Street level pharmacies helped to stimulate the economy.
Via Baltimore Sun:
The amount of drugs looted from Baltimore pharmacies during the Freddie Gray riots last year was substantially higher than initially reported, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. About 80 percent more doses of drugs were taken, the agency said, including powerful opioids.
Gray, 25, died in April 2015 after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in police custody. On the day of his funeral, 27 pharmacies and two methadone clinics were looted.
“There’s enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year,” Anthony W. Batts, who was police commissioner, said at the time.
Treatment specialists have said it’s difficult to determine how fast drug users would absorb an increase in supplies, especially since it was unknown which drugs were taken and who might have acquired them.
Given that the thefts occurred more than a year ago, the drugs likely were sold long ago, said Don Hibbert, the DEA’s assistant special agent in charge for Baltimore.“We do believe most of the drugs were distributed,” he said. “We are not seeing current effects.”
Hibbert said a third of the city’s pharmacies were looted during the unrest, and the retailers have placed the value of the drugs at about $500,000. DEA officials said the street value was likely far higher.
Nearly 315,000 doses of drugs were stolen, the DEA reported. More than 40 percent were Schedule II opioids, a class that includes methadone, oxycodone and fentanyl.
Scheduling is based largely on the potential for abuse, and Schedule II is considered high.
Fentanyl, which is many times more powerful than heroin, has been a particular problem in the state. Law enforcement and treatment professionals say it’s often mixed with or substituted for heroin without the user’s knowledge.