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.”

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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