Epicenter of fentanyl. We went to the worst district in the USA [REPORTAŻ]
Standing gospel music resounds from the speakers, hundreds of men, women and children are looking forward to entering. This Sunday morning Los Angeles Mission – one of the largest shelters for the homeless in the city – organizes a party. Inside there is free food and clothing, and smartphones are even distributed.
Enock has just been cut by a volunteer. He was recently released from prison and is currently looking for a place in a homeless shelter. Says that It is dangerous on the street: people steal, gangs cause problems. This afternoon clearly contrasts with everyday life behind the center's door. With what outside, probably The worst slums of the USA – Skid Row.
There, the tents are placed in rows, old clothes and rubbish spill out of store prams. People are lying on asphalt or stand paralyzed on the spot, leaning into narcotic dementia. They call it “zombie walk”. You can feel urine everywhere. Access to sanitary devices did not meet UN standards a few years ago.
Homelessness and drugs
According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, about 63,000 each night. people in Los Angeles remain without shelter. And this number is growing. This is almost as much as in all of Germany. In 2023, only 900 homeless people died in this city. Many of them because of fentanyl – a drug that floods the USA.
– After six months, a mental injury develops on the street. The brain is changing – says Monique Alvarado, who has been working as a manager of the project in Los Angeles Mission for over three years. He knows the difficult everyday life of people on the streets. Already after 40 hours of homelessness, the sleep cycle is disturbed and the constant standby appears. The energy level required for ordinary survival often exhausts at noon. This leads many people to drug addiction.
Alvarado describes how the so -called “Plan to stop” contributed to the state of the district. In the 70s, attempts were made to create a situation in which everyone wins: homeless people and low -income people will find in Skid ROW protected infrastructure of social housing and catering outlets, while investors and tourists will not have to feel bad in more wealthy districts. Even today, tents that serve coffee and soup are located by various non -governmental organizations.
Later, the city installed increased street lighting on the borders of Skid ROW to create a psychological barrier and better monitor the movement of the homeless. However, it developed in the district Spiral of crime and violence.
Tents in the Skid Row district in Los Angeles, June 2023.
Vicious circle
In 2000, the police tried to deal with her particularly strongly. The “policy of broken windows” was aimed at immediately punishing for minor crimes, such as broken windows or graffiti. It was about creating environment that discouraged crime and vandalism. The result was filled with prisons and mass entries in the registers of crimes that scared off employers and made even more people in the crisis of homelessness.
Today, Skid Row is a tolerance zone. He describes two policemen with frustration in an interview with “Die Welt” their daily work. People constantly break the law before their eyes. However, in court this rarely leads to serious criminal consequences. Arrest for possession of drugs or their public use? This “would only mean a lot of paperwork and it would not lead to anything.”
Skid Row has evolved into Open drug market. Gangs have announced that part of the district is a zone of peace to divert attention from interests. People who face homelessness are used as intermediaries. – For drug dealers, Skid Row is a testing ground, which works how products work. They are not interested in the suffering of people – says one of the policemen.
First aid
The increase in the popularity of fentanyl is a new level of escalation. The price for 1 kg is about 12 thousand. hole. (PLN 48 thousand). At the same time, heroin costs from 30,000 up to 50,000 hole. (from PLN 120,000 to PLN 201,000). Fentanyl, however, has a much stronger effect. Already the amount comparable to the head from the pin can lead to fatal overdose.
Reports of fentanyl are also increasingly appearing in Germany. According to Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, as part of a few months of testing, its traces were detected in 3.6 percent. Heroin samples that were taken in drug consumption rooms. However, this is still not much compared to the USA, where Careless rewriting of opioids was driven by millions of people into drug addiction, and the whole country in a serious crisis. Last year, US President Joe Biden personally negotiated an agreement with the Chinese leader XI Jinping to stop the influx of raw materials from China.
To reduce the number of drugs related to drugs, Nalloxon is increasingly used in Los Angeles. The drug – administered in the form of a nasal aerosol – acts as a first aid in the event of an overdose of fentanyl. In Los Angeles, he is advertised in Instagram relations, distributed at the bar in clubs or issued in vending machines.
Like fruit on trees
In Skid Row, pink containers with medicine are glued to trees like fruits that can be quickly broken in emergency. Policemen say that sterile needles are also attached there. – The law says: If you take drugs in a public place, you can be arrested. On the other hand, the government is distributing syringes and pipes for crack. Does this really say to citizens: keep from a distance? – notes the officer.
Packaging with nokloxon on trees in Skid Row
David Holmes distributes a few streets away at his stand on American health insurance. He believes that the area is neglected, but it is not very dangerous during the day. In the last four years “only twice saw someone shooting with a weapon.” However, since the pandemic of Coronavirus, Skid Row is still decaying.
California also played a role in this. On the one hand, the weather attracts homeless from American cities, such as Chicago, where They would freeze to death in winter. On the other hand, liberal policy encourages people in crisis benefits that are more generous compared to other places in the USA. According to statistics, about a third of all homeless people in the United States live on the west coast.
Everyone who earns less than 20 thousand hole. (PLN 80,000), for example, can qualify for “Medi-Cal”-California version of the state healthcare. In the 1990s, the form of a payment card was also introduced. But even in the case of food vouchers and a small amount of possible cash payments, the drug market managed to develop.
“People just can't get out of this swamp”
Ultimately, drug addiction is always indicated by volunteers, policemen and homeless people as main problem. “I think many people have given up here,” says Holmes. “People just can't get out of this swamp,” he adds.
To receive a place in a homeless shelter, applicants must be “cleaned” for a specified time. Monique Alvarado, who works in Los Angeles Mission, believes that this is one of the biggest obstacles.
– Some people They voluntarily decide to live on the street. Everyday life in the centers is strictly regulated: no drugs, established hours of meals and night rest – he explains. He looks at the park behind the police cordon at the festival, where the homeless smoke crack.
“Not everyone can do it,” he adds.
