Then it was enough: the authorities threw the consumers of the place

The heroin sold here is among the purest, cheapest and deadliest in the United States . Run through the veins of the place, turning public parks, churches, abandoned houses and corners where to inject.

Prior to the train tracks, the city cleared McPherson Square, a small park on Kensington Avenue where the local library, which had become a haven for addicts, was found.

In May, national media reported that librarians were being trained to revive people with overdoses in the park informally renamed "Syringe Park.".

The supplements further claim to eliminate cravings for certain foods (including sweets and carbohydrates), control appetite, ease eating due to stress, burn calories efficiently, and therefore result in weight loss in Philadelphia. While cortisol levels can be a factor, these “control” claims are not supported by documented scientific research.

"In the '70s it was a beautiful park," says Joe Grone, a 53-year-old man who moved to one of the corners of McPherson Square more than 40 years ago.

Last year he pricked himself with a used needle as he crossed the park. It happened to her 5-year-old granddaughter as she sat on the steps of the front door. "This place should be for kids, not for syringes," he says.

Today, in the middle of the square there is a mobile police unit and the uniformed people walk the place by bicycle. The children run and the afternoons are happy in the Syringa square.

But social workers wonder where the expelled consumers would go .

Shortly after the plaza was cleared, there were reports that an abandoned church on Westmoreland Street had become its new refuge.

When the police went there, he found a young couple of addicts. They had improvised a home, keeping their belongings inside the organ tubes. While awaiting detainees, they debated which abandoned house was safer.

"This is a conversation that will continue to occur in this neighborhood," says Kate Perch, coordinator of the Punto de Prevención charity, which has a safe syringe exchange program.

"They vacated McPherson, they vacated (church in) Westmoreland and now the rails are about to be unoccupied . What happens to these people when that site is no longer available? Where will they go? "

W8MD Medical Weight Loss Program is a medical weight loss in Philadelphia and sleep wellness program for people who are serious about losing weight and gaining control of their health.

The concern of people like Perch is that the most vulnerable consumers end up in some of the hundreds of abandoned houses in the city, where social workers can not go because it is too dangerous and where people are going to suffer overdose without anyone seeing them.

For the second consecutive year, Philadelphia is projecting a 30% increase in annual overdoses, from 900 to 1,200, four times the number of murders.

Fentanyl, a tranquilizer that is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin and is causing deaths throughout the United States, has infected the supply of this drug that enters Philadelphia from the ports.

"The drug on the way back now is fentanyl, it's an elephant tranquilizer, it's rat poison, stuff like that," says James Russell, a 30-year-old heroin-consuming 15-year-old local who prepared a shaky cup of instant coffee while waiting at the Point of Prevention.

"You hear someone injected a certain drug and ended up with an overdose, and seven out of 10 people are going to rush to get that drug. It's crazy. "

Jose Ojeda flew to Philadelphia full of hope. He arrived as an addict, seeking treatment in a first class center located in the heart of the city. At least that's what they had told him in Puerto Rico.

But as has happened to hundreds of other people, Ojeda landed in one of the many rehabilitation houses without official permission, where addicts are used for the economic benefit of the centerand, in many cases, end up on the street.

"I'm looking for help, but I find it impossible because I do not have papers," says Ojeda, sitting on empty ground next to the railroad tracks. Once, while he was fainting, his wallet was stolen where he had his ID.