How Fentanyl Floods the Streets of Portland

“We have a lot of people that want the help. We simply do not have any help to give them.”

HANDOFF: A fentanyl purchase on Southwest 6th Avenue. (Blake Benard)

By Brianna Wheeler

This week, I’m welcoming back Lucas Manfield, whose WW cover story “Life in Hell” culminates months of reporting on a downtown fentanyl market that, despite city efforts, evades erasure.

Manfield really put himself on the line for this reporting, and the final package is pretty revelatory. Unlike non-Portlanders armchair discoursing about how and why Portland is in the thick of a crisis, Manfield did his investigating from the inside, untangling the crisis from the worst of its effects to shine a light on a real solution.

“This is Portland’s crisis right now,” Manfield says. “We have a lot of people that want the help. We have a lot of people that are aware of the problem. We simply do not have any help to give them. And that is devastating.”

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