focused on the high-level drug traffickers, not the guys working the streets, but the arrests did little to curb the growing demand. The police have realized that they can’t arrest the problem away, and they spend many of their calls reviving drug addicts with Narcan, an overdose-reversal spray. The Philadelphia prison system has become the largest provider of drug treatment in the city.
Most corners were run by small, unaffiliated groups of dealers, making the area difficult to police if a dealer was arrested, there was always someone there to replace him. Kensington’s decentralized market kept competition high and prices low. In the early 2000s, Dominican gangs started bringing in Colombian heroin that was not only purer but much cheaper than heroin imported from Asia, which historically predominated. Eunice Sanchez, a local pastor, put it more succinctly: the area, she said, was the “Walmart of heroin.” “We have not only people from other parts of the state,” Trainor said, “we have people from other parts of the country who come here.” Every year, “drug tourists” from all over the United States visit Kensington for the heroin. In 2017, 236 people fatally overdosed there. The neighborhood is part of the largest cluster of overdose deaths in the city. The city’s Department of Health estimates that 75,000 residents are addicted to heroin and other opioids, and each day, many of them commute to Kensington to buy drugs. Philadelphia County has the highest overdose rate of any of the 10 most populous counties in America. In Philadelphia, deaths related to fentanyl had increased by 95 percent in the past year. For years, the heroin being sold in Kensington was pure enough to snort, but that summer, it was mixed with unpredictable amounts of fentanyl. It’s known for having both the cheapest and purest heroin in the region and is a major supplier for dealers in Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland. In the summer of 2017, when I first toured the area with Patrick Trainor, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, he called Kensington the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast. “I knew then that I wasn’t going to leave,” he said. The addiction was too powerful and the withdrawal too excruciating.
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“It was like the alien in the movie was going to pop out of my chest, things I’ve never experienced going through detox before.” They tried dosing themselves with Suboxone, a synthetic opioid that eases the pain of withdrawal. “I’ve never been so sick in my life,” Mark said. The withdrawal was the worst Mark and Sarah had ever gone through. But the heroin had been cut with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that the couple had never taken before. Mark was used to the high he got from drugs in Massachusetts, but this was different. And the heroin in Kensington was very cheap. A friend taught him to shoot up heroin because it was a lot cheaper than taking painkillers. Mark got addicted to oxycodone after he was injured by an I.E.D. Some people lay on the ground looking dead.
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They stuck needles in their arms, necks and the skin between toes.
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Many people smoked crack or meth or injected heroin. The dealers were all out in the open, calling out brand names, even handing out free samples.
Missing-person posters hung from storefront windows. Kensington Avenue, the neighborhood’s main drag, was a congested mess of Chinese takeouts, pawn shops, check-cashing joints and Irish pubs. Most of the blocks were lined with two-story rowhouses, abandoned factories and vacant lots. The streetlights were broken or dim, and the alleyways were dark. Mark had never heard of it, but it was easy to find, not too far off I-95. Mark got out his phone and Googled “really bad drug areas.” A neighborhood in Philadelphia came up: Kensington. In New Jersey, they needed to buy more drugs, just enough to make it to Myrtle Beach. They had been on their way from Massachusetts to South Carolina, hoping to get clean there and find someplace cheap to live. The first time Mark shot up “Philly dope” was in the summer of 2017, with his girlfriend, Sarah.
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