“that one that starts with a D”: “Makers of Dilaudid to Officially Change Name to ‘That One That Starts with a D,’” http://gomerblog.com/2017/03/makers-of-dilaudid/.
“You go crazy if you can’t laugh”: Author interview, Health Wagon nurse-practitioner James Kendrick, May 24, 2017.
“but they don’t put the resources to monitor them”: Author interview, Shenandoah County sheriff Tim Carter, July 10, 2017.
three people died of overdose: Virginia Department of Health statistics, 2012. (Five died that year of prescription opioid overdose.) Two NAS babies were reported for Shenandoah County in 2012.
“it was like cutting off and on a light switch”: Author interviews, Lutz.
demanding sex from female addicts: Ibid.; author interview, Don Wolthuis, Jan. 7, 2016 (and many subsequent interviews with Lutz, Wolthuis, and others).
diseases of despair: Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century,” National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, at http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078.full.
“The places with the lowest overdose mortality rates”: Author interview, Shannon Monnat, June 6, 2017. Lewis County, NY, schools’ payment in lieu of taxes from Maple Ridge Wind Farm: Joanna Richards, “Wind Farm a Windfall to Lewis County Communities,” North Country Public Radio, May 15, 2013.
opioid-prescribing rate in the Woodstock region: Opioid-prescribing rates comparing Lee County’s (10.23 percent) to Shenandoah County’s (2.96), Virginia’s (5.49), and the nation’s (5.03); data comes from Medicare Part D enrollees, 2013, compiled by Monnat. The statewide figure was 5.49 percent.
journalist Sam Quinones: Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 327–28.
Declining workforce participation wasn’t just: Author interview, Monnat. Princeton economist Alan B. Krueger’s 2017 study also backs Monnat’s thesis: “The opioid crisis and depressed labor force participation are now intertwined in many parts of the U.S.,” he said, in the Brookings Institution paper “Where Have All the Workers Gone? An Inquiring into the Decline of the U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate,” Sept. 7, 2017, found here: https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/where-have-all-the-workers-gone-an-inquiry-into-the-decline-of-the-u-s-labor-force-participation-rate/. Related: Fred Dews, “How the Opioid Epidemic Has Affected the U.S. Labor Force, County-by-County,” Brookings Institution, Sept. 7, 2017.
Packaged in Harlem, the heroin was shaped: Details of the FUBI ring were gleaned from interviews with numerous law enforcement officers who worked the case, 2016–2017, including Lutz, Stafford County drug task force officer Kevin Coffman, ATF agent Bill Metcalf, and Wolthuis, along with numerous users and their relatives, and with Ronnie Jones.
D.C. was so afraid of the drug: Author interview with one of his subdealers, “Marie,” name withheld to protect her job, May 23, 2016, confirmed by several drug task force officers.
wouldn’t even know where to put the needle: Author interview, Jones, Hazelton Federal Correctional Institute, Aug. 11, 2016.
“you don’t have people shooting at you”: Author interview, Coffman, May 31, 2016. Coffman also described the regular weight of the Harlem heroin haul.
important subset of the drug trade in Baltimore: Jean Marbella and Catherine Rentz, “Heroin Creates Crowded Illicit Economy in Baltimore,” Baltimore Sun, Dec. 19, 2015, quoting a RAND Corporation study and Baltimore’s heroin task force.
With the highest per capita rate of heroin use: Baltimore has the worst heroin problem in the country, according to incoming Maryland governor Larry Hogan: Jenna Johnson, “Hogan Says He Will Declare Heroin ‘Emergency’ Once Sworn in as Md. Governor,” Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2014. A 2000 DEA report said Baltimore had the highest per capita rate for heroin: Julia Beatty, “Baltimore: The Heroin Capital of the U.S.,” The Fix, March 30, 2015.
Baltimore residents were six times: “We have oh-point-two percent of the country’s population and one-point-two percent of the drug overdoses,” and locals are six times more likely to die of an opioid overdose, according to Mark O’Brien, Baltimore City Health Department’s opioid overdose prevention and treatment director: Author interview, Sept. 4, 2016.
Little Baltimore: Jennifer Donelan and Dwayne Myers, “Heroin Highway: Part 5—Hagerstown, Md. ‘Round the Clock Emergency,’” WJLA, Washington, D.C., Feb. 19, 2016.
A 2017 New Yorker profile of Martinsburg: Margaret Talbot, “The Addicts Next Door,” The New Yorker, June 5 and 12, 2017.
Intended to aid police surveillance: Luke Broadwater and Justin George, “City Expands Surveillance System to Include Private Cameras of Residents, Businesses,” Baltimore Sun, Oct. 30, 2014.
“Sometimes the dealers will flash their lights”: Author interview, Dennis Painter, June 17, 2016.
His girlfriend had to pick him up late that night: Author interview, Courtney Fletcher, Dennis’s then-girlfriend, May 17, 2017.
The first time Jesse shot up heroin: Author interview, Kristi Fernandez, May 23, 2016.
Gray was driving on a suspended license: Outlined in “Statement of Facts,” United States v. Devon Renard Gray, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, Harrisonburg Division, Feb. 5, 2015.
“we’ve almost come to blows”: Author interview, Coffman, May 31, 2016.
a squealing chase through Middletown: Author interviews, Wolthuis, June 2, 2016, and Metcalf, May 23, 2016; and Joe Beck, “Officer: Strasburg Chase Speeds Reached 60 to 90 MPH,” Northern Virginia Daily, April 9, 2013.
Responding to a nearly sixfold increase: The per capita rate of imprisonment increased from 93 per 100,000 to 536 per 100,000, according to David Cole, “The Truth About Our Prison Crisis,” New York Review of Books, June 22, 2017.
“Too many Americans go to too many prisons”: Charlie Savage, “Justice Dept. Seeks to Curtail Stiff Drug Sentences,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 2013.
“My story was, I was recently out of jail”: Author interviews, Metcalf, May 16, 2016, and multiple subsequent interviews.
Rose had forgotten it was a territory: Author interview, Marie (name withheld), May 23, 2016.
“two hundred people I know of would get sick”: From the courtroom testimony of Marie (name withheld): Joe Beck, “Sentencing Depicts Dealer’s Role in Heroin Ring,” Northern Virginia Daily, June 3, 2015.
a woman’s chipper recorded voice intoned: Author interview, Marie.
“Never get high on your own supply”: Ibid.; Notorious B.I.G. lyrics from “Ten Crack Commandments.” Other details of Jones’s spending came from Jones, Lutz, Metcalf, Coffman, and Wolthius.
“reminds me of The Wire”: Author interview, Lutz, Jan. 19, 2016.
“We were disgusted”: Ibid.
overdose deaths in the region would surge: Author interview, Lauren Cummings, executive director of the drug abuse and prevention coalition Road to Recovery, July 3, 2017.