Carjacking and Fentanyl: Down and Out in Philadelphia & St. Louis
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Summer 2018, Philadelphia. A single weekend in July. 173 people overdose on a bad batch of heroin. At least 10 die. Dope is laced with fentanyl and one of the chemical components of spice, or K2.

They call this batch's brand Santa Muerte, or Saint Death. This is unfortunately the reality of Philadelphia, especially in the northeast neighborhood of Kensington, said to have the largest open-air drug market east of the Mississippi, though likely it's the U.S.'s biggest one, too. For years, it's been the drop-off point for the purest heroin in the U.S. So-called drug tourists from all over the states go there to do it. Wholesalers from all over the region pick up their supplies there.

If you want to, you can just go on YouTube and type in Kensington. And there's videos on there with millions of hits. Just a GoPro attached to a car, driving up and down the blocks. And the despair and suffering is evident. I went down there a few months ago, had a law enforcement source who wanted to show me around. And it's just blocks and blocks and blocks of addicts. Many in bad shape, just the walking dead. It's the only place I've ever seen multiple people on the sidewalk of Big Avenues openly injecting into their neck in the span of 10 minutes.

The Dope Boy lookouts call out Bajando when they see us rolling through. On the side streets off the main avenues, that's where they set up shop. That corner brings in $30K a shift. That one might bring in a million a week, a source tells me. 3100 Jasper, there's three crews on three blocks, easily bringing in a million dollars a week on these narrow streets of tightly packed row houses. Then there's Budenot and Cambria, one of the biggest drug corners on the East Coast, said to bring in multiple millions a week.

It's nothing too new. It's been a drug market for decades, and the city seems at a loss to stop it. In recent years, though, things have only gotten worse. Overdoses are going way up, and some estimates say that a billion dollars is flowing through the neighborhood. And there's one major reason for both of those things. Fentanyl. This is The Underworld Podcast. Welcome back to The Underworld Podcast, where we teach you that even fentanyl dealers don't want you wearing your outdoor shoes in the house. See you here.

I am your host, Danny Gold, and with me, as always, is Sean Williams. We are two journalists that have worked all over doing occasionally interesting things, and every week, we bring you a new story about organized crime, criminal things, and all that.

As always, bonus stuff is on the Patreon, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast for a small donation. And we have merch like the should be famous. Don't Instagram your crimes, t-shirt and hoodie on our website at underworld pod.com slash merch. I won for your favorite jail rapper. I just have insert Sean comment here. Okay. Cool. Well, I mean, yeah, this, like this episode is reaching us both. Like we're both against it up against it. Right. I'm off to the States next week.

When you just moved to Texas and deadlines coming out of both our asses is the worst of times, best of times. And who knows if those sneaky Russians come across the Ukraine border, I think I might be sent out there to take selfies in a flak jacket, just like all the other correspondents out in Luhansk at the moment. I would add just to keep on the IG soon, guys, because we're going to be doing a merch giveaway there.

And I'm going to do a little something a little different for the Patreon next week, which I think folks are going to really enjoy. Is there anything else? Do I have to be trying to be funny or something here? No, it won't work anyway. But yeah, I know we harp on the Patreon. But if you guys don't get those numbers up, we're just going to start doing like, you know, Clinton crime family or Trump crime family episodes to lower in those politics dollars. Because, you know, we'll do what it takes and it'll be your fault, you know?

For first-time listeners, this episode is actually a little different than what we normally do. I almost said this is like a very special episode, like we're a 90s sitcom, except I don't think they really tackled even the risky ones like fentanyl and carjackings. But yeah, how about that title, right? How about that title? Every garbage politics podcast is talking about 1984 every other week, but we want to reference when Orwell was in the slums with the swindlers and sex workers and gnarliest of all, waitstaff.

But yeah, where was I going with this? Transparency, right. We actually had a special guest lined up to do an episode on one of the biggest narcos to ever exist. Sort of like how we did the Otoniel episode with Toby, but he had a last minute thing. And like I said, Sean and I are both kind of busy. So we figured, I figured I'd throw something together on a couple of recent reporting trips and research I've done, especially since there are hot button issues and people do love when you get to throw the words on the ground around, right? Like authenticity, right?

So I slapped together this episode. It might be all over the place. I may get things wrong, which again, if I do as always yell at Sean on Twitter about it, not me. You mean you slapped this together like one of your docos? My documents are incredible and I should have 12 Emmys, but you know, I don't know. I'd rant against the industry, but I don't want to steal Jake's dick. Anyway.

Sorry, this is taking a long time to get to where we're going. Overdose rates are insane in the U.S. right now. I'm sure you guys have seen. Over 100,000 people died in 2021, which I believe is a record. And the primary driver of that is fentanyl. And I happen to have been in St. Louis in January doing a deeply reported doc on the subject. The murder rate in the U.S. in a lot of cities is also rocketing sky high. It's also become a hot button issue with regards to criminal justice and policing and sussing out what the drivers to it are. There's

There's endless debates and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, and on a similar note, I just read Empire of Pain, the Patrick Radden Keefe book about the Sacklers and the opioid crisis, like how this stuff goes on the palace intrigue right at the top of the tree. I'd recommend. I'll get him on the Patreon to talk about it soon. But yeah, I'm really excited to see what you've been picking up the last few weeks because you've been all over the place. Yeah, Sam Quinones' book, too, Dreamland, I think goes into that a bit. It came out years ago, but it's excellent.

And I think probably the one city that I think is really at the center of that surge in violence is Philadelphia, not just drugs too, right? I mean, Philly has long been a violent city, but they just had their highest murder total ever, like higher than even during the 1990s crack era and by a lot. The previous highest murder total there was 500, I think, in the early 90s. Maybe they were close two years ago too. They had 560 murders in 2021, which is, I mean, insane, right? It's a war zone.

And this episode is going to kind of be similar to Murder City St. Louis one I did way back when we talked about how St. Louis had the highest murder rate total in America. Now in 2020, they had their highest ever. I think it was 260. But 2021, it actually went back to where it was in 2017, 2018 in the 190s, which, you know, it's still awful, but it's a huge improvement to where it had been in 2020. So good on them.

Good on the people there for getting that down. But to give some perspective on Philadelphia, New York's murder total has jumped from below 300 to around 450. And there's been just a massive amount of attention and debate devoted towards it. I mean, which there should be, right? But it's still far lower than the highs of 1991, 1992, which were above 2000. Philly's, like I said, the highest it's ever been. And 2013, 2014, they had less than 250 murders. So it kind of shows you where it's at right now.

And I just, I produced the video piece there on the city just kind of, you know, being insane. That was basically the pitch. But unfortunately couldn't go on the shoot, so I just set everything up.

But after the St. Louis episode aired, I actually got reached out to by someone in Philly law enforcement telling me that I had to come down there to see what's going on because the city was just out of control. And that was, it was all like pretty much, you know, on background. It wasn't for like a story. He just was like, you should see what's going on here. I think it's pretty cool. The people who reach out to us for these shows, like we have, you have law enforcement, we have like real street dudes from across the world. We're getting emails from public defenders, emails from prosecutors, you know, like everything and everyone, man. I think, yeah,

I take it as a testament that we're doing something right. Oh, yeah, for sure. And next week's episode actually came straight from a guy who reached out to us too. And he was born in Moldova and I definitely did not meet that guy out back of a Berlin casino. Definitely not. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that too. I don't think there's been, I don't want to spoil it, but there's been no English language reporting. None. Crazy story. On that at all. Yeah, it's going to be excellent.

Um, I actually, so I did go down to Philly to get a ride along with this guy, get some of that perspective a couple months ago. But to understand Philly too, I think, or to at least understand it best as you can without being there and intricately involved, there's two really good long-form articles. One is by Alec McGinnis for ProPublica that goes deep into the gun violence there. It came out in mid-2021. And one is from a few years back by Jen Percy in the New York Times mag that really goes deep on the drug trade there.

on the Kensington neighborhood, you know, what issues have cropped up, what they've tried to do to stem that, that flow. And that was part of, you know, what I went to check out.

And Kensington is just, it's nuts. I mean, they do call it the biggest open-air drug market on the East Coast. But I looked around and couldn't find any references to the biggest open-air drug market in the U.S. or on the West Coast or Western Mississippi, however you want to say it. But maybe Skid Row in LA. I don't know. I don't think they've got the million-dollar corners just operating in the open right there like Kensington does. I've also just never seen so many people just openly injecting into their necks on main avenues. It's really tragic. And I don't mean to...

to make light of it at all. You know, when I say stuff like walking dead, because that is how it feels. And I don't mean it to be disparaging. It's just really, it's something, man. And it's really a shame. And just block after block of people shooting up, dozing off, nodding out. And they actually do call it hamsterdam down there. Yeah, that word was ringing in my ears as you were going through that. I mean, also million dollar corners. What, like what is going on? That's insane. I can't believe that. That's how much business is being done. And if you search on YouTube, like I said,

There's dozens of videos that just kind of show that scene there. People in really bad shape. And it's tragic.

Kensington is where the cheapest, purest heroin, like in the US, at least in the Northeast, flows in. And you got dealers from Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland. They're copping wholesale there, as well as up to an estimated 75,000 addicts buying daily. Oh my God. Also, you definitely need some Hackney Magazine article comparison for that. Like, I don't know. Imagine the whole population of Daytona Beach or Andorra walking around like zombies. Yeah, it's a... My rates are really competitive.

Yeah. And people, people come from all over. They also have, like I said, the drug tourists, people who come from out of state just to set up shop there and cop. And in Percy's article, there's actually a guy who comes from Texas because he saw a national geographic documentary on it in from like 2013. I should also say,

The Percy article mentioned is from 2018, right? So there's a lot about crack and meth and how fentanyl is encroaching there. But these days, there's a lot more fentanyl. And I actually got taken to like, you know, the one dust corner too, which still sells dust, which is, you know, a nice niche specialized market. But yeah. Shit.

Kensington, it's right off I-95. Massive highways like that. They always facilitate the drug trade, especially when it connects big cities. And, you know, you're on the way to Philly, D.C., New York and all that there. I've actually been to this hood. Like I interviewed Bernard Hopkins in Philly a lifetime ago and the area was awful, like crumbling blocks and boarded up row houses, like those old photos of the Bronx that you see. I mean, like American poverty is so nuts, man. It's like nothing else in the world.

Yeah, it's the history there. It's very similar to North St. Louis. It's this blue collar factory neighborhood. But of course, the job shut down there when manufacturing leaves. The neighborhood gets kind of walled off in a way, segregated. White flight happens. Poor black and Hispanics move in and resources get deprived and so on and so on. Here's a quote from a random GeoCities website I really liked. Yeah, that's how we do our sources right here.

One thing about Kensington that never goes disputed is that it was once a vibrant, bustling industrial center of Philadelphia. The factories and mills were known for their textiles. This is the vein in which Kensington established itself against the backdrop of the city.

But it was a reputation that would eventually be diminished as deindustrialization in Philadelphia led to significant population loss, high unemployment rates, rapid economic decline, and neighborhood and housing abandonment. It's a familiar narrative, I think, that we've discussed on the podcast a bunch, especially when it comes to some cities in the U.S., especially Rust Belt ones with high crime levels. Way back when, it used to be known primarily for being a working-class Irish neighborhood. In the 19th century, big on textiles, especially carpets.

The 1950s is when the factories start getting shut down and the resources disappear and the abandoned buildings start and the joblessness. Then you get the drugs and the gangs. Before the current drug gangs, it had a history of Irish gangs dominating the underworld there. Most infamous was the K&A gang, which was named after a street corner. It started off robbing places and then started selling speed.

I actually never knew this before I started researching, but Philadelphia had a pretty crazy reputation for meth in the 80s. No, you don't think of meth as being an urban drug, but yeah, right there. I think that gang eventually became known as the Northeast Philly Mob and had connections with the usual Italian affiliates and all that. You know, my source said it really kicked off there in the 80s, the drug trade.

And then Kensington was one of the areas that got hit in the 90s with perks and being everywhere. And then Oxy, you know, it wasn't just West Virginia and Ohio, right? They came to Kensington too. It's also one of the first places fentanyl really hit the U.S. And is this stuff, is that the stuff coming over from China or South America? It's all coming from Mexico, but the precursors, everything gets shipped from China to Mexico where it's cooked up and then brought into the U.S. Right.

And I think I talk about this later on. I think I had a note, but I do want to do a big episode on, on fentanyl and how everything works there. You know, just really get into the details. I think Ben Westhoff wrote one of the better books on it and we'll probably use that as a source, but this is not going to be that episode. Just this whole fentanyl trade and all that. I think we're just going to get into some interesting stuff about, about Philly and St. Louis here.

Here's a quote from Percy's article. In the early 2000s, Dominican gangs started bringing in Colombian heroin that was not only purer, but much cheaper than heroin imported from Asia, which historically predominated. Kensington's decentralized market kept competition high and prices low. Most corners were run by small, unaffiliated groups of dealers, making the area difficult to police. If a dealer was arrested, there was always someone there to replace him. The Philadelphia prison system has become the largest provider of drug treatment in the city.

The police have realized that they can't arrest the problem away, and they spend many of their calls reviving drug addicts with Narcan in overdose reversal spray. So something to add to that, I just realized, I did a story inside Cook County Jail, which is the main jail in the county where Chicago is, I think in 2016, right? And I think it's on my website. And Cook County Jail had become the largest provider of mental health services.

In Chicago, because all these mental health facilities had been shut down. And, you know, of course, the people that need treatment are going to get arrested. And it was, you know, the sheriff at that point, he wanted us to do this story to show inside the jail how crazy things were, because he was like, this shouldn't be how it works. Like, we should not be the largest mental health care provider in a city like Chicago. I mean, it's just insane.

So yeah, it was already the spot before fentanyl and the opioid epidemic hit. And then you have an influx of people, of course, who get hooked on oxys or opana. They couldn't get scripts or couldn't afford the street price. So they turned to heroin. And with that comes crime, well, more crime, desperation, prostitution, gangs, and violence. I actually found an old article from 1991 that talked about North Philly in the area they call the Badlands, which is partly in Kensington.

Quote, in parts of North Philadelphia, it's possible to make a street bust or buy cocaine or heroin around the clock. Some intersections have drugs for sale on all four corners. Badlands dealers are so bold that they sometimes try to sell to agents in unmarked cars.

You could buy dope all day long in any amount you wanted, as long as your cash holds out, William Renton, a drug enforcement administration agent, said as he drove through the Badlands. According to Renton, up to half the buyers in the area are middle-class whites who drive in from the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware suburbs.

You know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Oh, yeah. And I mean, I had no idea this stuff went so far back. I mean, outside the US, it's like the opioid crisis and fentanyl brand spanking new things. But from what you're saying, this is like a really old problem. I mean, it's not like ancient, but it's been going on a while. Well, I guess technically heroin counts as an opioid, right? I don't know. But I mean, no, I mean, opioids, opioids and all that really didn't hit.

Till like, I think the early two thousands, it was becoming a thing. When was Oxy coming out? Late nineties. So it didn't become like a crisis moment, I think until the mid two thousands. And then it was mostly focused on rural. Right. And then it starts hitting the cities a bit later. As far as heroin though. I mean, yeah, heroin is a long history. I think the seventies were particularly bad with heroin. Yeah. But, um, like Atkinson, the, the, the, yeah. Right. And fentanyl is only, I feel like I've only started hearing about fentanyl in the past five or six years. Um,

But again, we'll do a bigger background episode on that at some point in the future. Everything, though, everything in these markets is fentanyl. And here's something from the Philly Inquirer in August of 2020. Philadelphia long was known for some of the purest and cheapest heroin in the country. But in recent years, much of the heroin supply was replaced by fentanyl, sometimes without users' knowledge. The synthetic opioid is both cheaper to produce and much stronger than heroin.

And we'll talk about that a little bit more later on because, you know, I have some stuff I've talked to a dealer about. I mean, the city's actually tried and put a lot of money into changing things and in like innovative and compassionate ways. A progressive mayor was elected in 2016, Jim Kenney, and they really did try to solve the problem. Like I said, compassionately from Percy, quote,

His administration wanted to focus on getting heroin users into treatment rather than arresting them. In late 2016, Kenny created a task force of addiction experts, doctors, social workers, and agents from the DEA to come up with a plan to curb overdose deaths in the city.

In May 2017, they offered 18 recommendations, including a media campaign about the risks of opioids, wider distribution of Narcan, and support for medically assisted treatment, which uses opioid replacement drugs like Suboxone to help users manage withdrawal. It just didn't work, unfortunately. You know, they did this other stuff too. It wasn't like it was all that. I don't want to, you know, kind of get it wrong, but they were knocking down these encampments, like in an infamous area called El Campamento that Percy talks about.

But people would just go and set up shopouts around the neighborhood, build new encampments, and a lot of people simply refused or didn't want treatment. Yeah, I mean, this is... I mean, The Wire was just a documentary, wasn't it, really? No, I mean, this is a little different, but it's just like... Yeah, it's... It's hard, man, because they're really...

I don't know what the right answer is, you know? In fact, city-wise in Philly, overdose deaths are actually up 60% between 2015 and 2019. And that stat comes from a 2020 paper by the criminology department at Temple and the attorney general looking at how drug trafficking gangs influence death and ODs. There's actually too been a lot of rage in the area too. You know, they're trying to crack down on some of the major crews with some success, but it doesn't help to stop things. They just get replaced with new crews right away.

The Philly Inquirer has done amazing work on this. They had a great series on Kensington in 2021 by the reporter Mike Newell. A heroin dealer named Flack tells him, quote, "'All I see is money, money, money. Ain't nothing but money down here,' he said, waving at the intersection."

This is one of the few places in America where you can wake up Monday flat broke. And on Tuesday, you can have $10,000 in your pocket. Some blocks do like 60,000 a day. Some do 20 million a year. There's 80 corners with dealers and a two mile stretch. And there were 40 people killed and 178 shot and wounded during 2020. And it's mostly rival crews fighting over corners. Yeah, that is nuts. I mean, I remember Louis Derue did a pretty good docker on this year's back called Philadelphia and he's,

Talking to this guy who's got like a 50 grand chain who's saying he's jobless and Theroux is just doing that British Pollyanna thing like, oh, that's a nice piece of jewelry. Did you find it on the ground? I mean, the routine gets a little tired at times, but I do love him. Dude, I referenced that in a different episode. That's probably why you watched it. Yeah. No, he didn't say he's jobless. He said he's involved in like real estate and stuff. But I thought that was a really good method to have him be like, oh, yeah, I'm wearing a $50,000 chain. It was a good little piece of, you know, weirdo interviewing technique. Yeah. Yeah.

Here's more from Newell's report, quote,

There's G, the dealer, deep in addiction himself, who grew up in Kensington, sleeps in an encampment at night, and sells bundled heroin mostly to stave off his own withdrawal. There's Black, middle management, who delivers drugs to the block and collects the cash. It's my job to see the police before they see me, he says. A former college football player, he reckons he can still outrun them.

I mean, this is just great reporting, you know? Yeah. G makes like $180 to $250 for an eight-hour shift. Other low-level dealers on blocks that are known for higher quality stuff can pull in $500 to $600. And Flack pulls down $1,000 to $3,000 a day. Yeah, I mean, it's not like insane money, but it's still better than magazine rates.

I mean, it's tax-free, though, baby. You got to factor that in, right? Christ, yeah, okay. Way better than magazine rates. When I was with my source, you know, he's telling me they'll go in and lock up a street dealer. Like, within minutes, there's a new crew ready. They'll set up shop. Like, the cops will set up shop in an abandoned house. They'll do a takedown. They'll do an arrest. And the next crew would come right back in 15 to 20 minutes.

And for the narcotic stuff, he's like, you just don't feel like you're making a dent at all. Which reminds me, one of my editors at Vice, one of my video editors, would make fun of me because in every episode or every doc I did, there's always a point where I'd ask the guy for some reason or another, be like, does it feel like you're fighting a losing battle? So we were going to pitch a show called Fighting Losing Battles with Danny Gold. Anyway, these guys definitely do feel like they're fighting a losing battle.

The dealers, they actually have a roll call, right? Like attendance every morning. It's an efficient business. Crews even rent out corners there, which I'd never heard of before from the people holding them. Like these corners make so much money. Someone will own it. Essentially, they'll be able to control it through violence or whatever means. And these other crews will pay them 20K for the weekend just to set up shop.

There's a guy who just got locked up for murder. Doesn't even touch drugs anymore. He just rents out his corner for like 2K a day. There's multi-millionaires out there. And the money is just insane on the street. It's not unusual for them to bust a street-level house with $30,000 in just a potato chip bag. Like, you know, that's crazy money coming in.

And there are fights over control sometimes, though it is divvied up. It'll be quiet, and then there'll be a weekend where just nine people are shot. And then you know it's a fight over territory. Then it'll be like three weeks of someone getting shot every day on the same block. It all eventually gets funneled to the cartels, but they're mostly using Dominican and Puerto Rican sort of mid-level street organizations. Now, does the retail money itself funnel up to the cartels? Like, how does that work? Are they concerned with that? Are they just wholesaling? Is it on consignment? And I really don't

have answers for that. And it's some of the questions that I've been asking myself, you know? Yeah. I mean, like, it seems like something this lucrative that the massive cartels are going to be just walking in and controlling it all. But if the bodies are dropping that much, it doesn't seem like any one group is kind of like taking it, taking it by the neck.

Well, they do have some level of control, right? But the question is who, like how far down does that level go? According to former Attorney General Kathleen Kane, in that Nat Geo doc actually that I referenced earlier, it used to be Colombian cartels who ran it using their own people on the streets, which I don't know. I mean, I kind of find that very hard to believe, but I don't know.

She says now the Mexicans have taken over, which is true. And they use the existing structure, just kind of use the existing dealers. And that's how they kind of run things. The drugs, they go to Chicago, they go to Arizona or Cali from Mexico, and they get repackaged specifically for Pennsylvania. And it just gets flooded with cheap heroin. Again, remember, this is 2014. So things have obviously changed with fentanyl.

And everyone else says the Mexicans are just running everything. But the dealers on the lower levels, they'll still bang it out over corners and customers. And that's one of the things that I was looking into. I was supposed to actually talk to some federal sources off the record about pinning it down, but couldn't figure that out. How much control do the cartels actually have over the market in Philly? And which cartel? Though everyone seems to say it's Sinaloa, even though Sinaloa was fractured, right?

Because on first glance, it sounds insane to say the cartels are interested in how the streets in Philly are moving. But the reality is, like, look at the Flores brothers in Chicago, right? These are high-level Sinaloa guys directly connected to the top ranks. And they oversaw things there. And there are estimates that Kensington brings in close to a billion dollars a year, which is enough money to interest, like, higher echelons of cartel operatives. Now, I think some reports of cartel involvement in, like, nitty-gritty stuff in the U.S. get exaggerated.

remind me to tell you the story once of that reality TV show that wanted me to be involved, that I turned down about how the cartels were on this small town in rural America when it was really just like street level dudes. And they just wanted to exaggerate everything. And they actually did when it, when it came out. But I mean, I think here it's definitely not an exaggeration. The question is how far down the chain does it go? I don't know. I think not retail, but you never know. What is the name of this show? You got to name names there.

I mean, I think I signed the... Whatever. We'll do a special episode on it one of these days. I can talk about all the wacky, insane TV projects that have tried to get me... I mean, there was the... Yeah, there was the alien one too, but that's a whole other story. Oh, shit. This is from an opioid threat paper published in 2018. Quote, Philadelphia is a primary wholesale market for heroin traffic primarily by Mexican transnational criminal organizations.

The city also serves as a secondary wholesale market for heroin transported in from U.S. ports of entry and transshipment areas such as the southwest border, New York City, Chicago, and the Caribbean, primarily the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and out to other parts of the mid-Atlantic region, as well as into New England.

Philadelphia-based heroin traffickers supply large portions of Pennsylvania, with additional source regions of northern New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan providing wholesale bulk retail and retail qualities of heroin, namely to Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. And they get a little further into specifics, too. And I'm sorry for going quote heavy, but it's good stuff. And, you know, I didn't have too much time. So we're going to do that.

Hispanic drug trafficking organizations, mostly Mexican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican, dominate the transportation of heroin into and within Pennsylvania. Several DEA cases have involved Dominican DTO members with a permanent or semi-permanent presence in Mexico entrenched with command and control elements of Mexican TCOs.

Investigations also revealed that Mexican TCOs employ Caucasians to transport wholesale quantities of heroin and vehicles across the country and into Pennsylvania. Available intelligence indicates that Hispanic, African-American, and Caucasian DTOs distribute heroin at the retail level throughout Pennsylvania. I'm going to ask a stupid question, but this is Caucasian being just like white and not Chechens or something.

Yeah, no, white. I think it's like reverse affirmative action. You know, if you want to traffic drugs across states, you get a white guy to drive it because police are less likely to stop him. Oh, right. It's just how it goes. The paper also had some really good info on prices and how profitable moving heroin is compared to other drugs. And just think, fentanyl is way, way more profitable than heroin.

In 2017, the reported price of heroin in Pennsylvania ranged from $48 to $150 per gram, $2,000 to $5,000 per ounce, and $50,000 to $8,000 per key. Quote, the current profit margin for heroin traffic in Pennsylvania is staggering. Per investigative reporting, a typical baggie of heroin in Pennsylvania contains an approximate average of 0.02 grams of product with a price of $10. One kilogram of heroin without adulteration can create approximately 50,000 bags.

Packaged at a bag weight of 0.02 grams with an approximate street value of $500,000. Therefore, an average kilogram investment of $65,000 can lead to a conservative approximate profit of $435,000. Now remember, they said without adulteration, so that's before being cut, I think. Jesus, that is nuts. Yeah, which is insane.

I guess though they said average of 0.02 grams of product. We don't know how much of that product is heroin, but you have to imagine it's getting cut a lot. So take those profits and double, maybe even triple them. And listen to these numbers on fentanyl. Barring variables in product purity, a baggie of purported heroin containing exclusively fentanyl is comprised of approximately 90% adulterant and 10% fentanyl, which equates to approximately two milligrams of fentanyl per baggie.

Packaged at an average product weight of 0.02 grams per bag, one kilogram of fentanyl can produce 500,000 bags with a street value of $10 each. Therefore, an average $54,000 investment for one kilogram of fentanyl can yield an approximate $5 million profit. What? So, I mean, I don't know maths, but that's basically 10 times the amount you can get for heroin? Yeah, well, more.

A hundred times. Oh, 10 times the amount you can get for heroin. Yeah, I thought you were talking about 10 times the amount you can get for your investment. Yeah, I mean, that's why everyone's switching to fentanyl, right? It gives people what they say is a better high and it's insanely profitable for the dealers. And we actually talked to a fentanyl street dealer in St. Louis to understand that sort of retail side. I'm going to get to that later on when we switch locations. But yeah, another reason I wanted to look into Philly was that murder rate there just going through the roof.

And obviously the drug trade plays a huge role there, but that's not the only reason it's gone up so much. And in McGinnis's article that I referenced earlier, he looks into like the driving forces behind it,

How the pandemic disrupted a lot of programs for young people. A lot of people had social programs that kind of keep things level, just completely disrupted. All these sort of active school programs and violence interrupter stuff get canceled. And the article does a good job of looking at all of those issues in a fair, balanced way. It also talks about Larry Krasner, who's the progressive district attorney who took over in Philly and has faced a lot of heat because he's

You know, that whole thing is kind of pulling back on enforcement in some areas. And there's debate about how much of a role that plays in bringing up the violence. But he actually won reelection last year. But with everything going on right now, I don't know, man. I don't think it's going to be interesting to see if he can win again. Do they have votes the same time as the president or is it less?

I think it's every four years for DA. It might be two years. I honestly, I'm not a hundred percent sure. I think it's four years. And for those who don't follow, like I'm not going to get into the politics too much.

But progressive DAs have won a series of elections in big U.S. cities in recent years. You know, there's been a big push for criminal justice reform. We have a lot of issues with mass incarceration. And that happens to coincide with some of these cities seeing just unreal increases in violent crimes. So there's a ton of debate on where that blame falls. Can you put it all on the progressive DAs? Can you put it all on the pandemic?

I will say, as far as Krasner goes, and this is only tangentially related, but I'm angry, he has the most unprofessional, like, openly hostile comms team I've ever dealt with. Just rude and not transparent in an unnecessary fashion. It made the nerve to tell me that a story looking into the reasons for Philly's murder increase was, quote, tired. Like,

Like, I'm sorry it's February and your city just had the highest murder toll ever. 560 people are dead. Like, how is that a tired story? Ouch. I mean, notes to comms people. Do not tell a journo their story is tired or that they shouldn't be doing a story that's like red rag. Yeah, especially a story like this, right? There will be an angry Twitter thread. It's coming. And they flipped out when they found out I was setting up an interview with a state representative from West Philly, you know, who has been shot before, is like a black guy in the middle of these neighborhoods who actually wants stricter policing.

in some ways. And like, I'm sorry I'm not doing a hagiography of your guy and bringing in someone else with a, I'm bringing someone else in with a different perspective, but it's called journalism. And I don't know, man, it was just like, I've never, I've never dealt with that. But, uh, rant over, I really feel for the journalists of Philadelphia. If this is what they have to deal with, like on a daily basis.

I will say, though, about Krasner, like one of the insane things that he's doing is relaxing gun arrests and prosecutions in Philly. And like I'm all for some criminal justice reforms. Right. But in Philly right now with that, like it's insane. Here's a quote from McGinnis's story. Krasner's office had had launched a diversion program for some defendants under which those who had purchased firearms legally but lacked the permit to carry them could have their arrests expunged after probation.

The office argued that it was unfair that Philadelphians face more stringent gun rules than residents of other parts of Pennsylvania, as the state requires gun permits for city residents, but not for those elsewhere. And the overall conviction rate for illegal gun possession cases was falling too. It dropped to 49% in 2019, from more than 60% in the four years before Krasner took office, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Quote, are we going to replace a war on drugs with a war on guns? Krasner asked the Inquirer. And are we going to use that as an excuse for mass incarceration? I mean, to be fair, like, I don't know enough to say that I can come down on one side of this clearly. Like, if America, America has like the highest incarceration rate in the world by a mile and it's currently going through this crazy murder spree. I mean, maybe not locking folks up isn't a bad thing. I'm going to plead the Rogan on this, though. I'm a fucking idiot, guys.

Wait, I don't understand what you just, you just kind of said that you would say maybe locking up folk. Oh yeah. Maybe not. You know, maybe locking up folks is like, you know, maybe that's something, but I don't know. Like there's clearly tons and tons of different factors going on in the city. So.

I don't know. I don't know what you're... I feel like you're using a double negative in the wrong... Whatever, man. Yeah, I don't know, dude. Like, that's a real quote from him. I didn't expect a remarkable critique on this. It just doesn't make sense what you're saying. Anyway, that's like a real quote. And yeah, the police, they're definitely not happy with how Krasner is doing things. They see the situation as out of control and feel like he's hamstringing them, especially when it comes to that lack of enforcement on guns. I think it's hard to argue against that when there's so much gunplay happening there. I'm like, yeah, I think...

And yeah, it's like, you know, there need to be changes in criminal justice in this country, right? Like the way to stop all of this isn't just arresting, incarceration, all that. And I've talked about this too with El Salvador and the barrios, right? The neighborhoods need resources. People need opportunities, you know, mental health, all that. And that's a tough thing politically because it only plays out over years and years and it doesn't win elections. But you also can't slow down on the big things, the violence, the guns, right? That you still need to be heavy on that

While you're also dedicating resources, trying to build up opportunities. You can't just do that and pull back on actually stopping the violence. And I'll get flack for this, but I actually think Eric Adams has the right idea. Like he's going very hard on the guns and the violence. He's also doing things like boosting the summer jobs program for teens, 33,000 to 100,000 jobs. I mean, that's like, that is such a monumental thing to do.

that will save more lives than anything. Like getting kids off the streets, jobs, money in their pockets. I don't know. I think it's great. Yeah, I mean, I was going to try and say something dumb about opinions and politics and stuff. But yeah, I mean, I don't see any argument against that. Get people on jobs, stop them doing drugs. I don't know. Yeah, cool. Makes sense. Even like the law enforcement guys I was with, they all agree there's a need for criminal justice reform. But at the same time,

You know, they actually think that like jail is necessary. And sometimes, especially when it comes to guns and things like that, they have like moms who will ask them like why their sons aren't locked up because they think they need it as a sort of, you know, way to get off the streets and get out of this. Sad.

Yeah, and he talked about despair on both sides, like despair for the addicted, how the streets are just kind of killing them, and then the despair of the regular people living out there. You know, a lot of people, like there are families in these neighborhoods, and they're trying to raise their kids there because, you know, they can't get out. They don't have the money to get out, and they're just filled with like dealers and zonked out addicts, prostitution, violence, and all that, and there's a lot of interesting debates about that going on. He gave a lot of credit to some of the churches around there, these small Spanish churches who I think

are really just doing God's work and really helping people out. And apparently Chick-fil-A, without fanfare or press, they'll come down and give out sandwiches and food to people and all that. But yeah, the city, they just can't figure out what to do. Yeah, I mean, if Chick-fil-A is listening to this as well, I like chicken, and you're loaded, guys. Come advertise with us. We'll get some. You know they're very anti-gay, right? Oh, no. All right. Yeah.

Like give us money, but don't advertise with us. Give us sandwiches, but don't advertise with us. Cause I don't know if, I don't know if we can do that.

Another big thing too that's happening in Philadelphia, which is crazy, I guess it's new again, but carjacking is just through the roof. I think the number I was told was that there were 200 in January and they're having issues now with people like victims, people shooting back when there are attempts made. It's happening like multiple times in a month and it's just back in a big way. And I had this assumption, it could very well be very wrong, that with new technology and cars, you know, tracking and all that, it kind of disappeared.

over the last 10 or 15 years, not disappeared, but like really shrank from that high in the 90s. Shout out to New Jersey Drive. Classic movie. The bad guy cop who was in it, who looked like a roided up Jerry Seinfeld, he used to work as a bouncer at Bar None in the East Village like 20 years ago. So acting, I mean, tough gig, man. But yeah, now carjacking is back up huge in Philly. I'm hearing about it a lot in LA, in St. Louis. I kept hearing about it too. You know, they're saying it's like joyriding. It's

It's people stealing cars for luxury rings that ship them overseas. And it's just wild. Yeah, I mean, a real-life Gone in 60 Seconds would be a pretty awesome episode. We should do something like that. But also, I mean, carjacking must be such a good indicator. There must be some crossover between high crime rates and this phenomenon of sudden carjacking waves. Because we've had it in Sweden. You did one from Israel, right, as well? There was loads of carjacking going on.

I don't think so. Oh, maybe it was car bombing. Maybe that's, that's a little different. But carjacking seems to like follow these big waves, right? So I don't know. But yeah, in St. Louis in January, carjacking was a big thing. Everyone was talking about, I'd set up this round table with a bunch of St. Louis moms, all from the North, you know, all who had lost a son or daughter to gun violence and they brought it up and they said they were so nervous about what's happening right now. Like they want,

They want like the National Guard called out. Like, I think that had to do a lot with the guns and murders too, not just carjacking, but they're talking about being scared to go to like gas stations where lots of shootings happen. And the police there too, at least in the county, when I spoke to them, they were saying the exact same thing.

Yeah, that's really, really awful. I mean, that's full war zone kind of stuff. But I was not in St. Louis to make a doc on that. I was actually there to do a story on fentanyl. And like I said, we will eventually do a deep dive, but this is not going to be that. But with that number, I mean, over 100,000 Americans dead of an overdose last year. A lot of that is due to fentanyl. Of course, all of it shot up during the pandemic. But more people in St. Louis actually died of overdoses than of COVID, which is an interesting little thing.

Little detail. And I can't go into too much detail because the piece isn't out yet and I probably shouldn't. But yeah, I think I've talked about this before. One of the things that surprised me from talking to a fentanyl dealer years ago when I was in St. Louis, this is maybe early 2019.

was that people on the street were actually asking specifically for fentanyl, as opposed to like copping heroin that had been cut with it or other drugs that had been laced with it. Like Izzo, who I interviewed for the Patreon really early on, he actually sold crack first, but then started selling fentanyl because that's all anyone wanted and asked for. And this is like 2018, I think. Yeah, it's basically all anyone wants right now, all that's being sold. I mean, we had people telling us they missed the days when you could actually get heroin, but it's almost impossible now.

All you can find out there is fentanyl and even uppers like meth are getting cut with it because this is the thing that they said. I don't know if it makes sense. They say it's even more addictive, which I don't know what the science is on that. Like meth has always seemed pretty addictive to me, but that's what I was hearing. We actually spent some time with an active fentanyl dealer down there. You know, when I got to know Izzo, he was already out of the game. He had caught a charge for conspiracy to distribute. But through some contacts, I was able to get a guy currently selling.

We met him out in the county a bit. If you're thinking like crazy stash house with like people in mass sorting stuff out and the people standing guard with AKs, like it's really not that. I mean, we had to take our shoes off when we entered his small condo and dude just kind of showed us his stash, walked us through his process, reasoning, all that.

I think we kind of joked it was like artisanal fentanyl, as it's really just him operating independently. But he sometimes has friends and associates who will fill in when he can't be there. Hey, man. I mean, the moment he made you take your shoes off, he went up like a thousand levels in my estimation. I mean, you walk into a German's home here, with your shoes on, you're about to get killed. Big debates on that over the internet these days. Oh, fucking babies. I love it. I figured we would shoehorn in something topical. But yeah. Yeah.

You know, he was just showing us how you get your package, you chop it up. I think that's a really important thing. A lot of people unfamiliar with it don't realize all these dealers selling fentanyl, not all, but a lot of them, they're the ones cutting it up and deciding how heavy the dose is going to be. I mean, obviously it's cut along all levels of the chain, but when it gets to a street dealer, the guy prepping the pills, like it's decidedly impure. And then they use their own recipe as they call it to, you know, prep it for distribution.

And again, dealers don't actually want their clients to die. Like they want it to be strong, but they want them to live because that's bad for business otherwise. But these guys aren't exactly lab technicians, you know, and neither are the people they're getting it from. So if they get something initially stronger than they're used to and don't cut it properly, maybe don't test it or have someone else test it. That's when bad things can happen or when people don't know what they're doing or cross contamination sometimes with Coke and ketamine and all that. Like test your drugs, people. Definitely test them. Says the dealer, quote,

You're definitely going to know because one time you're going to get a different batch that is stronger than another batch. It's all about cooking and how you want to make your food. That's how you look at it. I want it to be satisfying so I can get more clientele. Hey, Mark Cuban, eat your heart out.

He's talking about making sure it's strong enough here, but you have to find that balance. And the dose is all things considering. They actually seem kind of low, lowish, right? Like in terms of strength, like he says, they'll get you high for 25, 30 minutes though. He's never done it. And he'll sell like 12 or 14 caps or pills to a person for $30. People are usually taking a few at a time and they'll go through that in a day. Easy. You get your customers by handing out the testers, the freebies and the cell number. I went into that a bit more in the last St. Louis episode, like episode 12.

And he says he can make like $1,200, $1,300 in a day if you know what you're doing. And he's been doing it for seven years, though he was selling weed before. But the money is in fentanyl. He's got about 100 names in his phone, clients. He's got 50 calling every day, but on a good day, he'll get 75 or 80. Jeez, I don't even like talking to my folks on WhatsApp. This sounds exhausting. I mean, I'm going to stick to podcasts. Sounds better for me. Yeah, I mean, it's high risk.

He walked us through the process of cutting it too, using his, he's got his own pill press, just putting it together. And he cuts it with Dorman, which is an over-the-counter sleeping pill. And I guess it's very popular in St. Louis for cutting fentanyl. I'm not sure what it's like in other states and other cities. He's had issues with police here and there, but he says the real issue is defending your territory. Though it's not really like these guys have corners in St. Louis, at least, though some do. It's more about people poaching clients. And of course, in St. Louis, things lead to gunplay very easily. Quote,

Everybody is armed. Some people got AKs, handguns. Everybody is armed. He would be a fool not to be armed. He didn't open up too much about a supplier, but he did say that he has a usual guy, but he's starting to shop around now for a better deal. And as for who runs the street trade, quote, in this game, of course, it's gangs involved, but in this game, everybody is just doing it right.

He actually wants to retire in seven or eight years. I feel like all dealers say that. Yeah. It says none of his clients have died, but some of his partners, quote, ain't none of mine have died, but a couple of my associates who I mix with have OD'd and died from a batch. And I hear the same thing from every dealer I've spoken to, but who knows? I mean, when things go wrong with that, they really go wrong and people die. St. Louis is a city of 300,000 people. It had 1,168 overdose victims in three years.

I had 650 murders to that list too. Just in February, seven people on the same few block stretch died over a weekend and two died in the same area a week later.

Turns out it was a hot batch. It was crack that was laced with fentanyl. And a woman has since been charged by the feds, and she was selling it out of her apartment complex. Colin Dickey, a special assistant with the DEA, told a local outlet, quote, We are seeing fentanyl in the St. Louis area at record amounts, being included in counterfeit pills sold as regular powder mixed with other substances, such as cocaine, heroin, and meth.

Some folks may not know that fentanyl is contained in these substances, adding to deaths by overdose. Yeah, I'm supposed to come in with a joke here. I mean, I can't even tell jokes on a funny moment. Yeah, I was going to say you should actually never, never come in with jokes, even if it's a lighter moment. I'm not sure I ever have done. But yeah, you've got these counterfeit pills that are masquerading as perks or even benzos or other painkillers, and they're just appearing and they're actually just fentanyl.

Missouri, Kansas, and Southern Illinois saw a bunch of fentanyl raids in 2021. They seized 188 kilos, which is more than 82 in 2020 and 104 in 2019 total. So you add those up and it's still more than that. And I've heard it said that there was a buildup in the early days of the pandemic as kind of trade shut down across the border, Mexico, where it comes from. But since then it's been like an open faucet. So yeah, there we go, man. Just bad tidings all around. So yeah.

I hope this came together well. I'm sorry if I occasionally lapse into talking politics, which I never want to do here. But hopefully this episode had something of value. On the ground, authenticity. We'll be back to the regular scheduled stories next week, of course. Yeah, we've got a gang war, car factory, Soviet war veterans, tons of crazy stuff. And I'll be experimenting with something new on the Patreon, so keep your eyes peeled there, guys. Yeah.

But yeah, until next week, thanks for tuning in.