The story of two unlikely kingpins, teenagers from baltimore to capitalize on the chaos of the riot following freddy graves to launch a drug empire. In stark review, it calls someone a remarkable discovery with wrong language in ireland it issues societal change. Please welcome, kevin deutsch. [applause] thanks so much for having me, guys. Its an honor to be here tonight reading from the book. I think i talked to many of you during the reporting of the book before and after it to me. I spent over a year, essentially the last 20 in and out of this world with a hard year in it, living in reading it while i was working at newsday, that was writing about markets, encryption, how drug moved. I use that sort of as a ground to learn about the technology somewhere using a baltimore. Just to give you a little background on this story, i talk about this in the book. I first got wind of the rise and the looting of the drugstores from a source who ive been working for my first book, the triangle. We had talked about collaborating on Something Else yet another story about his experience or possibly even a book about his life. We had struck up a correspondence with a semifriendship and when rioting broke out, he told me to get down there and he was specifically interested which at the time was not anybodys radar. We knew it was part of a larger everything in that area was being limited. And so he brought my attention and told me it was part of an orchestrated effort comes Pacific League the drugs in these pharmacies. I spent about the next year tracking, even after i was done with the book, still going to some degree looking in tracking what happens to those pills and other drugs that were stolen. There are 31 pharmacies and clinics were officially going to the dea looted during the riots. Thats only the official number. By reporting shows there was a number of millions of dollars worth of heroin pills and other drugs that changed hands during the chaos. Many games in to more, the biggest of which is the family game, known as pgf. Other games sort of what a worker in the riot, even more power could be accessible and things were up for grabs. A lot of members actually help defend businesses, but others to gain power of the pecking order. The book is not only about the drought, but the drug that were feuding over the drought. When its ready. I will take you deeper into the boat. Im going to sort of take you to the heart of the epidemic in some of the innercity neighborhood that was reported in. One of the reasons i wanted to write this book to the opioid hepatoma the upperclass white community. The late aspect of the epidemic its a lot of attention. Almost exclusively. When the fact is we could go to baltimore for East New York right now. We could put a hard right now and find any people shooting up or using those who were not white, and all races, pages, demographics. That is something that is largely votes passed in the media they think in part because it easy for reporters to go. Most reporters are away. I am white. I am a reporter and im speaking from experience. I think white reporters have a comfortable going to white neighborhoods to write about white drug addicts. That might be a controversial thing to say, but thats makes. If you saw my people of color coming you can see this of the epidemic. Anyway, i wanted to cover that aspect of it. I wanted to talk to you about baltimore called off the alley, which is a small stretch of pennsylvania avenue. A place where a lot of time writing about addicts there. Many other drugs ended up. They call it up the alley. First glance it looks like west baltimore filled with discarded liquor bottles and addicts stumbling onto looking like tom maddux or Michael Jackson thriller video. The rundown stretch revealed more troubling. For nearly opiate addicts are getting high on the products. Through such users, keisha jones and terry ottman, 21 are holed up in one of those roach infested row homes, boiling down but it does into liquid form. Keisha sixyearold son sits in the corner playing with the tribe while the women speculate about the quality of the drugs theyre about to inject. Going to be real nice keisha sent with the oxycodone with the lighter in his bed while terry ready for syringe. 40 milligrams. I just hope there is good as hollywood whos recently learned she six weeks pregnant with their first child she hasnt seen the babys father, her exboyfriend and five. Ive got to make the most of it today because they cant be fooling around with those omar. These are my sendoff. Brands that change every few weeks and varied based on the dosage. At 16, hollywood, mike tyson, but on the nose and red tails were all the rage in april. In early may he was pink the blue angels have reacted wanted. Now its beyonce, black ivories they are clamoring for. They have not let us down yet. They began easing pain pills earlier this month. Im sure theyve been right that these two issues that. Theyre addicts like them. People Start Initiative and opiates from dusk until dawn and many who got their products before it till city camelot. Just to interject, i read about him as part of a crew that was going to battle with till city territory of baltimore. The concentration of drug abusers on the street is among the highest in the country. Casualties of the ongoing wave of overdose and associated violent ravaging innercity with littleknown enclaves. U. S. A. Became ventured a street bike it. Nice places beyond redemption is a baltimore homicide with a number of killings in the area. If you come here for one of three reasons. Buy reasons. By drugs, sell drugs or you just dont care anymore. The only other excuses youre a homicide or narcotics detective. Addicts along the alley tend to agree. I feel for pills, break into houses, i do it just like everybody else around here. Snorting a pair three houses down, a series of gunshots ring out in the distance. That is their soundtrack he jokes. The former petition is never touched anything harder than marijuana, taking heed of the lessons shes learned much inherent ruin the lives of cousin, neighbors and customers at the beauty shop where she once worked. I sure think thats so crazy around here with freddie gray and all that he was feeling really bad. I had pgf with pills and a lot safer. I went and did a thing. They bought them every day to have sex. Since then, jackson lost his job with the longterm boyfriend relationship and been arrested multiple times for drug possession. I still cant stop using she says. Five houses down, roderick has 44 has just finished an ejection tube melted down oxycontins. Discounted painkillers by the pocket fold. Teaches a street drug. Like an ugly broke down car who spent about 50 a day on pills. Oxley is a drug like a mercedesbenz, some classy. If you can afford the classy one, why buy the one broke down. To encourage is currently spending 50 a day on pills and sold by till city. I saw painkillers were for white people. Money is good insurance because folks like me cant usually afford them. Studies have shown prescribers are far less likely to get opiate painkillers to africanamericans due largely to racial. It is always hard to get my hands on them. They were scarce. That changed after the riot. Until pills, lots of people switched after they went on sale. This has been a town. Baltimore has had the capital since the 1960s, registering the highest cap at a benny municipality in the country since 2014. Back at the local department of health counted at least 60,000 drug addicts in the city many as 40,000 addicted to train for. By some estimates, one of every 10 residents is a trend for added anything that given its long history with addiction, baltimore and 2015 is in many ways a natural epicenter of the innercity opiate storage. If they die in the suburbs, the symbol mark says continued, foxy alley as a symbol for the second. The april riots by the most vulnerable residents, poverty, gun violence, substandard housing, property from the failing schools, and over incarceration. But they made these problems worth. They search kinds with the influx of opiate and addictions. Its not just happen in the baltimore either. Across the country, the epoxy alleys are popping up with numbing frequent the turning into what we call boulevards of pain. These areas are mostly impoverished and mostly black records show. Among them, 24yearold hairdresser in st. Louis raising two kids on her own. A 20 roach short order cook in chicago terms of attending a major university. 46 roach editor in the watch with children to support an Adult Education teacher in philadelphia dreams of moving to the suburbs. Camden, chicago, new orleans, cincinnati, detroit, atlanta and other cities enter hospitals, rehab clinics every day. They go and die for my addiction. Absolute way. It till city customer seemed overhead in 2005. Right now the pills i what i need so i keep you sane, end quote. Keisha jones and carrots jones and carry out and have never traveled outside Baltimore City were lucky enough to be of the first customers. Other users heard about opioids at discount prices and thought why not see what they were about. The drug has to be safer than heroin said that junk is strictly for lowlife. Keisha remembers thinking if the price was right in to the edge up, there is no need to expand. I thought they would make me feel better but the scar covered arms and lord knows they have the best feeling because it makes you feel so confident, so ive used to make everything is right. As elaborates on her love for opioids, her son and the coroner paul thought for keisha. Can we please go, mommy growing tired of sitting. Women are so caught up in preparing for injections, they forgot all about the boy. Not that they find you sit in front of him. I now come to says, hes used to it. Not that she tells her son. Im busy. Just going to read a little bit more. And then well wrap up. I want to give you more of this. Im a third of a macro perspective. As an innercity neighborhood, both keisha were within the target demographics that he will donate the Property Line will typically resides at a womens shelter. They worked parttime at a discount clothing store, snorting or injecting 10 to 12 pills a day and the employee bathroom. Maybe id got some help and out if they knew where to start. If they were living in a prosperous neighborhood, theyd have a significantly better chance of getting treatment. They show most Government Programs that inner cities are severely it, meaning a poor black black opioid addict is less likely to get the help he or she needs. Baltimores commissioner highlighted the problem of testimony at the u. S. House of representatives in the committee, describing difficulties faced by innercity bikini pics opiate. I remember my patient, 24yearold mother of two who came to the er nearly every week requesting treatment when the condition recall she would be told there was nowhere to go that day or the next they offered an appointment in three weeks time. Because she lacked housing and other supportive services, she would relapse. One day her family found her unresponsive and not breathing. By the time she arrived in the er is too late to save her. She died. The baltimorebased Addiction Treatment center those in inner cities are one of the ways black opioid abusers are treated differently than whites to suffer from the same disease. There are shortages, but also out of reach of shortages. Not communities of color he said. The impact of socalled private pills and harrowing firsthand. Not only on addicts at a wellknown baltimore hospital with the residents need, but also his own family. His estranged father died of an opioid overdose in late april april 2015. Two weeks later his wife committed suicide with opioid painkillers. Later a teenager would be wounded by baltimores neighborhood. Why get the star treatment for black suffering during the epidemic in people from violent in our communities. For whatever reason, the white addict is more often seen as unwilling as the white addict is more often seen as an unwilling innocent victim of doctors and Drug Companies and the way society uses that, suffering from disease, people who need a second chance. Black innercity opiate abusers are still seen by politicians, media and public is somehow complicit in their addictions and therefore not deserving of the same thing to think this way a staggering double standard. Collagen is africanamerican is one factor contributing to the treatment. Also at play at the lack of political influence among poor blacks in neighborhood in the limited number of Treatment Options in those places compared to white communities. Both of those mean there is less visibility for black addicts and therefore less awareness on society. Norland specializing treatments is another culprit. [leftbracket pain pills. These days though. Dealing organizations like the city are distributors of so one drugs. Their purchasers, too. The franchisor norland for example shows the kind of clearinghouse looking for polls. After ripping off a drugstore, a a perpetrator can sell pain pills to bgs be gfr another gang of street value and one of the largest known and buyers a solid opioids in america. When the first wave of addicts found their supply and government regulation, they switched to heroin because it offers the same high but if five or 10 bucks a bag of a lot cheaper. Hill said he essentially turned the dynamic on its head. They have minorities even its way through increasingly priced out of the market switching the. Now, the guys who come to when you have got a you want to unload. The centers for Disease Control and prevention suggests why to get their pills from doctors or dine at a higher rate than blacks. Cdc records, Law Enforcement science and Public Health data from the 10 largest cities indicate opioids on the black market including stolen drugs peddled by cities are killing africanamericans in higher numbers than whites. With regard to Overdose Deaths caused by illicit opiates, users are suffering disproportionately based on what we see in africanamerican communities right now. We dont hear more about the dialogue surrounding addiction in this country. They dont reflect one side of the story, only one group gets attention for financial resources. Journalists in the United States have a somewhat opioid users to the detriment of blacks to see more resources for wider areas said Christina Keller in cleveland, ohio where it flooded and impoverished heroin. They know how to make their voices heard when it comes to opioid abuse. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and in this case, greece News Coverage of the government funding that followed she said. As an example of onesided coverage, killers january 2015 New York Times article on brutality with which stated researchers repeatedly speculate the nation has seen a cohort of white or isolated out of the economy. Talk about isolating much data the economy. A tall black communities expense color is white. Theres no question what opiate addicts suffering a precedent which to some of the same conditions who cannot are the factors africanamericans living this way, too. My question is where are the stories about them . As for pell city, Many Associates say they are grateful for the lack of press. If our customers were white, thou would be on the front page says one member. That would make what we are doing a lot harder. [applause] so, thank you. You know, i wasnt going to read that much, but i wanted to contextualize to you guys can actually paint a picture. I wanted to give you some of the data, too. A lot of the book is pulling record in breaking down data from the system. One involves pulling overdose records from all over the country. There is a lot of paperwork, too. I tried to get that inherent to bring the story home from a data perspective and not just anecdotal it. Anything you guys like to ask me . Open to questions about the boat. Anything else . When you refer to the East New York, just kind of amit total impression was that infiltrated nonwhite neighborhoods in new york city. Posada butchered it, but more so. What i tried to do in the book as i hate to separate pills from heroin to any other opiates. And if you are addict did to the molecule you have to be addicted to pills and you want to shoot either one. In new york, not so many pills, but theres a market for pills, too. Its not just those in these locations. The people buying these in selling an all view it as part of the same market because it is the same chemical addiction. These tend to be from the doctors prescription. What i found from the book is most legally prescribed prescriptions for opioids go to whites. My research showed a large percentage of the legal opioid painkillers are being sold to blacks. Much larger than is recognized in the official federal statistics. That is partially a result of toxicology reports be more aero, being more frequently in whiter neighborhood that have more money, more resources to conduct full and complete autopsy is in toxicology. There is a lot of factors. From an illegal street joint perspective, this is having pills and heroin are affecting africanamerican communities in ways that we hadnt anticipated and the federal Public Health data which i thought was important to get out there. You mentioned that overdoses are more prevalent in africanamerican communities. Forgive me if i miss this, but i was just wondering why. Is it because quantities are being consumed at higher doses in this instance is or is it that medical help is less readily available . Well, in terms of overall opioid doses ,com,com ma i dont think the argument is that its more prevalent in communities of color. But i do make the argument that its prevalent and much more prevalent than reflected in Public Health data generally poor Media Coverage especially. So i think that the reason we are not hearing about this part of the Opioid Epidemic is the narrative has been created that white, lower middle class, upper class. Newsday i wrote a kind of stories about white families, a lot of times beautiful young white girls like to be put on the front page of the newspaper. That is a trend you see in the press for the past decade. Theres also a lot of people dying. Its not as easy to sell. They take that picture on the front paper and is part of the narrative. Part of what i want to do is correct part of that narrative. Was set overdosed in one community. The part you are referring to is the trap with the highest levels of the opioid overdose rate, 53 out of 100 chart the highest levels of overdose may follow majority, minority community. That doesnt mean necessarily that minorities are overdosing at a higher rate. But those are communities that are majority, minority. Those are places where i saw what the implement. That is not addressed in the price in the book will bring more attention to that issue. It seems like you got barry into this. You are in our homes, try a moment. What is your reported process . [inaudible] really come the same thing ive always done which is put myself on the line, go to people, talk to them. Tell them who i am, so im interested in and hang around until somebody tells me something. I worked with a lot of people in this room. So much of what we do is putting yourself out there in a situation that definitely isnt comfortable and not always safe. With this book it was definitely taken to the extreme with that. When i first got to baltimore, i was lucky enough to have a source who is in the dead world. I guess you would call him a retired blood came later. If i hadnt had him as an intermediary, i wouldve been able able to connect with anybody. Through him, i was able to get them. You start figuring it out where they congregate, where the dealers go, start hearing about pills from this pharmacy and in this neighborhood, you go there and you go there. So i was just zipping around baltimore whenever i could. Im not. They also used encrypted software after. A lot of my reporting was online. Communicating with people who are selling these drugs on the dark web. It was something new and when i was in it i thought it was such an important story. So i wanted, i felt they needed to be out there. The other reason for that, the other reason that story gets told is that i think that the future. Thats how products move increasingly. We are still going to see people on the corner but the smart play right now if youre a drug dealer is to use your iphone what to talk about in the book is the most powerful drug dealing tool ever created. Encryption. So its no longer a matter of just serving drive along traffic with hair when an coke and bills. A lot of the stuff even really poor areas is being done online. Because everything is being done online. I did a lot on the web and a lot of just running around. Try not to get killed mostly. We talked about the lack of minorities. How do you think that as reporters we get to bring the voices of the minority to our own for overdosing to this whether its in the front page or even a brief . Also, do you plan to take your book to like local communities, councilman to show this is an issue, not just free clinics but clinics at actually have produced more healers, more people in this community . Absolutely. In terms of telling these stories, i think newsrooms in america, its no secret that they are primarily white. And i think editors and reporters need to make this a priority and say listen, we are telling the story and we put this on the front page. We talked about overdoses but what about the poor communities . We are acting like this story is only a white problem, which is ridiculous to think that the opiate, Opioid Epidemic is only going to affect pretty white girls, okay . It affects everybody. The molecule does not discriminate whether youre black or latino, male, female, american indian, jewish, muslim, it doesnt matter. The idea where making it, i think editors need to realize part of covering communities family is also covering addictions fairly. You cant discover economics or education fairly across all demographics. You need to cover things like addiction across all demographics. Its killing more people anything else in this country, killing more people than guns, car accidents. So i think editors need to listen to minority voices in their communities. They need to take a Broader Company deborah broader perspective when it comes to look at issues like addiction and talk about it took taliban that is going to the communities where they are comfortable, which are often more rural, more white, more comfortable communities. They key is just a report out to more communities that are not represented in the media. That might be sending reporters out to neighborhoods that reporter might not want to go. Thats our job is to go those places. As newsrooms increase and become ivy league, being a newspaper reporter used to be a working class a job. Not like it is now. I think if we had that approach and now more people would be willing to go to place with a uncomfortable. You would see more stories like this. We need to be more uncomfortable and make reporters more uncomfortable. Those are the stories that we need. Other questions . We are at the daily news together and work a lot together. A lot of what i do reporting lies, brown so most of the time, south bronx its like 80 of the committees are talking about. I think a lot of the perception, and another think this is an an accurate picture but the perception is when its a drugs, its going to be like being related. So we are not going to touch it necessarily because its getting related and this individual may be, and overdose have a rap sheet that is like five miles long. Hes got 53 priors and it suggest, just, you know, how do we write something nice about somebody that died of his horrible addiction when hes been involved in so much crime . Its not fair. Its not fair at all but it think what happens to a lot of the suburban white kids, they get caught up in the own kind of drug world. They might not have a rap sheet, may be dad they did all. Maybe they got lawyers, who knows . Every case is different. But d. C. Like all these other, its the addiction but also these other factors that kind of late into it, you know . May be you got like five breakin charges or something spilling your absolutely right. Theres a lot of crime going on today. Ill tell you, must be empty tonight. All the devils are here. You have a great point and im guilty of this as a crime reporter. As i think all of us, and our editors, too. What we do is whe open when we t in it, a lot of people follow the news dont notice that when we get in, generally some issues involved in a crime or an overdose or whatever, in time in the news, something that is not good we generally run the gamut of assistancof the system to sey have a rap sheet. Sometimes when somebody has a rap sheet or committed crimes or has done time, editors and reporters use of this term, perky. We have shootings out there. Its all gangs. There is a misperception in immediate that those stories could be more easily dismissed. For whatever reason. Thats institutional and thats been going on for a very long time. Thats going to require to think differently i think about, thats going to be like turning a big ship around, think differently about how we approach addiction and crime issues like that. Its also born of the fact that you only have so much real estate when you telling a story. The papers and a tv news want to tell the most dramatic stories that are going to reach the demographics of money. People are going to buy papers, by advertising. So there gravitating more towards places with money that a more affluent than its opportunities when they might not sell as many papers. Economics is a part of it as well as just the mindset that has developed over decades in newsrooms. I think we need to start thinking about it differently and just get rid of the idea that the story should get any less coverage because its in a bad neighborhood or because a man or woman has a rap sheet, they dont deserve the same coverage that they would a white neighborhood. Thats my perspective anyway. Automatic. [inaudible] of course. Adverse point of view, its more surprising like when a middleclass girl in long island overdoses on pills than when drugs hit communities where people were kind of born with two strikes against a the entrae of poverty, homelessness, maybe pairs of been involved in the criminal justice system. Its not really a value judgment about one person is worth more than the other. Its going to be chopped to change that spirit i agree with you. It is a cold and calculating new sally. Im as guilty of it as anybody else. This is what we are taught that this is, the bigger story, the best store as murder at a good address come right . Nobody cares about the murder at the bad address. Murder at a good address. Its rarer, its a bigger story. What i wanted to do in this book is tell a lot about murders at bad addresses and those stories that we dont have. I think, i dont know if we will be able to change it but i think we need to have some voices in newsrooms where i where that idea im hoping this book helps promulgate that idea and philosophy at least a little bit. I was a photojournalist. One thing that i noticed is i kept following these stories and i follow, very close to the vermont state police. One thing i noticed is as it gets a deeper, people become numb to it. Its so prevalent. The hardest thing is, is keeping them unknown, if you want to use that as a term. Because a lot of people really dont believe them. I have a hard time making people believe that in vermont, and ive done work in eastern maine, and no matter where ive been, ive been up and down 91, up and down 95. Its everywhere. Its not, you know, these are not white, these are not the White Working Class people who live in a nice upscale places. These are the working men out in the water and their children, and they have nothing to pass their highly their livelihood to now. A lot of their children have this problem. It really is, even though its technically a white mans problem, but when you go farther to eastport made you find out the native americans also the exact same problem. And often to a greater degree because not so much that theyre less educated, they are educated enough. Its just its easy to get to them. They have a problem, addiction to begin with. Native americans have an addiction problem. Its ingrained. It has to do, you know, they limit the alcohol. Spirit let me pick it up from there. Every community is dealing with the fallout from the Opioid Epidemic. This molecule does not discriminate. It does not discriminate. White communities like the ones youre describing, that is raw and horrible and that is real. Theres so many communities that are being hit hard by that. I just wanted to bring my small piece of the story to say hey look, its not just white families are suffering from this, which i think if you were an alien land on this planet and google opioid addiction, you could be forgiven if he believed its only affecting white people, which you read story after story after story about whites struggling about white workingclass people out of the job market or turning to cheap pills, cheap heroin. I just dont want us to forget theres many, many other people out there suffering from this same addiction. Its the hardest addiction i think in the world to break because its pure pleasure. The thing that i or over and again is hey, you dont know what this is like when i take this my life was shipped back before. But when i take this i thinking. I am the queen. There is a feeling like this. Its hard to kick something it makes you feel that way whether you are black or white. Other questions . Yes. First, do you think policymakers will repeat the mistakes of the war on drugs, incarcerate lots of people for solutions . Second, you are just describing the euphoria and ecstasy of taking these drugs. Have you tried any of this stuff . No. I never did come ive never done heroine. During the reporting of this story i consumed no opiates. [laughter] when i was in college, thats another story. Like many of us. But no, i mean, its horrible. I wouldnt mess with it at this point in my life because its so addicting. I seen it destroy so many lies. The are people in this room have dealt with it. There are people ive worked with who have dealt with it. It transcends all boundaries. Even though we know that, like thats the place, the boiling point. You dont hear about the boundary beyond white neighborhoods. Thats what i want people to hear about. The other port of your question was how is this epidemic going to be treated the addict criminal justice system. Obviously i think now the narrative has completely changed. This is welldocumented that now, so before donald trump came into office, during the Obama Presidency there was a sea change where the government and the press followed, starting addiction as a problem, as he helped her issue, as a problem of treatment at the disease. Whereas before when we had a drug epidemic that affect a larger Africanamerican Community with the crack epidemic in the 80s and early to mid \90{l1}s{l0}\90{l1}s{l0}, at that time the portrayal by the government and by the press following suit was hey, this was a gang problem. They need to be locked up. When you do lock them up a throwaway vikki. Thats where the three strikes law came in. Thats we saw a lot of the really tough laws that created this state we have now, what would lock up more people than anywhere else in the world. Of course when we have an epidemic that became affecting lights in numbers come in massive numbers, the Opioid Epidemic, and art of change. I talk about in the book. I think that change because those wider canaries have more political power, more money. They know how to collect on christmas or get their councilman or woman on the phone. Thats something that doesnt always happen in poor communities. It doesnt always happen, and a lot of times when you do reach out its not the same because politicians go where the votes are and where the money is. The press does the same thing. So i think in the trumpcare i dont know whats going to happen. Before he left office, obama got through 1 billion in funding to fight the epidemic which is the most thats ever been allocated towards it and he fought tooth and nail on that. Thats not enough, in my opinion. In the book i talked to a number of doctors and others who believe that we need a Marshall Plan to fight opiate addiction in the country. We need to be pouring billions of dollars into community programs, faithbased programs, addiction programs, education programs, antiviolence programs. Its all part of the same problem and it will take money to solve that. So what we are saying i think is we are going to see, unfortunately, the opiate epidemic drop on the list of priorities that the federal government has. Who the hell knows whats happening right now . [inaudible] so who the hell knows whats going on right now . I dont know whats going on. Im willing to bet the opiate epidemic isnt going to be out on president trumps list, although it should be because he got a lot of votes from communities that are being ravaged by the Opioid Epidemic, especially white communities. He made a number of promises that he was going to address those issues. Lets see if that something he will actually address. When you started, did you do a story about [inaudible] how did your focus and the nearest kind of evolved . It started, i went down to baltimore antiwas working for newsday. I freelanced a story for newsweek about gangs and baltimore and about they had one of the largest, theres dozens of gangs and baltimore. Some large and some small. I was just viewing the writing and the unrest and activism from their perspective and what they viewed. Like i mentioned earlier there were a number of gang members who are actually trying to keep the peace. But there were a lot of them are taking advantage and exploiting the situation, which was a situation where police were overwhelmed, the press was over him and it was sort of anything goes. It was like the wild west. During that time i just want to focus narrowly on the pharmacy and break news about that because i saw that as a big story. When i got connected with some of the people who would been dealing those drugs and i saw that it was essentially a conspiracy to steal and traffic those drugs in some of the aress weve been talking about including west baltimore, other pockets of the city, then by antenna went off and i said this is huge. Then i started thinking about the socioeconomic issue and then i started pursuing those arteries of the store in a way i probably would not have if it hadnt been any other city. I was working at newsday and i was covering the white house. I was not aware. I knew that people were dying of opiates in minority neighborhoods, but i did not experience that reality at newsday. The way they change for me my first book, i went to this thing called the triangle in hempstead. The big drug that was coke, crack. What i saw the way the drug affected those communities and i also saw the way opiates were beginning to creep into them. It was on my rada way to when i wasnt baltimore and i thought this is something nobody is covering. I wanted to tell a story that nobody had told before, and i found there just wasnt a lot out there. It was a matter of showing up and in many cases just listening. Thats what started my focus, trying to sell some stories essentially, freelance and make a living and then it sort of expanded and is on this is a much bigger national story. I started traveling. I was able, through some of the dealers who acknowledged to me they were involved in this stuff, trace some of the drugs to other cities in the country. In other states, including new jersey, pennsylvania, south florida, riviera beach. So i was able to sort of, my goal was to track the impact of those drugs as they moved across the country. I was able to track some of them but i wanted to show how Something Like a pharmacy, 31 pharmacy could have a huge impact on drug markets on the eastern seaboard. Any more questions . One more question. Anybody . [inaudible] if you are coming at it from the perspective how this drug trade evolved, did you notice anyway within the drug, the way its orchestrated in drug gangs, make it as profitable as it is . You mean from a lawenforcement perspective . Law enforcement or general in trades. I mean, from my perspective i was trying to be dispassionate and not view it from a lawenforcement perspective or, you know, i wanted to do it over all. I wanted to take the birdseye view. That being said i spoke to a lot of lawenforcement officials who said encryption, they need a backdoor. This is something james comey, now we know james comey was having, putting out these memos for the election. One of the things he got most covert forms he was calling for doctor to encryption for apple and android device. I think to a man, lawenforcement belief is thats where you cut it off. If you have access to someones phone after the arrest them and you dont just get 10 guesses on the password but jeff and definite, you could crack the code, it used to be that a cell phone was a detective greatest tool. When got a cell phone everything was in the. The drug dealers world was in there, his contacts, where he was, where he was going, his entire network. Now you cant access that anymore. A lot of them dont know that. I think thats a major issue and that hasnt been addressed either. In terms of encryption and how that will be dealt with by the feds going forward. So thank you, guys. I appreciate you coming out. [applause] thanthank you, really. I appreciate it. Spin thank you so much kevin. We have plenty of books for silver im sure he will be happy to sign them. [inaudible conversations] heres a look at some books that are being published this week