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Addiction Activists Say They're 'Reducing Harm' Locals Say They're Causing It

Addicts have turned a minority neighborhood into an open-air drug market. Residents blame the mostly white advocates for ‘destroying’ their community.

In early March, Oregon became the first state in the nation to both decriminalize and then recriminalize hard drugs after voters realized the level of chaos they’d unleashed by making possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine a civil matter in November 2020. Even as Skid Row in L.A. and San Francisco’s Tenderloin steal the headlines, Pat Trainor, a DEA agent who has been witnessing the problem in Philadelphia for the past 26 years, told me, “I know of no other area that has been more adversely impacted by the opioid epidemic than Kensington.” But today is a good day because she and her partner, Pete, are headed to the railroad tracks for “a picnic.” Once or twice a month, they like to take the money Prevention Point gives them in return for obtaining certain vaccines or medications to buy a bunch of snacks, like Pringles and a Gatorade.

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