That is today at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2s booktv. Hello. Good evening. I am the manager of the book shop and i want to thank you all for joining us for the lunch of Kevin Deutsch pill city. Kevin deutsch is an awardwinning criminal justice reporter and the author of one previous book the triangle; a year on the ground with new yorks bloods and crypts his new book, pill city, tells the true story of two unlikely kingpins from baltimore who capitalize on the chaos of the riots following freddie grays death to steal 100 million worth of pills and launch a drug empire. In the star review, pill city is called a remarkable feat of discovery saying that are raw language and violence it paints the bleak and grimly complex picture and issues forcing societal change. Now, please welcome Kevin Deutsch. [applause] thanks so much for having me and thanks for coming. It is 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. It took me i spent about a year over a year potentially the last 20 months in and out of this world. It is hard if you are living and breathing it. While i was working at news egg, i was writing about drug markets, encryption, how drugs move online. I used that sort of as a ground for learning about the technology that some dealers were using in baltimore. Just to give you a little background on the story i talk about this in the book. I first got wind of the riot and the looting of the drugstores from a hipster who is a source i had been working for in my first book, the triangle. He had walked about collaborating on another story about his experience as a blood gang leader in new york or possibly a book about his life. We had struck up a correspo correspondence and semifriendship and when the rioting broke out he alerted me and told me to get down there. He was specifically interested in the pharmacy looting which at the time wasnt on anybodys radar. We knew pharmacies were getting looted but we thought it was part of a larger everything in that area was being looted. So, he brought my attention to the pharmacy looting and told me it was part of an orchestrated effort specifically. So i spent about the next year tracking, even after the book i kept going and i am still going to some degree, looking and tracking what happened to those pills and drugs that were stolen from the pharmacies. There were 31 pharmacies and methadone clinics that were officially looted during the riot according to the dea. That is only the official number. My reporting showed there was a number of millions of dollars worth of heroin, pills and other drugs that changed hands among drug gangs during the chaos. Many gangs, and baltimore has many of them, the biggest is the black rebel family gang, known as bgf. Bgf and other gangs went to wars. They used it as a period of where power could be acceptable in the underworld and things were up for grabs. A lot of gang members helped defend businesses but others used it as an opportunity to exploit and gain power in the underworld pecking order. So, the book is not only about the loot of drugs but also about the drugs that changed hands over drug gangs that were feuding over the corners. What i am going to do is take you a little deeper in the book. Rather than start at the beginning i will take you into the heart of the epidemic as i experienced it and some of inner city neighborhoods i was reporting in. One of the reasons i wanted to write this book is because there is so much attention paid to the Opioid Epidemic in rural, middle and upper class White Communities. The white aspect of the academic gets a lot of attention. Almost exclusively gets all the attention. When the fact is you could go to baltimore, east new york, harlem right now, and find many, many people shooting up or using pills who are not white and rural middle class people. This is an epidemic that affects all races, ages, demographics and that is something that is largely looked past in the media. I think in part because it is easier for reporters to go most reporters are white. I am white and i am a reporter. I am speaking from experience. In most news rooms, most people are white. I think white reporters feel more comfort going to white neighborhoods to write about white drug ad didicts. That might be controversial to say but that is my experience. If you saw more colored people in the newsroom i think you would see this epidemic represented more fairly in the press. I will talk about an area in baltimore called oxy alley which is a small stretch on pennsylvania avenue. It is place where i spent a lot of time writing about the addicts there. This is a place where some of the looted drugs ended up. They call it oxy alley. It looks like any other blighted street filled with vacant homes, discarded liquor bottles and addicts stumbling out of the corner looking like zombies. Two users, cosha jones and terry augmond are held up in one of the roach invested homes boiling down a batch of pills into liquid ford. Her 6yearold son is in the corner and the women speculate about the quality of the drugs they are about to inject. Going to be real nice keisha said melting the oxy codeine. 40 million. I hope they are as good as the hollywood says the woman who learned she is six weeks pregnant with her first child. I have to make the most of it today because i cant be fooling around with pills no more terry says. These are my send off. Pill city gives names to opioids, brands that change and vary on the type and dosage. F16, hollywood, mike toois n and black domino were the rage in april. Now it is beyonce and black ivy they are clamoring for. Bgf hasnt let us down yet, have they securing pain killers from the bgf. In other vacant along oxy alley there are people just like them. Shooting and snorting opioids from dust to dawn. Many getting them from jimmy masters before pill city came along. He was part of a crew going to battle with pill city over drug corners and lived in baltimore. The concentration of drug abuseers on the street is among the highest in the country overdose, associated violence ravaging america pss cities. Few outside the game ventured to oxy alley views them as places quote beyond redemption end quoed. You come here for one of three reasons to buy drugs, to sell drugs, or because you dont care anymore and dont mind dying. The only other excuse is you are a homicide or narcotic detective. Addicts along the alley agree. I fuck for pills, steal for pills, break into homes, whatever i need to do says Vanessa Jackson who is snorting three houses down just as gunshots range out in the distant. That is our sound track she joked. She took notice of watching heroin ruin lives of family members, neighbors and everything. After everything got bad with freddie gray i was feeling bad and i heard bgf having cheap pills as good as heroin but safer. They brought them every day along as long as i have cashier i am down to have sex. Since then, she lost her job, has been arrested multiple times but the thing is i cannot stop using. Five houses down from where jackson is getting high, roderick hesz, 44 just finished injecting methadone his choice. I used to use h, talking about heroin, but h is a street drug, you know . Like an ugly broke down car who is spending about 50 a day on pills. But oxy is a trug like a mercedes. If you can afford the classy ones why keep buying the ones that is broke down. A similar analogy is drawn saying he always thought pain pills were for white people. People with money and good insurance. Studies show prescribers are far less likely to give opioids to africanamericans due largely to racial bias. It was hard to get my hands on them. They were scared but that changed after the riots. He said pills aint never been as big as heroin until pill city made them big. Lots of people switched from heroin to pills after the looted pills went on sale. This has always been a heroin town. Baltimore has been americas heroin town representing the largest rate of any usage in the country. That year, the local department of health counted 60,000 drug addicts in the city and as many as 48,000 addicted to heroin. 110 residents by some estimates were a heroin addict and even that sounds low says curry. Baltimore in 2015 is the natural epicenter of americas inner city opioid scorge. If the white kid dieing in the suburbs of his bed room is the symbol of the first wave, continue quote, oxy alley is a symbol for the second end quote. Opia opiates are only part of the problem. The april riots faced by baltimores more vulnerable residents. Poverty, gun violence, substandard housing, vacant properties, failing schools, and profiling and incarceration rates. It is not just happening in baltimore. Across the country, new oxy alleys are popping up turning blighted streets into what mark calls boulevards of pain. The people overdosing are mostly impoverishes and mostly black records show. Among them a 24yearold hair dresser raising two kids on her own, a 20yearold short order cook with dreams of attending a Major University in chicago, a 46yearold janitor in milwaukee with five children to raise. In camden, chicago, new orleans, detroit, cincinnati, atlanta, and others dozens more are entering hospitals and rehab clinics every day. Quote do i i know i am probably going to die from my addiction . Absolutely. A pill city user living in the 9thward. But right now quote the pills are not what i need so i keep using end quote. These two were the first users and like others they heard about the opioids at cheaper prices. This drug had to be safer than heroin the women assumed since quote that junk is strictly for low lives and feans. I thought they would make be feel better suffering for an uncarved pain. It is the best feeling because it makes you feel confidant, at ease and everything is right. Her son still seated in the corner calls out can we please go, mommy, he says growing tired of sitting in the damp dark basement. The woman are so caught up in preparing their oxy they forgot all about the boy. Not that they mind using in front of him but by now he is used it. Not yet love, i am busy. I am just going to read a little more and we will wrap up. I want to give you a little more of a taste of this from sort of a macro perspective zooming out. As poor black residents of an inner city neighborhood they call within the demographics. Quiche is a single mother and terry resides in a womans shelter. They work parttime at a discount Clothing Store in baltimore snorting and injecting 1012 pills a day in the employee bathroom. I think i would have gotten help by now if i knew where to start. If they were living in a more prosperous neighborhood,istics suggest they have a better chance of getting treatment significantly. Most government founded outreach programs in inner cities are severely unfunded meaning a poor black opioid addict is less likely to get the help they need. The testimony highlighted to the oversight and government reform city describing the difficulties faced by inner City Residents looking to kick opioids. I remember a 24yearold mother of two who came to the er every week requesting Addiction Treatment a former practicing physician recalled. She would be told there was nowhere to go that day or the next and offered an appointment in three weeks. Because she lacked housing and other services she would relapse. One day her family found her unresponsive and not breathing and by the time she arrived in the er it was too late and she died. A baltimore physician specializing in Addiction Treatment said the quote this is just one of the many way black opioid users are treated different from whites suffering from the same disease. There are shortages in White Communities but not so in communities of color. Seeing the seeing the damage first hand where he is a doctor but in his family. His father died of an opioid overdose in late april 2015 in his apartment. Two weeks later, his wife, committed suicide with a mix of vodka and opioid painkillers. Later, a teenager he mentored was injured as well. Elgin says for whatever reason the white addict is more often seen as an unwilling innocent victim of doctors and Drug Companies and that is how society views the victims. People suffering from disease who need a second chance. But black inner city opioid a addicts are quote seen by politicians, the media and the public as being complicit in this addiction and not deserving of the same sympathy it is staggering double standard. Elgin who is africanamerican says racism is just one factor contributing to this rare treatment. At play is the quote lack of political influence of blacks living in drug plagued neighborhoods and the limiteded number of Treatment Options compared to White Communities. Quote both factors mean there is less visibility for black drug addicts and less awareness in corresponding empathy in society. Black market pain pills is another culprit. Opioid dealing organizations like pill city are purchases of stolen drugs too. The franchise in new orleans is a Clearing House for pharmacy labs looking to unload their elicit haul. After ripping off a drugstore a perpetrator can sell them at street value an arrangement pill city one of the largest known buyers of stolen opioids in america. When the Law Enforcement and crack down show they switch to heroin since it offers the same high as pain kills but at 5 10 a day is cheaper. Pill city made pills affordable to poor minorities even as whites were being priced out of the market. Now, bgf are the guys you come to when you have product you want to unload. Data compiled by the cdc records stkts and Law Enforcement filings and public katea indicates opioids sold on the black market are killing africanamericans in higher numbers than whites. Quote with regard to over dose deaths caused by ill licit opioids black people are suffering dispor disproportionately. When the data only reflects one side of the story, only one group gets the Media Attention and financial resources. Journ journalists in the United States are quote focused on white opioid users to the detriment of white says an addiction counselor in ohio. It is not malicious but rather white people know how to make their voices heard. The grease is News Coverage and the government funding that follows it. As an example of one side coverage, she cites the New York Times article saying there is a cohort of whites who are isolated and left out of the society and have access to cheap heroin and prescription narcotics. Talk about isolated and left out of the economy. That is how black communities have felt since the countrys inception explains keller who is white. There is no question white opioid addicts are suffering due to the same condition but we cannot ignore the fact there are africanamericans suffering to have. Many Associates Say they are grateful for the lack of press scrutiny. If were customers were white, that shit would be on the front page said one pill city member. That would make what we are doing a lot harder. I wanted to contextual that and give you data. There was a lot of footwork and a lot of paperwork, too. I tried to get that in here just to bring the story home from a data perspective and not just anecdotal. Anything you guys want to ask me. Open to questions about the book, anything else. Sure. [ [inaudible conversations] pills have in filtrated but more so heroin. I hate to separate pills from heroin and any other opioid. So i view it as public experpt experts are viewing as the same problem. If you are addicted to the molecule you will shoot either one. In new york, there is more heroin. There is a market for pills but a larger market for heroin in eastern new york. It is not just pills. It is heroin, too. The people buying these and the people selling them all view it as part of the same market because it is the same chemical addiction. Do the pills tend to be more of what people think of getting from doctors . What i found from the book is most legally prescribed prescriptions for opioids go to white. A large percentage of illegal opiate painkillers are being sold to black. Much larger than recognized in the official federal statistics. That is partially a result of toxicology reports being more thorough and conducted more frequently in whiter neighborhoods that have more resources to conduct full, complete autopsy and toxicology. From an illegal street dealing perspective i found pills of heroin are affecting africanamerican communities in ways we had not really anticipated and not how the federal public data has reflected which is why i thought it was porn important to get this out there. You mentioned overdoses are more prevalent in the africanamerican and i was wondering why . Is it because they are being consumed at higher doses . Or that medical health is less readily available . Well, in terms of overall opioid overdoses i dont make the argument it is more prevalent in africanamerican communities than white but i make the argument it is prevalent and more prevalent than the Media Coverage especially is giving to it. I think part of the reason that we are not hearing a lot about this part of the opiate epidemic is that the narrative has been created that if a white, lower middle class, upper class problem. At newsly i wrote a ton of stories about white families and we will provide pictures of beautiful, young white girls they look to put on the front of the newspaper. And that is a trend you have been seeing in the press and have been seeing for the past decade. But the flip side is in communities of color there are a lot of people dying but it is not as easy to sell. For the reporter to get that nice picture to be on the front of the paper it is part of the narrative that part of the what i want to do is correct part of that narrative and bring another element into it. Forgive me but was it more prevalent in one community than the other . I think the part you are referring to is in the ten districts with the highest level of opiate overdose rates, 53100, are majority minority communities. That doesnt mean necessarily that minorities are overdosing at a higher rate in those communities but those are communities that are majorityminority and those are places where i saw the most severe impact. That is something, i think, is just not being addressed in the press and really by Public Health researchers. I am hoping that the book will bring more attention to that issue. Yes . It seems like you got very intimate with a lot of your subjects. You were in their homes for these incredibly hard moments. What was the reporting process like . Same thing i have always done which is put myself on the line, go up to people, talk to them. Tell them who i am and hang around until somebody tells me something. I worked with you and 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 is not always safe. With this book it was definitely taking to the extreme with that. When i first got to baltimore i was lucky to have a source who was in the gang world and was a i guess you call it a retired gang leader. He was able to voucher me a little bit with some of the people i interviewed. If i had not had him, i would not have been able to connect with anybody. Through him, i was able to get some of the stuff and be invited to some of these people. And once i started meeting people, you start figuring out where the dealers go and hearing about pills looted from this pharmacy and this neighborhood and you go there and there. I was zipping around baltimore whenever i could. When i got off work or on the weekends i would be there. And the other part of the story that i think is interesting is yauz working stories about encryption and the dark web when he hear about now but some of these gang members were the first to incorporate encryption and dark web drug sealing in the inner city market. That might send sophisticated but it is as simple as using apple messenger. Two of the men were Software Programs and designed their own. But they used signal and apple messengers and ones out there already. So i wanted to be out there. The other reason it is important for that hightech element is that is the future. That is how we will see products we are going to see people on the corner but if you are a drug dealer, you can use your iphone which is the most powerful drug dealing tool ever created. Encryption, communication, not a matter of traffic or heroin or coke. A lot of this stuff even in really poor areas being done now online. Everything is done online. I did a lot of running around trying not to get killed. Very disappointed about the lack of minorities. Or two part. How do you think as reporters we bring the voices of the minorities to opioid addiction whether it is on the front page, that are executed pitch, do you plan to take your book to local Community People or councilman to show them this is an issue we need to bring not just to clinics that produce more feelers for people in the community. Absolutely. In terms of telling a story i think newsrooms in america, no secret they are primarily white and editors and reporters need to make this a priority and say we are counting on this, put this on the front page and overdoses, what about poor communities . We are acting like this story is only a white problem is ridiculous to think the opiate epidemic is only going to affect pretty white girls. The molecule does not discriminate whether you are black, latino, american indian, jewish, muslim, doesnt matter. The idea we are making it editors need to realize treating communities fairly, you cant just cover education across demographics, you need to cover all demographics, killing more people than anyone else, more people than guns in many cases. I think editors need to listen to minority voices, take a broader perspective when it comes to issues like addiction and talk about it in communities which are often more rural communities. The key as reported more communities are not represented in the media too. That reporter may not to go on drug corners, that is our job to go to those places and at newsrooms that are ivy league, being a newspaper reporter used to be a working class job, used to be not like it is now and i think if we had that approach now where people were willing to go where they are uncomfortable you would have more stories like this. We could be more uncomfortable, those other stories. Other questions . We work a lot together and when i do reporting in brownsville, 80 in those communities, a lot of perceptions, when it is drugs, it is going to be hurty, gang related so we are not in touch because it is game related and this individual that may be overdosing has a rap sheet that is 5 miles long, 53 priors and how do we write something nice about some buddies that died of this horrible addiction when he has been involved in so much crime and i think it is not fair at all but what happened to a lot of suburban white kids they get caught up in their own drug world, they may not have the rap sheet, maybe dad paid it off or they got lawyers, who knows . Every case is different but you see it is the addiction but also other factors that play into it. Maybe he has 5 is in charge or something. Absolutely right. A lot of crime reporters today, hell must empty the night because all the devils are here. No. You have a great point. And all of us and our editors too, a lot of people who follow the news dont know this but when we get a name some what is involved in a crime or overdose, for something that is not good we generally run them through to see if they have a rap sheet, sometimes when somebody has a rap sheet or committed crimes, editors, reporters say perpy, that is too perpy for us to cover. We have shootings out there and drugs out there and there is this perception in the media those stories are more easily dismissed for whatever reason and that is institutional. That has been going on for a long time and will require us to think differently like turning a big ship around, how we approach addiction and crime and things like that it is also born of the fact that we have so much real estate when telling a story so the papers the told the most dramatic stories that reach the demographics of money, they turn on the tv by advertising so they are gravitating more toward places with money that are more affluent than communities they might not know about with high saturation viewership is money, economics are a part of it as well as the mindset that developed over decades. We are all going to do that and we need to think about it differently and get rid of the idea that stories should get any live coverage because a man or woman has a rap sheet. That is my perspective anyway. One of the traditional news values, more surprising when class girl in long island, overdosing on pills, when drugs hit communities, people were born with two strikes against them in terms of poverty and parents involved in the criminal Justice System so probably a value judgment, just like a very encapsulating news value, tough to change that. I agree with you. It is ingrained and i am as guilty as anybody else. This is where journalists, the bigger story, the best story is murder at a good address. No one worries about that. It is rare, the biggest story. What i wanted to do is tell a lot about murders at that address and those stories we dont hear so i dont know if we can change that but we need to have some voices in the newsrooms aware of that idea and i hope this helps propagate that idea and philosophy. I was a photojournalist, one thing i noticed is i kept following these stories, followed closely in a rural town in vermont and one thing i noticed is as it gets deeper people become numb because it is so troubling. The hardest thing is keeping them unknown if you want to use that as a town because people dont believe it. I have a hard time making people believe, i am doing work in eastern maine, no matter where i have been, i have been up and down 91, 95, us one in maine, it is everywhere. These are not the White Working Class people that live in upscale places. These are the working men and their children and they have nothing to pass their livelihood to. A lot of their children have this problem and it is really, even though its technically a white mans problem when you go farther in maine you find out the native americans have the same problem. And often to a greater degree because not so much they are less educated. They are educated. It is just easier to get to them when they have a problem to begin with. Native americans have an addiction problem ingrained and it has to do, they limit their alcohol let me pick it up. Every community has fallout from epidemic. It does not discriminate and we need to stop. White communities like the ones you are describing is raw and horrible and real and it happens and so many communities are being hit hard like that but i wanted to bring my small piece and say it is not just white families who are suffering you are an alien landing on this planet and google toed to opiate addiction you could be forgiven if you believe it is only affecting white people because story after story about whites struggling, working class people out of the job market, cheap heroin. I dont want us to forget many other people out there are suffering from the same addiction and it is the hardest addiction in the world to break because it is pure pleasure. The thing i heard over and over is you dont know what this is like my life was shit i am the king, the queen, there is no feeling like this. It is hard to kick something that makes you feel that way whether you are black or white. Other questions . In the trump era do you think policymakers look like this . Incarcerate lots of people, second, you were just describing the euphoria and ecstasy of taking these drugs. Have you tried this stuff . No. I have never done heroin. During the reporting of this story i consumed no opiates. When i was in college, that is another story. Like many of us. It is horrible and i wouldnt mess with it at this point in my life because it is so addictive and i have seen it destroy so many lives, people we work with dealt with it and it transcends all boundaries and even though we know that, that is the boilerplate, this addiction transcends all boundaries, we dont hear about that. The other part of your question was how is this epidemic treated to criminal Justice System . Obviously now the narrative is completely changed. This is well documented, before trump came into office during the Obama Presidency there was a seachange where government and the press started viewing addiction as a problem like a healthcare issue, a problem of treatment of disease whereas before when we had drug epidemics, largely africanamerican communities but the epidemics in the 80s and 90s at that time the portrayal by the government and press following suit is this is a gang problem in these neighborhoods are creating these problems on their own and we need to lock them up. That is where use our a lot of tough love that created the incarceration state where we lock up more people than anybody in the world and when we had an epidemic that affected life in massive numbers, it has changed. The narrative changed, the wider communities have more political power, more money, they know how to call congressman or get their counsel little woman on the phone and that is something that doesnt always happen in poor communities and a lot of times when you do reached out it is not the same because politicians are where the votes are in the money is and the press doesnt mean anything. I think in the trump era i dont know what is going to happen was before he left office obama got through 1 billion in funding to fight the epidemic that had never been allocated. That is not enough in my opinion. In the book i talk to a number of doctors and others who believe we need another plan to fight opioid addiction, pouring billions of dollars into community programs, faithbased programs, addiction programs, education programs, all part of the same process and it will take money to solve that and what we are seeing, we will see the opiate epidemic drop the priorities the government has. Who knows what is happening right now . Who knows what is going on right now . I dont know what is going on. We are waiting to see what happens but i am willing to bet the opiate epidemic wont behind on resident trumps list although it should be because you have a lot of folks in communities that have been ravaged by the opiate epidemic. He made some promises he was going to address those issues. Lets see what he will address. Is a story did you go into it . The quality of the press and the healthcare industry, that has been the narrative. I went down to baltimore for newsweek, i was working for newsday and the story for newsweek about gangs in baltimore and they had one of the largest, dozens of gangs, some small, some large and i was just viewing the rioting and unrest and activism from their perspective. Like i mentioned earlier, a number of gang members were trying to keep the peace, but some were exploiting the situation, police were overwhelmed, the press was overwhelmed. It is like the wild west, for a limited number of hours so during that time i want to focus narrowly on great news because i saw it when i got them of the people dealing in those drugs and i saw it was essentially a spirit c to steal and traffic those drugs in the areas we have been talking about including baltimore, my antenna went off and i said jesus christ, this is huge and i started thinking of socioeconomic issues and pursuing the arteries in a way i wouldnt have if it happened in any other city. I was looking at newsday and covering the epidemic and i was not aware, i do for a dying of opiates in minority neighborhoods. The way it changed me, my first book, a place called the triangle, what i saw, the way drugs affected those communities and the way opiates were being done. It was on my radar in baltimore but it is something nobody has covered. I wanted to tell a story nobody hopedfor. And ifound there wasnt a lot out there. It was amatter of showing up and it is very focused on selling stories and freelance and expanded and i saw this was a much bigger national story. Instead of traveling i was able through some of the dealers who acknowledged they were involved in this stuff trace the drugs to other cities in the country in other states including new jersey, pennsylvania, south florida and i was able my goal was to track the impact of those drugs across country. I was able to track some of them but i wanted to show how 31 pharmacies could have a huge impact on drug markets on the ancient seaboard. Any questions . One more question. This treatment in communities if you were coming at it, how the structure evil did you notice any way the drugs are orchestrated and being with their facility. From the longdistance perspective . Like an economic perspective. From my perspective i was trying to be dispassionate or i wanted to view it overall, the birds i view and that being said i spoke to some official during the reporting of the book who said encryption, this is something james comey, having put out these memos, one of the things he got coverage for is he was calling for backdoor encryption for apple and android devices. Lawenforcement believes that cut it off. If you had access to someones phone after you arrest them you dont just get 10 guesses on the password, you crack the code. It used to be the cell phone was protected, the greatest tool. Everything was in there. The drug dealers world was in there, contacts, where he was, where he was going and you cant access that anymore and a lot of us didnt know that which that is a major issue. In terms of encryption and the feds going forward. Thank you, appreciate you coming out. Thank you. Really. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, plenty of books for sale and happy to sign theme