Fentanyl is being laced to become even more deadly

In February on a snowy Wednesday, I met a homeless man named David standing outside a Safeway panhandling for money. He was wearing a white hoodie with the words ‘Portland State University’ printed on it and holding two empty beer cans and a remote control.

I asked him what it’s like to be homeless in Portland. ‘I know how not to be homeless, but there’s a reason I am out here and something’s not right,’ he replied. He told me that when he gets housed, he often gets kicked out quickly and doesn’t want to have to go through the effort again. Something bad happened to him when he was a kid; when he goes indoors, he feels closed in and his ‘demons appear’, he explained. He started using drugs to hide the pain.

He used to use heroin, but became a fentanyl addict because it was cheaper and stronger.