Imagine a substance that feels like a hug. It warms you, quiets your mind, and rocks you gently to sleep. There is just you and this warmth, and the sensation is almost like being loved.
This is the way addicts describe heroin.
“As soon as I did it, it felt like I had found what I was looking for,” a 27-year-old female heroin addict from south Charlotte said in a recent interview. “I felt right for the first time in my life.” (...)
Buying heroin in Charlotte is similar to ordering a pizza. Phone numbers of dispatchers float around the city. For an eager customer, dealers are easy to find. Call the number, place an order, and the dispatcher will instruct you to drive to a safe, public place—a mall parking lot, a suburban cul-de-sac. The park behind the Arboretum was once a popular place to buy. A runner—not the person who took the order—meets the buyer, and they can complete the deal window to window, without ever leaving their cars.
Much of the heroin being sold here is called black-tar heroin, named for its sticky, gooey consistency and dark brown color, which can resemble brown sugar or a Tootsie Roll. Its production is overseen primarily by Mexican drug cartels, DEA agent Ferris says. Black tar is a crude, unrefined version of the drug. To make white powder heroin, opium is converted to morphine and then to heroin. When making black tar, manufacturers leave out a refining step, and leave in many impurities. This means the drug is cheaper, but full of bacteria and other dangers.
At any given time in Charlotte, there can be 10 to 15 trafficking “cells” receiving heroin from the cartels, Ferris says. Members of the cells process the drug, dilute it to increase their yield, roll it in plastic, and wrap it in tiny, brightly colored latex balloons containing anywhere from one-tenth of a gram to a full gram. Runners and dispatchers travel to Charlotte primarily from Mexico. They are often quiet men in their 20s who may sell for an average of a year at a time. If they are not arrested, they go back home, Ferris says, although some return to America to be promoted through the ranks of the drug-dealing organization. To the cartels, runners and dispatchers are interchangeable and dispensable. Hundreds may be arrested, but they are quickly replaced.
by Lisa Rab, Charlotte Magazine | Read more:
Image: Logan Cyrus
This is the way addicts describe heroin.“As soon as I did it, it felt like I had found what I was looking for,” a 27-year-old female heroin addict from south Charlotte said in a recent interview. “I felt right for the first time in my life.” (...)
Buying heroin in Charlotte is similar to ordering a pizza. Phone numbers of dispatchers float around the city. For an eager customer, dealers are easy to find. Call the number, place an order, and the dispatcher will instruct you to drive to a safe, public place—a mall parking lot, a suburban cul-de-sac. The park behind the Arboretum was once a popular place to buy. A runner—not the person who took the order—meets the buyer, and they can complete the deal window to window, without ever leaving their cars.
Much of the heroin being sold here is called black-tar heroin, named for its sticky, gooey consistency and dark brown color, which can resemble brown sugar or a Tootsie Roll. Its production is overseen primarily by Mexican drug cartels, DEA agent Ferris says. Black tar is a crude, unrefined version of the drug. To make white powder heroin, opium is converted to morphine and then to heroin. When making black tar, manufacturers leave out a refining step, and leave in many impurities. This means the drug is cheaper, but full of bacteria and other dangers.
At any given time in Charlotte, there can be 10 to 15 trafficking “cells” receiving heroin from the cartels, Ferris says. Members of the cells process the drug, dilute it to increase their yield, roll it in plastic, and wrap it in tiny, brightly colored latex balloons containing anywhere from one-tenth of a gram to a full gram. Runners and dispatchers travel to Charlotte primarily from Mexico. They are often quiet men in their 20s who may sell for an average of a year at a time. If they are not arrested, they go back home, Ferris says, although some return to America to be promoted through the ranks of the drug-dealing organization. To the cartels, runners and dispatchers are interchangeable and dispensable. Hundreds may be arrested, but they are quickly replaced.
by Lisa Rab, Charlotte Magazine | Read more:
Image: Logan Cyrus
