Here's some new news about drugs in Baltimore:
* A kilo of cocaine now costs $32,000, up a full $10,000 from 2006. Bulk quantities of the drug are more expensive here than in Washington, where a kilo costs $30,000, and in Richmond, Va., where it goes for $26,000.
* Local drug dealers outsource even the final stages of turning powder cocaine into crack.
* Dealers are increasingly steering away from highways to smuggle drugs, preferring package delivery services so they can track their shipments on the Internet.
It's hardly a revelation that the drug business is big business in Baltimore. Mayor Sheila Dixon estimated a few months ago that dealers on one city street, Pennsylvania Avenue, rake in $10 million a year. And just like annual reports measuring the economic ups and downs of business ventures, experts measure the vitality of distributors in the lucrative cocaine and heroin trade.
The experts in this case are from the U.S. Department of Justice's Washington-Baltimore High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, part of the National Drug Intelligence Center. Their 15-page report, "Drug Market Analysis 2009," looks at drug dealing from a macro level, a panoramic portrait of how drugs are distributed in the Washington and Baltimore area.
In many ways, the report concludes that not much has changed: Baltimoreans continue to abuse heroin, die after overdosing on it and keep killing for it at an alarming rate.
The federal report notes some new threats - traffickers from the Dominican Republic who are typically supplied by Colombians are dealing in even larger amounts of drugs because they've found "new suppliers in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Mexico."
Meanwhile, Mexican traffickers have moved into Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, using Georgia and North Carolina as shipment hubs.
And, the report states, West African criminal groups are moving in on the Baltimore trade, threatening the growing West Coast-based Bloods and Crips gangs, importing heroin not only from New York City but also "directly from Afghanistan." In some cases, the report says, drugs are simply mailed "directly from Pakistan."
The good news is that authorities attribute the jump in price for bulk cocaine in Baltimore to a crackdown by police that has "disrupted the cocaine supply in the region, making it difficult for lower-level dealers to obtain the drug." They are being forced to look to Pennsylvania and Michigan for supplies, thus driving up the price.
