The article summarizes about a region neighbourhood to Philadelphia that has the largest heroin air narcotics market based on the East Coast. There is a flow of people looking for the ‘rare drug' to the extent of having ‘drug tourist.’ Percy (2018) gives a detailed account of some of the drug addicts that are based in the area. The reasons behind them were having to end up in the place and get overly addicted. The state of the place and how it is undeveloped due to the selfishness, failures of the mind and psychological reasons of the drug addicts in the area.
Mark and his girlfriend Sarah were having fun and presuming to use injection drugs once and later on detox on their way to Massachusetts. However, they required more drugs enough to sail them where they wanted to go. On searching on Google a place that they could get the drugs with the keywords ‘really bad drug areas' they got to know about Kensington (Percy, 2018). When they got there, they found out dealers selling the drugs out in the open shouting in brand names and even offering free samples. The site of the place was filled with people injecting themselves smoking crack or laying on the ground looking dead.
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Mark was pushed to drugs after he was injured by an I.E.D. a time when he had been deployed to Iraq. Through the assistance of a friend, he learned ways of shooting up heroin since it was a lot more economical than the painkillers. Kensington had a very cheap type of heroin. It was about $5 per bag. Mark had used the drug and got used to it from Massachusetts and also thought that the one in Kensington was real heroin. They were surprised that it had been cut with a mixture of fentanyl, a form of synthetic opioid which they had never consumed before.
Getting to withdraw from the drug an experience they described as the worst they have ever undergone. The area is known to have a market for the purest and cheapest heroin in the area and is a significant supplier to States such as Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland. The heroine in the area had been pure until that summer when it was mixed with unpredictable forms of fentanyl. Deaths caused by fentanyl had risen to about ninety-five per cent in a previous year. Philadelphia County has been highlighted for having the highest overdose rate contrasted to the ten most populous counties in the United States. The Health Department in the city has estimated the number of addicted residents to be 75,000 and commute to Kensington to buy drugs (Percy, 2018). The Philadelphian hub that has been observed as a cluster of overdose deaths; in 2017 an estimated number of 236 people overdosed.
Kensington turned out to be a drug zone when the place was deindustrialized in the 1950s. When the white populations fled to occupy the suburbs, Hispanic and African-Americans seized the site, and since there were very few invests coming in from the city, the drug market saw an opportunity to fill the economic vacuum. The houses in the area were converted into drug dens, the factories into places that they could shoot up and the rail yards were transformed into homeless encampments (Percy, 2018). Many of the people there were immigrants who had come to the place looking for better pastures and had no means to move.
Percy (2018) of the article expresses a need that should be addressed. It gives an account of the state of Kensington in a vivid manner showing that the people in the area need help. The article talks more and in detail about the homeless and drug addiction with succinctly highlighting the Hispanic and African-Americans. While it displays the mere need of the people, who are poor and homeless no solution is provided regarding some essential techniques that could be employed to ease the situation in Kensington. The article is beautifully written and profoundly moving from a sympathetic perspective. Percy (2018) is appealing to the public in an empathetic manner through the showing of images of the people who have been affected with the use and addiction of the drugs.
The in-depth story came to me as new information; it got me thinking of how some of the "homeless" issues in my state will turn out to be if the drug epidemic is not addressed sooner or later. I was intrigued by how advertised-as-safe drugs, for instance, Oxycontin that is usually approved by the FDA and other misleading markets that are mainly marketed by Purdue and Mallinckrodt, push users down the path to use heroin (Percy, 2018). The article indicates what a death sentence looks like if heroin is in play, not only for the users but also the community members from where the users inhabit.
The article left a couple of questions, such as how do we as a supposedly civilized and advanced society permit this to take place? Looking at the “2001 decriminalization law,” a drug dealer that by chance caught with less than a ten day supply of any drug should be given a mandatory medical treatment that should not have any judge, courtroom or jail. The question is where the compulsory medical treatment will take place?
Reference
Percy, J. (2018, October 10). Trapped by the 'Walmart of Heroin.' Retrieved November 7, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/magazine/kensington-heroin-opioid-philadelphia.html
