Rising Drug Crime, A Collapsed Industrial America, And A Path For Its Rebirth
Understanding the problem that sits between industrialization and post-industrialization.
An illustration of Kensington, struggling in its deindustrialized state. Retrieved here, with original credit to Joseph G. Brin.
Introduction
A mayoral candidate in the town of Kensington, Philadelphia is drawing national attention for calls to deploy drones and increased law enforcement to combat a rising drug problem. His views do not make Kensington unique in growing tough-on crime stances. America is feeling hopeless about rising drug addiction, deaths, and crime rates. Solutions from academics, medical professionals, government agencies are robust and costly, with little to show for it. Kensington, Philadelphia, is a focal point in the opioid crisis, and within it we see the defeatism that is echoing across the country. What was once a center for American industry is now a nationally-renowned drug center. I will argue that what we are seeing in Kensington is not unique, and we are facing these endemic struggles throughout the nation.
In 2018 the New York Times provided data showing that Philadelphia County has the highest overdose deaths of any county in the United States.
75,000 residents in Philadelphia County suffer from heroin addictions.
236 deaths from drug overdosing in 2017.
Increases in fentanyl have contributed to rising death rates.
Recently, new additions to the drug market including xylazine, a drug meant to numb pain in “non human animals,” have led residents in Kensington to be plunged into stupors, typically resembling a “zombie-like” state that makes them vulnerable to assaults, rapes, heart trouble, and a variety of other symptoms; in short, xylazine is not safe for human consumption, particularly as it is being mixed with fentanyl. This comes as the United States Drug Enforcement Agency is issuing warnings about xylazine, which they are calling the “deadliest drug threat that our country has ever faced.” Kensington is in the middle of the nation’s opioid crisis, dealing with modern, devastating drug concoctions including mixtures of fentanyl and xylazine, and the people have nowhere to turn.
“Innovative” Solution For Managing The Crisis: Out of Ideas
In an absence of working solutions to manage the opioid crisis, Kensington mayoral candidate David Oh has come up with a plan to reduce opioid addiction: drones. Oh’s plan is to use aggressive police tactics to remove users and occupants from Arlington Avenue, a place where drug users congregate, and use drones to help police spot crime that they can then rapidly respond to. It is regretful that we have come to a point where drones and aggressive policing tactics seem like the only option we have. How did we get here? How did a once booming manufacturing town like Kensington, Philadelphia become an epicenter for the opioid epidemic, drawing drug tourists from around the country? Is the only option we have to resort to being a full-fledged, Orwellian security state?
How Did We Get Here?
Kensington Philadelphia was once a booming industrial town. In the aftermath of the Civil War and into the late 18th century, the city was dense, boasting a diverse population of migrants and workers, and served as one of the leading textile-producing cities in the nation. During the Great Migration, Kensington’s population flourished with African Americans fleeing the South, seeking jobs–and Kensington sought them, noting that they needed many laborers to fit the booming demand. And then the jobs vanished, sent overseas where production was cheaper.
Between 1955 and 1975, Kensington lost 75% of its manufacturing jobs, and all those with the capability to do so fled for the suburbs. Kensington, today a diverse town, saw many people, from many races and ethnicities who arrived too late become entrenched in the town; they became trapped in poverty and unable to escape to the suburbs. With poverty came rising rates of crime, poorer schools, and of course nowhere for people to work to change their circumstances.
A New Economy: Great For Some, Horrible For Others
Forbes Magazine describes the modern Kensington as a city where wealth and tremendous poverty intersect, creating the conditions that call for drones and Robocop-style enforcement. The empty industrial sectors, abandoned lots, and vacant properties gave way to a vibrant social scene, where the service-sector economy and housing market exploded. “Fishtown,” Philadelphia, once a part of Old Kensington, looks nothing like it used to, with youth pouring in to enjoy the hip, diverse culture.
This is the new economy of many American cities. Out with the old, in with the new, has been the destiny for many. In the era of deindustrialization and the loss of jobs, those who could, left. Those who were trapped behind became entrenched in poverty, rising crime, and soaring drug addiction rates. And then the new community moved in, bringing a new economy. This new economy was geared toward housing and amenities, adding restaurants and working on building the social scene. What does this do to local housing? It raises the prices. We see this throughout developed areas: there are few jobs to support the costs of living, and rising housing prices make homes available for some, and unaffordable for most. Those who were left behind during the exodus of industrialization lack the resources to survive in this new economy.
Trapped Between Two Worlds: The Not-So-Unique Story Of Kensington
Kensington is notably a focal point in the drug epidemic because its problems are severe, but its circumstances are not unique. Consider for a moment the person you see on the streets who is drug addicted. What happens if they get clean? They can get a job at the local coffee shop, or maybe a waitressing job. Their salary, if supplemented with a second job, may cover rent, although it will most likely leave little behind for food. What about job growth? The new economy of people who benefit from the service sector–tech workers, the contractor class, the academics, those with government funding–exist in specialized fields where the person who has managed to lift themselves up from addiction will be blocked from entry into this field. Gone are the days of a 9-5 job with a decent salary and benefits. Gone are the days of affordable housing. The new economy is devastating for the class who have become the backbone of the drug-addicted. The absence of affordable housing and the ability for people to make their own money has forced the government to invest tremendously in basic life support. They have to subsidize housing, food, medication, transportation, services, a robust criminal justice system–and they should, without government help these people would die.
This story is not unique to Kensington. I see it here in my hometown, a vibrant beach town in California. Rent is astronomical–nothing a service sector job could afford. College students, even with their parent’s money, live out of vans or crammed into basements in order to go to school. The homeless and drug addicted populations have exploded recently, and there is nowhere for them to go, and definitely nowhere they could afford to live. This low quality of life is adjacent to rows of homes overlooking the Monterey Bay, selling for millions of dollars; one-bedroom homes a good ten-minute drive from the ocean sell for seven figures. Rent? Forget it. To rent a one-bedroom in this city costs about three-thousand dollars a month. We remain committed to searching for solutions to problems like drug addiction and crime, but we have yet to figure out an economy that provides jobs, living wages, and can help people live in an environment not plagued by a for-profit housing sector.
Moving Forward
The path out of the crisis in Kensington is two-fold. The first path echoes a discussion that few have accurately described: moving backwards. Donald Trump, in the era of social movements, received tremendous backlash from the “Make America Great Again” slogan that he campaigned on. The belief was that he was referencing the age of the pre-civil rights era, where racism and the Ku Klux Klan spread terror through the south. It was perceived that he meant to plunge us back into an era of segregation, one to take steps back toward sexist views of women being locked in the household. This could be considered the “social” perception of Trump’s movement, and if we can agree that this would benefit no one, we can move on to a potential positive side of this idea. Economically speaking, the industrialized United States that was abandoned in the mid 20th century provided stable jobs for many; the new economy that arose as we deindustrialized only provided jobs and prosperity to a thin crust of American society. Moving backward socially allowed for people to ignore a very real reason to look back: the old economy had benefits for many, and should have been expanded upon to include marginalized groups rather than abandoned for all.
The second step requires that we deal with the effects of deindustrialization, namely the current population of drug addicts and dealers. Too often policy proposals are too narrow, focusing only on one symptom, or only part of the problem. We need manufacturing and industry, but we also need ways to lift people out of their current predicaments. This is where progressive, harm-reduction strategies can meet a more conservative approach to re-industrialization. Current drugs on the streets, Xylazine, Fentanyl, Heroin, Meth, are problematic and causing serious reactions and deaths for thousands of addicts and recreational users. Harm reduction strategies would work to treat existing addicts, while the economic shifts would work to mitigate the next generation of addicts. This is where we could provide clean needles, safe drugs, and the treatment drugs like Methadone to a dwindling population of drug users, to support them while we mitigate the aggravating factors for drug addiction around them. If we only try to treat the symptom of our hurting economy–the rising drug addicts–we will have to treat a growing symptom and our efforts will be exhausted. This must be a two-pronged approach, and not one that is merely propped up on government life support. When people have money, their children go to better schools. When people have money, they get medical care and seek treatment.
As an example of this, many aid groups in foreign countries have found that the best way to support a struggling population is to enable them to be financially stable. Fair trade is a popular way of doing this. Receiving survivable wages has allowed communities to build their own roads, access their own medical care, get their own food and water. It empowers people to send their children away from impoverished areas where they can specialize in more advanced careers and bring skilled labor back to their original communities. It works.
Concluding Remarks
We sit in a precarious time where people do not know how to treat the symptoms of our societal problems. The shift in the economy to this postmodern system has been great for some, and terrible for many. Those who are trying to come up with solutions are seeing the shortcomings of government policies and interventions, namely that they are too little to have much systemic measurable effect. Our way out of this is not drones on the streets, or aggressive policing. Our way out is to treat the existing symptoms in a less inflammatory environment. This means we need places for them to go, economies that have jobs for them, and we need the empowerment to come from communities. Government funding and police are merely life support. If we want to solve these problems, we must reach deeper.