DISPATCHES is Christopher Moraff’s weekly column for Filter, featuring analysis and beat reporting. Christopher has spent over a decade reporting on the intersection of policing, criminal justice and civil liberties. His immersion reporting from Kensington, Philadelphia, has earned him a reputation as an expert on injection drug culture and the fentanyl crisis. His work has appeared in publications including the Daily Beast, the Washington Post and Al Jazeera America. He is co-host of the podcast Narcotica, and curator of the stock photo site StashHouse.org.
Conditions in the Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia, where I’ve reported for years, stand as a rebuke to a litany…
Just over a week before a more reform-friendly administration takes over in Washington, the US harm reduction movement was dealt…
In January, a few weeks after my 49th birthday, my partner, Carolyn, gave me a most unexpected gift. She emerged…
John (not his real name) was a regular on the Avenue. A biracial man in his late 20s, he was…
The life conditions imposed by the pandemic are leading many Americans to seek mental health treatment for the first time.…
One of the nation’s oldest involuntary commitment laws designed specifically to target people who use drugs is facing a court…
If the War on Drugs were seeking a motto, “One step forward, two steps back,” might be rejected as overly…
When the current protests began in Philadelphia on Saturday, May 30, something felt distinctly different from the last time I…
Like much of the nation, Philadelphia has come to a virtual standstill. At publication time, Philadelphia County had almost 6,400…
[Update, February 28: Less than 12 hours after this report was published, Safehouse withdrew its plan to open a safe…