Amid Baltimore’s OD crisis, officials’ silence will likely continue through Election Day

This story was originally published by Mobtown Mag.

As Baltimore’s unprecedented overdose crisis continues, so does the culture of silence adopted by public officials —and that will likely continue through Election Day.

Mail-in ballots are already being cast, and thousands of more voters will soon head to the polls. Meanwhile, neither Mayor Brandon Scott nor the 15 Democrats appearing on general election ballots for Baltimore City Council will answer questions about the crisis before they are likely voted in for their four-year terms.

“Sorry to change my response, but given the ongoing trial with McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, I will not be providing comment at this time. Happy to answer questions post-trial,” said Zac Blanchard, candidate for the city’s 11th District, after initially agreeing to answer questions.

Blanchard was one of only three Democrats who won their primary election bids for mayor or city council to acknowledge repeated requests for comment about the overdose crisis over a week-long period.

Jermaine Jones, candidate for the city’s 12th District, also declined to comment. The office of Councilman Antonio Glover, who is running for re-election to represent the 13th District, acknowledged it received Mobtown Mag’s questions but never provided answers.

In deep-blue Baltimore, Democrats who win their primary elections are ostensibly guaranteed to win in November.

Yet with election victories in their sights, sitting council members and those looking to serve for the first time seem to be bowing to pressure from Scott’s administration, which has largely refused to talk about the overdose crisis in detail in recent months.

The mayor has only substantively addressed the crisis on a few occasions in that time, such as briefly during his State of the City address in late March, before International Overdose Awareness Day last month and upon announcing settlements with pharmaceutical companies.

His administration in the meantime has frequently declined to comment on matters related to overdoses.

Earlier this year, council members Mark Conway and Danielle McCray attempted to gather public input on the crisis by holding hearings scheduled to begin in July. They were canceled following pressure from Scott’s office.

At issue, Scott’s office has said, is the need to protect ongoing litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

The city is locked into what’s anticipated to be an eight-week trial with McKesson and Censora, formerly called AmerisourceBergen, over the companies’ roles in the opioid epidemic.

The trial comes after the city reached separate settlements with five other pharmaceutical companies, totaling more than $400 million.

As Election Day approaches on Nov. 5, it’s becoming increasingly likely voters won’t hear about how their elected representatives plan to tackle the crisis until the trial is complete.

Under that eight-week timeline, ballots will already have been cast and the city’s top policy-making positions filled for another four years — all without meaningful dialogue about overdoses, which kill more than three times the number of Baltimoreans than gun violence each year.

Concerns about jeopardizing the litigation are understandable, but the public must know where elected representatives stand when their neighbors are dying at alarming rates. It’s also a disservice to voters that officials will be able to skirt by without addressing the crisis in detail before Election Day.

Since the sitting council members last won elections in 2020, the crisis has evolved. Overdose deaths peaked in 2021, saw a small dip the following year and then began to rise again in 2023. About three Baltimoreans now die of overdoses each day.

And, unlike the public officials whose positions are funded by taxpayers, victims of the overdose crisis cannot afford to wait for special occasions to bring attention to their plights.

With a toxic, unregulated drug supply that’s flush with fentanyl, many drug users’ days are numbered under the city’s current harm reduction infrastructure. And a majority of those victims in Baltimore are Black, with the highest concentrations of deaths taking place in the city’s “Black Butterfly.”

In addition, Baltimore’s death rate is the highest in the nation, with the city seeing an increase in total overdose deaths last year despite a nationwide decrease for the first time in five years. Maryland as a whole also saw a decrease.

There were 2,513 deaths statewide in 2023, a 2.5% decrease from the year prior, yet Baltimore had 1,045 deaths, an increase of 5.7%, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

The most recent data shows that Baltimore had a death rate of 144.6 deaths per 100,000 people in the 12-month period ending in August, based on 2020 U.S. Census data, more than quadrupling the statewide average and dwarfing the death rates of other counties.

The 12-month total of 847 deaths, however, is also a notable decrease from previous periods, when the numbers often exceeded 1,000.

With 500 overdose deaths as of August this year in Baltimore, the city is on track to have fewer than 800 deaths by the end of 2024 — a number that would mark a significant drop but would require the death rate to remain steady, despite an expected increase in fatalities during the winter months.

The most recent statistics, therefore, provide some hope amid Baltimore’s struggle to keep drug users alive.

That hope has the potential to turn into concrete policy, too, with more than $400 million in funds expected to hit city coffers from opioid settlements.

With this sum, the city’s success with independent litigation against pharmaceutical companies has put it in a position to bolster existing harm reduction programs and push for additional initiatives such as overdose prevention centers.

The city has already earmarked $107 million from settlements to ramp up local remediation programs, as stipulated by the agreements. The remaining funds will be disbursed through a new governance structure that Scott unveiled in late August.

The mayor announced those plans while standing among public officials and those working to combat the crisis, emphasizing the importance of collaboration in determining how the windfall of funds should be used.

The goal was simple: to save lives.

But if those funds are going to be used to their full potential —  and if the city is going to prove it cares about those who use drugs — elected officials must lead the process with honest and open discourse.

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