CRISIS IN KENSINGTON: Drug overdoses kill 12 Pennsylvanians a day. Watch one man’s fight to help addicts

This is the second tale in a collection about the open-air drug sector in Kensington. Read through the initial in this article.

PHILADELPHIA – As overdose fatalities continue on to tick up in Pennsylvania, a single gentleman walks the streets of a drug-ridden community hoping to preserve addicts from dying — and possibly even help change their life around.

Kensington — usually identified as an open-air drug market place — is floor zero for Philadelphia’s opioid disaster. There, Frank Rodriguez wakes addicts handed out on the sidewalks, creating certain they’re not overdosing.

Enjoy: ACTIVIST Tours PHILADELPHIA’S Open up-AIR DRUG Market

Look at Additional FOX News Electronic ORIGINALS Right here

“I see the drug habit. You know, I see the drug dealing. I see the violence. I see the poverty,” the recovering addict previously told Fox Information. “Most of all, I see soreness.”

In 2021, a Pennsylvanian died about every single two several hours of a drug overdose, in accordance to preliminary knowledge the state updated very last week. Approximately 80{35112b74ca1a6bc4decb6697edde3f9edcc1b44915f2ccb9995df8df6b4364bc} of individuals associated fentanyl.

And like most states, Pennsylvania saw a substantial leap in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns, with the Keystone Point out struggling with 5,347 overdoses in 2021, marking a practically 20{35112b74ca1a6bc4decb6697edde3f9edcc1b44915f2ccb9995df8df6b4364bc} boost from 2019.

Check out: SAN FRANCISCO ACTIVIST EXPOSES BUS STOPS ‘HIJACKED’ AS ‘OPEN-AIR DRUG MARKETS’

For Rodriguez, an overdose played an critical function in his sobriety and eventual activism. For the duration of a relapse just after a limited stint in restoration, he experienced an overdose of his have.

“I woke up in the healthcare facility 3 times later on,” Rodriguez, who grew up and lived in Kensington for several years, earlier explained.

Afterward, the Brooklyn indigenous went to rehab where by he sat in the entrance row having notes.

Now, Rodriguez returns to Kensington to enable addicts. He offers cost-free haircuts and posts testimonies from struggling drug buyers on his YouTube channel “Morals Over Funds” in an try to humanize them.

But when he sees an addict handed out on the sidewalk, Rodriguez remembers his personal expertise.

Frank Rodriguez movies addicts’ testimonies in an work to remind viewers that they’re even now men and women — and they are struggling. (Fox News)

Click In this article TO GET THE FOX Information Application

“For me, that is why I see individuals overdose and I see persons stretched out and laid out and I wanna go there and just be like ‘yo, you alright?’” Rodriguez earlier told Fox Information. “That’s all it took for me to wholly adjust my existence, 180 levels.”

“Maybe there’s other folks that are like that also. And maybe not, but…” he said, trailing off.

To hear Rodriguez detail the horrors of Philadelphia’s open-air drug market, click listed here.