BALTIMORE, Md. — It was a phone call Bakari Atiba wasn’t expecting.
"We didn't even know. My executive director called me, was like, 'are you excited?' And I was like, 'excited about what?’” he recalled to WMAR-2 News’ Elizabeth Worthington.
He’d find out - the city of Baltimore hadjust settled a lawsuitwith the pharmaceutical company, Allergan, for $45 million. And $5 million of it was headed to Bakari and his team. He helps run Charm City Care Connection, which services those suffering from drug addiction.
"It's historic for us. I know personally it makes me feel good, like somebody on the city level has recognized the importance and the meaning of the work that we're doing on the ground,” Atiba said.
The city’s deal with Allergan is part of its ongoing litigation with several drug makers that officials believed helped fuel the opioid epidemic in Baltimore - a problem that’s only gotten worse in recent years.
"These are xylazine test strip kits. Xyalzine's the new thing. It's becoming whast fentanyl was when it first came out,” Atiba told WMAR-2 News as he showed us around the center on N. Wolfe Street in East Baltimore. "On average, we see at least 80 people a day."
That’s more than Atiba saw when he first started working here, during the pandemic.
"It was hard to find people,” he recalled. "So the numbers were kind of low. Unfortunately, the overdose rates were still raising. And we see that now. It is getting worse."
Last month, the Baltimore Banner and the New York Times published their findings from a joint year-long investigation into Baltimore’s overdose deaths. The results were jarring - even to city officials. Nearly 6,000 people died from an overdose in the last 6 years, the outlets found. And from 2018 to 2022, the death rate was almost double that of any other major city in the country.
Not everyone was shocked.
"Those numbers weren't surprising, because we're on the ground. We're seeing it every day,” Atiba said. "In the 3 and a half years I've been here, we've lost 4 clients and 3 staff. It's real. We're living it every day."
Atiba says holding companies accountable that might have profited off of all of this suffering makes the millions in funding even sweeter. When asked what he would say to skeptics, who say the worsening issue proves that programs like this aren’t effective, he said this:
"It's all about how you measure success. Somebody that hasn't eaten in two days and they come down and get a hot meal, that's a success because we're feeding a person that otherwise wouldn't have been fed."
Charm City Care Connection isn’t sure exactly what they’re going to do with the $5 million yet, aside from maintaining and expanding their existing services.
Another $5 million from the lawsuit is going to the “Peer Navigation Program,” which provies training to people who want to serve those in recovery. Mayor Brandon Scott plans to create a board to oversee how the money is spent.
This is likely just the beginning. There are several more defendants named in the city's lawsuit, so more money could be on the way.