Pill City

April 27, 2015 Mosher and Gilmore Streets, Baltimore, Maryland: Ground Zero in America’s Pill Wars.

Near this crime-plagued corner, the death of Freddie Gray has triggered the worst domestic rioting in years - and created a terrifying new breed of criminal entrepreneur. Here, as looters and arsonists lay waste to parts of Baltimore, two of the city’s brightest high school students are helping to carry out a historic drug robbery spree; one that will transform America’s underworld, leave entire swaths of their city in ruins, and entrench them as the nation’s youngest drug lords. In this groundbreaking book, Newsday criminal justice reporter Kevin Deutsch chronicles the rise of two gangland upstarts as they help steal $100 million worth of high-powered opiates and build a narcotics empire from scratch.Based on immersive reporting and interviews with more than 300 drug dealers, narcotics investigators, gang members, opiate addicts, and others, Pill City is the first journalistic account of the riot-fueled drug robberies that brought Baltimore to its knees, unleashing a nationwide wave of addiction and murder.With homicide totals spiking in cities across America—violence that stems largely from drug-related turf wars—this book will make a valuable contribution to the national conversation about addiction, race, gangs, and policing.