ILLEGAL PRESCRIPTION DRUG SALES FLOURISH AT LEXINGTON MARKET

Nearby treatment clinics fuel traffic, police say

Lunchtime inside Lexington Market: Amid crab stands and fruit stalls,
shoppers and merchants bustle and buzz. It's a crowded, multiracial scene, a
testament to the energy and random fellowship of city life.

Just outside the market's main entrance on Eutaw Street, a different
kind of commerce is taking place. Here, beside a picture window
extolling the history of the nation's oldest continuously run public
market, an illegal trade in prescription medications flourishes.

In a city where sidewalk sales of heroin and cocaine are notoriously
common, illicitly sold medicine may hardly seem like a major problem.
But some market vendors say it seems to be getting worse and is
diminishing the appeal of one of Baltimore's foremost
attractions.

MijizaDorsey sells jewelry from a cart at the market. She said that
during the 15 years she has worked there, once-sporadic traffic has
become more prevalent.

"People are afraid to take out their wallets," Dorsey said. "Business
is good - don't get me wrong - but it could be much better, if there
weren't all those people outside."

While high-ranking city law enforcement officials readily acknowledge
that black-market pills are widely available around Lexington Market,
they deny that the area has a drug problem. Some Lexington Market
vendors flatly dismiss the notion that there is drug traffic on the
sidewalk.

Lexington Market officials declined repeated requests for
comment.

On one sunny Thursday, a small, thin, stoop-backed man in a blue
windbreaker paces along the front of the market, offering Xanax and
"dings" to bystanders. A couple of days later, as the sky threatens
rain, a tall, gentle-faced man walks the same route, reeling off a
staccato patter in the manner - if not quite at the volume - of a
ballpark beer hawker.

"You can get any kind of pills here," he says, adding apologetically
that for heroin you need to go a few blocks west.

Police say the commerce in prescription drugs has long been part of
the Lexington Market streetscape and is fed by the proximity of
several hospitals and addiction-treatment centers.

The pill trade "is an ongoing problem, going on for years, but it's
very minor, and we don't have the violence associated with it,
either," said Maj. Steven McMahon of the Central District, which
includes Lexington Market. McMahon said nearly 40 pill-related arrests
were made near the market last year, and that 20 have been made this
year.

No homicides or rapes have occurred last year or this year in the
Lexington Market area. Twenty larcenies were reported last year as of
May 11, compared with 21 this year.

Herman Jones is president of Glass Substance Abuse Programs Inc., one
of three methadone clinics within walking distance of Lexington
Market. Jones said the market is a center of activity for addicts who
have either gotten hooked on prescription drugs or are selling them to
finance a cocaine or heroin habit.

"The entire city's drug situation is getting worse, and it manifests
itself at the market," Jones said.

Although a wide variety of medications are illegally sold around the
market, Jones said, the largest category of drugs peddled there might
be benzodiazepines, or "benzos." This family of anti-anxiety and
anti-hypertension medicines includes Valium, Xanax and clonidine, the
full name for the "dings" offered by one of the Eutaw Street sellers.

Jones said drugs such as clonidine are often used to enhance - or
"kick" - the effects of heroin or other drugs. He added that benzos
can be extremely addictive and stay in a user's body for about a month
while heroin remains for only three or four days.

Methadone, administered by clinics to block the effects of heroin
withdrawal, is among the offerings of the curbside pharmacy.

Many clinics require patients to speak after receiving their liquid
dose of methadone, to ensure that it has been swallowed. Addicts have
been known to take their medication without swallowing, spitting it
into a cup once they are outside the clinic.

The resulting cocktail of saliva and methadone, referred to as a
"spitback," can then be sold on the street to heroin users who either
cannot get into a treatment program or are looking for a way to tide
themselves over till the next hit.

Jones said addicts will use various means to get prescription drugs,
from deceit to force.

"Patients are stealing, forging, breaking into pharmacies," he said.
"If you hit four or five doctors, you can get a lot of pills."

Outside Lexington Market, an elderly man with a hard, lined face walks
by and asks for a dollar. When asked if someone could buy drugs here
at the market, his partner - also elderly-swoops in and says you can
get anything you want. The men stand close by, eager as pigeons at a
park bench, crowding in, asking for exactly what is wanted.

It's lunchtime. Nearby, white-shirted Lexington Market police pace and
hover, watching for suspicious activity.