Why Is Opiate Addiction a Major problem in Baltimore?

Note: Posted for Noah Dubnow

Most people who think of Baltimore don't associate it with opiate addiction or any other forms of drug addiction. Why would they? If your not looking for drugs your probally not going to find them in most situations. However, people who do experiment with drugs or are arround that particular crowd of people all go to the same place to get their drugs of choice; Baltimore City. A CNN article reads "The steady stream of people picking up clean hypodermic needles on a recent Friday morning in Baltimore is one indication the Maryland city has perhaps the nation's highest rate of herion addiction." According to Baltimore's health commissioner, Dr. Peter Beilenson, "Of the city's 650,000 residents, an estimated 60,000 use illegal drugs...About one out of every ten adults, he said, And for about three quarters of them, the primary drug of choice is herion... Baltimore is actually a multi-generation herion city, which breaks down to grandparents, parents, and grandchildren that have all used herion," says Beilenson("CNN U.S." 1-2). According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, "Maryland, particularly Baltimore, has one of the most serious herion abuse problems in the nation" ("Herion-Maryland Drug Threat Assessment").

I personaly didnt grow up in Baltimore city, I grew up in a private neighborhood in the suburbs for the most part. However, through out high school I meet a good childhood friend who lived in Baltimore city in the depth of drug addiction and crime. Whenever I would pick her up or go over her house to hang out I would drive down strips of broken down, foreclosed homes that were littered with broken bottles and trash; at the time I thought nothing of it untill I stopped to get gas on a few occassions and was confronted by a man on a bike who was trying to sell me crack and herion. The first time this happened I just kinda brushed it off as a weird experiance. However, this happened to me a few more times after, either at stop lights, while walking down the street with my friend, or while I was filling up my tank at the gas station. I eventually put one and one togeather and figured out that it wasnt just a weird coincidence that I kept being approached by people trying to sell me drugs on multiple occasions while driving through certain areas of Baltimore city.

One of the defining factors that predespose people to opiate and drug addiction is the enviorment and upbringing that they are brought into. If people are being brought up in a house where their mother or father or both are drug users and a enviorment that condones drug use they have a stronger predisposition to drug use or addiction. According to a CNN article "some people blame the city's 45,000 herion users on poverty. Others arent certain why the drug has become so entrenched that it's handed down along family lines ("CNN U.S." 1-2)."According to The Informed Reader, "One key diffrence, say crime analysts, is that the herion wave that first hit the U.S. in the late 1960s never dissipated in Baltimore. 'There are very few cities where herion plays as signigicant of a role,' says Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum" ("How Heroin Fuels Baltimore's

Stubborn Homicide Rate" 1-3). Others belive that enviorment and upbringing have little to nothing to do to with addiction. AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) both belive that a addict or alcoholic isnt made from the drugs they use or the alcohol they abuse, but born into the world as a addict or alcoholic. It is belived among these people that it is the behaviors that define a addict rather then the drugs. The behaviors that lead these people to use drugs or alcohol to escape their problems and cope with life untill they no longer know how to live life without drugs or alcohol.

works cited

"Baltimore: A city succumbling to herion." CNN U.S.. 09/22/2000: 1-2. Web. 18 Sep. 2011.http://articles.cnn.com/2000-09-22/us/herion.baltimore.

"Heroin." Herion-Maryland Drug Threat Assessment. National Drug Intelligence Center, 08/2002. Web. 09/17/2011. http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs1/1827/heroin.htm.

How Heroin Fuels Baltimore's Stubborn Homicide Rate. 01/02/2008: 1-3. Web. 18 Sep. 2011. <http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2008/01/02/heroin-fuels-baltimores>.