Baltimore councilman demands plan to dismantle city's open-air drug markets
Baltimore Councilman and Public Safety Chair Mark Conway demanded that the city take action and dismantle open-air drug markets, which are a major problem for many of the city's communities.
Conway provided his own plan and listened to a lengthy presentation from city agencies at a hearing on Tuesday.
City officials said they have had a pilot program in place near Lexington Market since last June as they work to stop open-air drug dealing, but they admit the issue is challenging.
The struggle with addiction
Lisa Williams told WJZ Investigates she has been clean for two years after struggling with addiction for more than 30 years.
"It calls you, and your body hurts so bad," Williams said.
Williams also knows the problems of open-air drug markets, including at Penn North, where two mass overdoses that were likely due to an animal sedative sent dozens of people to hospitals last year.
"To be truthful, drugs are always going to be around. But it's up to the people if they're going to keep suffering because getting high, you're suffering," Williams said. "You're dying slowly because every time you put that dope in you, you don't know if it's going to be your last one."
Williams said she stopped in part because she feared her children would get the call that she overdosed.
"If you can't do it for yourself, you can't make it through, so it's really hard. It's a real struggle getting clean," she said.
Demanding action
The council's public safety chair, Mark Conway, said the office of Mayor Brandon Scott has left him in the dark as he has called for help to address the issue.
"I've been asking a very simple question: Where is the plan to address open-air drug markets in Baltimore?" Conway said.
Conway is now proposing a comprehensive plan to get help for those struggling with addiction and provide jobs to get drug dealers off the streets, which he presented at the hearing on Tuesday.
"For too long, there's been an underlying assumption that these markets are just a permanent feature of our city, that they will always be here and the best we can do is to manage them," Conway said. "That's not acceptable."
Representatives from various city agencies told him that Baltimore has a plan to intensively target communities, but there were fireworks as Conway accused city leadership of dodging him.
"I want a meeting with the mayor because I think what's happening here, unfortunately, it's politics," the councilman insisted.
City representatives said they started intensive outreach in the area around Lexington Market in June 2025 and were able to take 18 guns off the street and provide job referrals to more than 70 people, and 876 referrals for service through the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).
Neighborhoods in need
The squabbling inside Baltimore's City Hall is not helping in communities that struggle with open-air drug dealing and addiction.
"I've watched this area change. I grew up in this area," said Darrell McDonald in Penn North. "They need to do a better job of letting people know there are other things to do because a lot of people feel like this is the easy way to do things."
While overdose deaths have plummeted by half since 2023, Baltimore has seen 561 deaths in the past year from March 2025 through February 2026, according to the Maryland Department of Health dashboard.
"If [a plan] can work, that would be perfect, and like I said, the people who are selling drugs have got to really want the help, because if they don't want it, they're going to be right here."
City representatives said Tuesday at the hearing that a federal task force has taken 34 kilograms of fentanyl off the streets this year.
That is enough to kill 17 million people, according to the DEA.
