Roughly 40 miles away from the nation’s capital sits the city dubbed the “heroin capital of the United States.” Heroin has been present in this city of 621,000 people for decades.

“People [have been] dying from heroin and cocaine and other substances for decades,” said Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen. Some city officials and residents — who’ve long felt overlooked in the quest for federal support to help curb their heroin crisis — are noticing more attention on the issue now that the epidemic has spilled beyond the inner city and into the suburbs.

“I’ve heard our community say things like, ‘Well why is it that there are white people dying in suburban rural areas that suddenly we seem to care about the heroin epidemic?’ I mean this has been killing people in our city for decades,” Wen told Rare. “And I do think it’s important for us to call out that as an injustice and say that yes, it is true that all of our attention paid to heroin has come too late for so many.”

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