A more recent statistic, compiled by The Baltimore Sun from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s 2015 heroin task force and a 2014 study by the RAND Corp. done for the White House, found the number of heroin users to be around 19,000 with about 9,500 chronic users. This group, the collective effort finds, spends an estimated $165 million on drugs a year.Though The Baltimore Sun acknowledges the inexact way these numbers are generated, it reports that when it comes to the amount of money spent on heroin, “experts say the actual valuation is likely much higher because of money spent by the occasional user.” Show me the money A large part of the problem stems from the fact that people are “making eye-popping sums in their chosen profession of heroin dealing,” says Marbella and Rentz of The Baltimore Sun. Searches of stash houses have found sums of money in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.That level of money is maintained by top earners,The Baltimore Sun finds. ‘Corner boys,’ a name for people who sell on the street, make as little as minimum wage according to economists, write Marbella and Rentz. Unfortunately, according to The Baltimore Sun, there is a vicious cycle of the lowest paid people in the drug trade resorting to being “corner boys,” which then leads to arrests and convictions, thus making them less appealing to legitimate sources of income, so they end up going back to selling drugs, most likely near their homes.
Oftentimes, these individuals are heroin addicts themselves. ABC News reports how much it can cost to keep up the habit. Some recovering addicts, the report found, were spending $50 or $140 dollars a day. “A long-standing challenge is the lack of well-paying jobs,” assert Marbella and Rentz. “It is simply more lucrative to sell drugs.” It’s all where you live The website TheFix.com reports heroin consumers and dealers are growing every year and are concentrated in lower income neighborhoods.The Fix reports and attributes an element of the distressing heroin problem to the city’s location. It’s in the middle of the East Coast and a port town, making it an easy and quick stop for traffickers heading up and down the coast. In 2013, writes The Fix, custom agents seized 128 pounds of cocaine making its way to Baltimore from Panama and China. Neighboring states have similar problems. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) made the heroin issue a big part of his 2014 State of the State address and Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D) called the heroin issue an emergency, writes The Washington Post. “The state’s heroin problem is likely a lot worse than most Marylanders think.That’s one of the conclusions from the state’s emergency task force on heroin and opioids,” says Marbella of The Baltimore Sun. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he would declare a state of emergency to end the heroin problem.
task force. “I think it’s just going to shine more light on the subject. It’s going to make people pay more attention to it.” “Every state on the East Coast has declared a state of emergency except Maryland - and Maryland has the worst problem,” Hogan told reporters as governor-elect during a state Republican Party convention. “We’re going to do it,” says Hogan about organizing a heroin specific
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