Crisis in Kensington: Documenting America’s largest open-air drug market
Frank Rodriguez sold heroin for years before himself becoming an addict. Six years clean, he now aims to humanize addicts in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood.
This is the second story in a series about the open-air drug market in Kensington. Read the first here.
PHILADELPHIA – As overdose deaths continue to tick up in Pennsylvania, one man walks the streets of a drug-ridden neighborhood hoping to keep addicts from dying — and maybe even help turn their lives around.
Kensington — commonly known as an open-air drug market — is ground zero for Philadelphia’s opioid crisis. There, Frank Rodriguez wakes addicts passed out on the sidewalks, making sure they’re not overdosing.
WATCH: ACTIVIST TOURS PHILADELPHIA'S OPEN-AIR DRUG MARKET
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"I see the drug addiction. You know, I see the drug dealing. I see the violence. I see the poverty," the recovering addict previously told Fox News. "Most of all, I see pain."
In 2021, a Pennsylvanian died about every two hours of a drug overdose, according to preliminary data the state updated last week. Nearly 80% of those involved fentanyl.
And like most states, Pennsylvania saw a large jump in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns, with the Keystone State facing 5,347 overdoses in 2021, marking a nearly 20% increase from 2019.
WATCH: SAN FRANCISCO ACTIVIST EXPOSES BUS STOPS ‘HIJACKED’ AS ‘OPEN-AIR DRUG MARKETS’
For Rodriguez, an overdose played an essential role in his sobriety and eventual activism. During a relapse after a short stint in recovery, he experienced an overdose of his own.
"I woke up in the hospital three days later," Rodriguez, who grew up and lived in Kensington for years, previously said.
Afterward, the Brooklyn native went to rehab where he sat in the front row taking notes.
Now, Rodriguez returns to Kensington to help addicts. He provides free haircuts and posts testimonials from suffering drug users on his YouTube channel "Morals Over Money" in an attempt to humanize them.
But when he sees an addict passed out on the sidewalk, Rodriguez remembers his own experience.
Frank Rodriguez films addicts' testimonials in an effort to remind viewers that they're still people — and they're suffering. (Fox News)
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"For me, that’s why I see people overdose and I see people stretched out and laid out and I wanna go there and just be like ‘yo, you alright?’" Rodriguez previously told Fox News. "That’s all it took for me to completely change my life, 180 degrees."
"Maybe there’s other people 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 here.
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