and narrow life. which, you know, people might say is boring, but i love my life today. i'm grateful. >> where are we headed? >> this way. to the recover project. this is where my recovery started. >> started nearly a decade ago in one of the two main streets of greenfield, the recover project is community-based. an open arms community-based program to help people stay cle clean. >> we'd like to start the conversation sharing with one another what happened at that point of our life, what that was like. >> as a child growing up in a home in addiction, i didn't understand how they could do all the stuff that they did to me and my brother and sister.

like, don't you love me enough? then i became a mother, and then i became a heroin addict, and i did that to my kids. >> my doctor was my biggest drug dealer. i was working two jobs, college on top of it. i'm on prescriptions. there's where it all began for me. >> what are the odds that you're going to own a house or have a nice car? any car? a place to live, all that stuff? seems less and less likely all the time. contrast that with what happens when you stick a spike in your arm, and why wouldn't you? >> i have this picture in my head of when i got the phone call that my daughter's father had been in the accident, and i had just had a c section, and they come in with a needle to give me drugs, and all i needed was a hug. i just needed someone to come up and give me a hug and say i care about you, and everything is going to be okay. >> i'll tell you something really shameful about myself.

the first time i shot up, i looked at myself in the mirror with a big grin. you know, something was missing in me, whether it was a self-image situation, whether it was a character flaw. i came from a stable family, the suburbs. i had a lot of advantages. there was some darkness inside of me that i hesitate to call a disease that led me to dope. i didn't have anyone else to talk me out of what i was doing. an intervention wouldn't have worked. i didn't have a child. i have a seven-year-old daughter now who i never would have thought. i looked in a mirror, and i -- i saw somebody worth saving, or that i wanted to at least try real hard and save. you know, anybody can find themselves very easily in this situation. and, you know, i look back on that, and i think about what

i'll tell my daughter. you know, that was daddy. no doubt about it, but i hope i'll be able to say that was then, and this is now, and that i'm alive and living in hope. thank you guys. >> thank you, sir. [ applause ] . oh, look. we have a bunch of...

announcer: babies who are talked to from the time they're born are more likely to have a successful future. talking and reading to children in their first years has a huge impact on what they do with the rest of their lives. the fewer words they hear, the greater their chances of dropping out of school

and getting into trouble. talk. read. sing. your words have the power to shape their world. learn more at first5california.com/parents in massachusetts, the clam bake is a ritual going back to the flinstones, before the pilgrims, today as the local shooting club, the immigrants who first started with rustic

fraternity, ray takes me through the fascinating process of creating an old-school clam bake. >> basically we build a kiln with hard, wooden stone. we burn it down. remove the wood. cover it with seaweed and corn husks, and then we put in clams, lobsters and corn like a pressure cooker. >> and a pig? >> no. we'll pull a tester out and see what we have here. >> let's eat. >> all right. >> first, some good chowder, and there really is only one kind of chowder, new england clam chowder. >> that's good. >> steamer clams, lobster, corn, potatoes. >> that's a pretty luxurious clam bake here.

>> that was amazing. >> can i have everybody's attention for a second. the opioid task force came together several months ago. i don't think we realized how quickly this could turn into a crisis for us. >> everybody in this room has been touched by narcotics in some way. the safety task force is a grass roots response. doctors, law enforcement, led by franklin county sheriff, addiction specialists and addicts themselves are coming together to find a community-based solution to what is finally being recognized as a public health crisis rather than just a criminal justice problem. >> it's a great opportunity to come here and break bread and look at the successes we've had so far. what makes me more proud than anything else about living in franklin county is that we won't sit back and wait for somebody to solve this for us. we'll be a model on how we save

our young people and our community. >> again, it's a change. the cities are the place where all the bad stuff was supposed to happen. it wasn't supposed to be nice towns like greenfield. it isn't the image that people used to have 20 years ago that it's a junkie in an alley using a needle. it's your kids, neighbors. >> divorce, i think is when you have these young people who break a leg and they go to the doctor and get a prescription for oxyand become addicted. this is any kid in a high school sport. >> it's only started in the past couple of years. the heroin was around. pills were around, but we didn't have people dying. >> once you've been busted for heroin, that's a hard thing to live down. >> got to get rid of that shame to people can address it. >> i feel like we're going to lose a generation of our young people. the district attorney the

sheriff, myself, the police department are all united. the task force has grown to over 100 people in over six months. that's what we're committed to doing. >> having lost one daughter to drugs, you know, whatever it takes. >> let's start by being honest with ourselves. as a nation, for decades, we were perfectly happy to write off whole neighborhoods, whole cities, whole generations of young men and women. as long as it was an inner city problem, an urban problem which is to say send them to prison. into a system from which they will never return. maybe now, now it has come home to roost, now it is the high school quarterback or next door neighbor son or daughter, now that grandma is likely to be a junkie, we will accept there has never been a real war on drugs. war on drugs implies an us

versus them. all over this part of america, people are learning there is no them. there is only us. we have to figure this out together. dramatic developments in the race for president. donald trump and carson are facing new criticisms for what they are saying will muslims. and two americans held hostage in yemen. they are free this morning. a night of firsts at the emmys. historic wins and records broken. what a night. good morning. welcome to "early start." i'm christine romans. >> i'm john berman. monday, september 21st. new controversy in the race for president this morning. ben carson says a muslim