Streets of Philadelphia: Those caught in US fentanyl crisis say solutions lie at home, not in China
- Trump administration has focused on Chinese production of the synthetic opioid
- But users in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighbourhood say the real fight is demand, not supply
It was windy, bitterly cold and just after 9am on a recent Sunday morning in Philadelphia’s northeastern neighbourhood of Kensington, but the area was brimming with activity.
A man, bent double, vomited into the street. A drug dealer called a friend to warn him of an unmarked police car doing the rounds. Men mumbled “works, works, works” at passengers disembarking from the city’s elevated “El” train, indicating they had needles to sell. A passing police car honked to disperse them, but didn’t stop.
To some, Kensington will always be known as the home of Rocky Balboa, Hollywood’s boxing hero whose fight against adversity captivated audiences around the world. But to Robert Reif, 62, a US Army veteran and Kensington resident who manages the Last Stop, a community rehab centre, this area is “ground zero” in a very different battle.
The unseen enemy in Reif’s metaphor is fentanyl, the potent synthetic opioid that is fuelling a public health crisis in American cities like Philadelphia, where in 2017 it was the primary killer among the city’s 1,217 overdoses. In the words of community outreach worker David Tomlinson, himself a survivor of a fentanyl overdose, the drug is “literally decimating an entire generation of humans”.
Thousands of miles away from Kensington, pharmaceutical labs in China prepare shipments of the white powder that ultimately end up on the streets of the United States, where, according to the National Safety Council, you are now more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a motor vehicle crash.
At 50 times the strength of heroin, small amounts of fentanyl can go a long way; 2 milligrams – just several flecks of the white powdered substance – is enough to kill an adult.
