Feature - Opiate Addiction in America, Chapter Two: Philadelphia's Forgotten
Jerome Sessini
Kensington, North-East Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Back in the 50's, the neighborhood was a thriving workers’ enclave nationally famous for creating hats, cigars, and a stable blue-collar life.
Nowadays, more than half the population lives below the poverty line, 2.5 times the rate of the rest of Philadelphia. For decades, Kensington is a destination from afar, the country for heroin users, where they can find some of the cheapest and purest heroin in the USA.
In the streets, drug dealers compete with one another to sell heroin, some laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 80 times more...
