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The first time Mark shot up “Philly dope” was in the summer of 2017, with his girlfriend, Sarah. They had been on their way from Massachusetts to South Carolina, hoping to get clean there and find someplace cheap to live. The plan was to detox slowly on the way. In New Jersey, they needed to buy more drugs, just enough to make it to Myrtle Beach. Mark got out his phone and Googled “really bad drug areas.” A neighborhood in Philadelphia came up: Kensington. (Percy, 10/10)

Tony Simpson, an entrepreneurial engineer, had grown increasingly concerned about Campbell County, Tenn., where he grew up and still lived. Despite a reasonably solid manufacturing base, as well as scenic lakes and hills that attract tourists, the Appalachian region he calls home was beset by a depressed economy and high rates of incarceration, largely fueled by drug and alcohol addiction. (Rosen, 10/9)

When Larry Hogan ran for governor four years ago, he vowed to urgently address what he called Maryland’s “heroin epidemic.” ...But upon taking office in January 2015, Hogan did not immediately declare a formal emergency. Instead, he set up a statewide task force that worked for a year to deliver 33 recommendations. As administration officials rolled out the strategies during 2016, opioid fatalities mounted to 1,856 people that year — a death count that ranked Maryland fourth among the 50 states for such per-capita drug fatalities. In all, 5,533 Marylanders died of opioid-related overdoses from the start of Hogan’s term through March 2018, a period of three years and three months. That’s more than the 5,019 who died during [Former Gov. Martin] O’Malley’s eight years in office. (Donovan, 10/10)

Kelly is one of 416 people over the past three years who have been admitted into TPP for substance use disorder, said Michael Hines, assistant director for adult probation and bail services in the Court Support Services Division of the judicial branch. People are admitted to the program immediately following arrest, which means they are not arraigned on charges until they have completed treatment. (Werth, 10/9)