Fentanyl is wreaking havoc in America

I stepped through a hole in the chainlink fence surrounding Portland’s O’Bryant Square and saw four people nodded out and three smoking fentanyl. The man who had supplied them was standing nearby; he gave me a nod and continued with his business.

Built in 1973, the park is mostly brick and concrete with its dominant feature a bronze fountain in the shape of Portland’s iconic rose. It was permanently closed and fenced off in 2018. The city blamed ‘structural issues’, but the real reason for closing the park was that it has long been a well-known place to use drugs. As a teenager in the late 1980s I used to skateboard there. As I practiced ollies, I often saw LSD and marijuana deals.

I’ve been a drug and alcohol counsellor and outreach worker for almost 30 years, so I’ve witnessed drug-use trends up close: the crack epidemic, the rise of heroin, then ecstasy, then meth.