Why Baltimore is seeing more drug overdose deaths than any other American city

More than 100,000 Americans are dying from drug overdoses every year, largely from the synthetic opioid fentanyl. But in recent years, no city has been hit as hard as Baltimore when it comes to overdose deaths. Special Correspondent Chris Booker examines why addiction has become so deadly in a city that has seen a steady decline in its population. It’s part of our series, America Addicted.

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Geoff Bennett: More than 100,000 Americans are dying from drug overdoses every year, largely from the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

But in recent years, no city has been hit as hard as Baltimore when it comes to overdose deaths.

Special correspondent Christopher Booker takes a look at why. It’s part of our ongoing series America Addicted.

Donna Bruce, Founder, DBU Inc.: You have my number, right?

Woman: Got it.

Donna Bruce: Got it.

Christopher Booker: In this West Baltimore neighborhood, everyone seems to know Donna Bruce.

Donna Bruce: You be careful out here. You got Narcan?

Christopher Booker: After years of battling drug addiction, Bruce is now in recovery, but she still remembers just how tough this life can be.

Donna Bruce: Because we got to give them some resources, so they can get to housing and stuff like that.

Christopher Booker: Today, she runs a nonprofit that provides support to families who have lost loved ones to overdose. And she helps those still struggling with addiction connect to social services and find treatment, a process that often starts with some basic questions.

Donna Bruce: Why are you here? How did you end up here? Like, what can we do to help you today, right? And those are the questions that stimulate relationships with people that be open and say, OK, listen, yes, I do, get high.

Put your hands on your eyes.

Christopher Booker: On the day we joined her, Bruce had come with her 7-year-old granddaughter, Cassidy.

Donna Bruce: I got a big surprise to show you.

Christopher Booker: She wanted her to see a new street sign named in honor of her son, Devon Wellington, Cassidy’s father.

Donna Bruce: Devon Wellington’s Way. Wow. Look at that.

Christopher Booker: It was here in the summer of 2021 that the 32-year-old died from a drug overdose.

Donna Bruce: I will never forget. I couldn’t help my own son.

Mona Setherly, Mother: OK, it’s right up here.

Christopher Booker: Just a few miles away, Mona Setherly is also going back to where tragedy struck.

Mona Setherly: He was funny and he always seemed happy.

Christopher Booker: Setherly’s 43-year-old son, Bruce, was found dead from an overdose at this abandoned Baltimore row house in 2022. The last time she saw her son, he told her that he was headed to an addiction treatment program.

Mona Setherly: He left. I gave him a hug. We were OK. And that’s the last conversation I had.

Christopher Booker: She says her son had likely been dead for about a month before his body was discovered.

Mona Setherly: He left February 15. And that’s the day I feel like he died, because I never heard from him again. And I wasn’t worried about it because I thought he went to rehab. And people kept asking me, have you heard from him? Have you heard from him? And I’m like, no, no, I’m sure he’s fine, though. I’m sure he’s fine.

And then after 30 days, I called the police.

Christopher Booker: While the city has long struggled with addiction, the arrival of the synthetic opioid fentanyl hit Baltimore particularly hard. Up to 50 times more potent than heroin, in the past six years, almost 6,000 people have died from an overdose, an average of three people every day.

Nick Thieme, The Baltimore Banner: No major American city has had a drug overdose crisis as severe as Baltimore’s today.

Christopher Booker: Alissa Zhu and Nick Thieme are reporters for The Baltimore Banner.

Alissa Zhu, The Baltimore Banner: They will have someone speak around 12:15.

Christopher Booker: For the last two years, they have been investigating the city’s overdose crisis in collaboration with The New York Times.

Alissa Zhu: Something that we have just heard over and over again is that every day we get a homicide tally, but we don’t get the same for overdoses. And, numerically, it is a far greater problem.

Christopher Booker: But getting that data wasn’t easy. In 2022, after months of repeated requests for the city’s autopsy reports, The Banner sued the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In January, a judge ruled in their favor.

Alissa Zhu: We knew that these were public records and the public should know what’s happening in the city in terms of overdose deaths.

Nick Thieme: From the moment that data ended up on my computer, we started investigating. And you look at it, and, I mean, the entire city is colored with overdose deaths. Blocks in some of the poorer parts of Southwest Baltimore have lost upwards of 8 and 9 percent of their population to fatal overdose.

Christopher Booker: They’re reporting found that overdoses began spiking in Baltimore about a decade ago, as fentanyl ravaged the city grappling with multiple challenges, including gun violence and later the pandemic.

They also found that one demographic has been hit especially hard, older Black men, who make up just 7 percent of the city’s population, but account for nearly a third of all overdoses.

Nick Thieme: They die at higher rates from overdose than they did from COVID at the height of the pandemic, from all cancers put together. There is nothing statistically that kills this group of people more than fatal overdose.

Christopher Booker: How does the city respond to your reporting?

Alissa Zhu: They were very defensive. They called our reporting misguided victim-blaming. And they were saying that our reporting should have focused on opioid manufacturers’ role in all of this because they are currently litigating against pharmaceutical companies.

Christopher Booker: This summer, Baltimore has reached $90 million in settlement agreements, the first with pharmaceutical giant Allergan and just last week was CVS for their roles in the city’s overdose crisis.

And a September trial is set for several other defendants, including Walgreens and Johnson & Johnson. Citing the litigation, Baltimore’s Mayor Brandon Scott declined our interview request, but his office provided the “News Hour” with this statement.

“For years, manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids targeted Baltimore with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills. This reporting faults the city for its efforts to clean up the mess these companies made.”

Mark Conway, Baltimore City Councilman: I think we need to understand the problem.

Christopher Booker: Last month, Baltimore Councilman Mark Conway, who chairs the city’s Public Safety Committee, planned a public hearing looking into what The Banner’s investigation found.

Mark Conway: We, as public officials, need as much information as possible in order to be effective on the changing nature of drug overdoses.

Christopher Booker: But just hours before Conway’s hearing was scheduled to start, it was abruptly canceled. Baltimore’s mayor said a public hearing could endanger the city’s litigation against opioid manufacturers.

Mark Conway: For the City Council not to be briefed and not to have transparent, open conversations about what we’re dealing with because of pending litigation, I think is a mistake, because we have decisions that we should be considering right now.

Christopher Booker: While the litigation continues, many Baltimore families are still coming to grips with all that’s been lost.

Mona Setherly: I never thought he was dead. I never, ever thought that.

Christopher Booker: When Mona Setherly finally got an update on her son, Bruce, it was the kind of news that no mother wants to hear.

Mona Setherly: When they found him, the police called and said: “Can I come over?”

And I was like: “Sure, ”

He didn’t even tell me. He just sat down and I sat down, and I was like, I could see. I knew. I said: “Don’t — please don’t tell me that.”

Christopher Booker: Today, she wears a necklace that her son was wearing at the time of his death and tries to remember the good times.

Mona Setherly: We did so many things that I am so grateful for. And he made me so happy. I wanted a lot more years, but you have got to be grateful for the time that you’re given.

Donna Bruce: So this is Devon Wellington’s Way. You can come here whenever you want and see your daddy street named after him, all right?

Christopher Booker: Donna Bruce is now using her son’s death to try to reach as many people as she can before it’s too late.

Donna Bruce: My son had to die for me to live, as if he understood that this was part of my assignment for Cassidy.

Christopher Booker: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Christopher Booker in Baltimore.