The opioid crisis has long plagued our communities, but nowhere has its devastation been more concentrated than in the Penn North neighborhood of West Baltimore. For years, I — along with committed community activists — have spoken out against this epidemic. We’ve marched, hosted forums and demanded action. Sadly, Penn North has not only been ground zero for this crisis — it has been a place where residents were once treated like test subjects and later scapegoated for the fallout.
When I sought public office, I called for serious, common-sense, community-driven solutions. I warned that failure to act boldly would lead to chaos — and now, in July 2025, we’re seeing exactly that.
In just one week, 27 people overdosed in a single Baltimore neighborhood — a horrifying figure that should shake every public official to their core. According to Baltimore Police, the first wave of overdoses occurred in Penn North on July 11, and then again on July 18, when officers responded around 8:55 a.m. to multiple 911 calls about suspected overdoses along West North Avenue. Five individuals were rushed to area hospitals in serious condition. Two others were revived with Narcan but refused further treatment. One simply walked away after on-site assistance.
This is unacceptable.
Penn North — located at the intersection of Pennsylvania and North Avenue — is infamous not just for the open-air drug market that has festered for years, but as the flashpoint of the 2015 Freddie Gray uprising. Yet despite the visible presence of mass transit police, a substation for the Baltimore Police Department and squad cars routinely stationed at this exact intersection, drug dealing continues in broad daylight. It’s as if this corner has been abandoned to destruction — as though it’s meant to stay broken.
We cannot allow this to continue.
Mayor Brandon Scott held a press conference following the most recent overdoses, promising expanded naloxone distribution, 24/7 treatment access and possibly mobile treatment centers. But while these efforts are well-intentioned, they fall short of the decisive action needed to end this crisis.
The truth is this: Baltimore doesn’t need more press conferences — it needs a cleanup. It needs enforcement, real-time intervention and full-on accountability for the dealers and traffickers poisoning our people. This isn’t about criminalizing addiction — it’s about stopping those who prey on the addicted and leave death in their wake.
At the federal level, we’ve seen real leadership work on this as well. President Donald Trump signed the HALT Fentanyl Act into law, permanently classifying fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act. Surrounded by families whose lives were shattered by fentanyl, he called the bill “another defeat for savage drug smugglers and cartels.” That’s the kind of historic action we need to replicate here in Baltimore.
Let me be clear: The opioid epidemic is no longer a distant health issue — it’s a war zone in our own backyard. And we can’t afford more inaction. We need police accountability, community intervention, drug court reforms and neighborhood restoration plans backed by policy, not platitudes.
Penn North is more than a headline. It is a historic neighborhood that deserves to be remembered not for tragedy, but for triumph.
We need to clean up this corner. We need to restore its dignity. And we must act — now — before more lives are lost.
Christopher Anderson is a third-generation Baltimorean, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran and a community advocate. He is chairman of the Maryland Black Republican Council and a member of the Baltimore City Republican Central Committee. He has run for Congress and the Baltimore City Council.
