Bad Rap “Heroin City” reputation unfair, according to the Baltimore Sun
“A long-standing challenge is the lack of well-paying jobs,” asserts Marbella and Rentz. “It is simply more lucrative to sell drugs.”
Conflicting stories In the year 2000, the DEA found Baltimore to have the highest per capita heroin addiction rate in the country. Of Baltimore’s 645,000 people, the city’s Department of Health estimates there to be 60,000 drug addicts with about 48,000 addicted to heroin. Such numbers, though, “are imprecise given the nature of the drug market and the difficulty of surveying heavy heroin users.”, warn Baltimore Sun reporters Jean Marbella and Catherine Rentz in a detailed investigative report. The National Geographic documentary Drugs, Inc. used the 60,000 addicts data to “support their sensationalizing-sounding assertion that Baltimore is the Heroin Capital of America,” says The Sun’s Rodricks. “Since then city health officials have come up with what they believe to be a far better-and much lower-estimate, based on an extrapolation of data collected in a comprehensive federal survey.That estimate is about 11,000 heroin users.” (2014.)
”Despite all efforts, Baltimore can’t shake its reputation as a degenerate, violent Heroin City” claims Dan Rodricks of The Baltimore Sun. The Drug Enforcement Agency found Baltimore to be the city with the worst of America’s heroin problem in the year 2000, but heroin has plagued the area since long before then. Director of the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program Tom Carr told ABC News Baltimore’s heroin problem began in the 1950’s. “It’s an old heroin town.There is an appetite for heroin in Baltimore... It’s accepted by all too many people down there as something that’s normal behavior,” says Carr to ABC News. “It’s almost a rite of passage for some.” Baltimore, Heroin Capital, USA - that’s what ABC News calls the beleaguered city in a two part report – The city still has a growing problem with heroin users and dealers.The problem is so bad, it sustains a large and profitable underground market.
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