The Business of Illicit Drugs

Report Outline
Special Focus

Introduction

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Overview

The supermarket would not have met public health standards for commercial establishments. Roaches crawled the refrigerator shelves, and the stench of urine filled the air. But the store was well-stocked for its purposes. The cabinets contained both new and used 10-mm B&D syringes, empty packets of heroin and cocaine, and Ziploc bags used for packaging marijuana. A small glass pipe used for smoking crack—an increasingly popular and highly addictive form of cocaine—stood in the window-sill.

On the floor, a bare mattress bore evidence that the apartment, a third-floor walk-up in a Washington, D.C., public housing project, was more than a supermarket. It also served as a place to use the goods that were bought there—a “shooting gallery,” where anxious heroin consumers could inject their purchases on the spot. Scattered around the rooms were charred bottle caps, used to heat heroin mixed with water, cigarette filters, used to strain impurities from heroin solution as it is drawn into the syringe, and bits of bloody gauze.