Drugs are a very big issue in Mott Haven. Young teenagers would become drug dealers because it was there only opportunity to make money. Drug dealers also have a particular timing. Nine to three and four to ten on weekdays, and nine a.m.to midnight on the weekends. If the drug dealers are users of drugs they even get a break to shoot their drugs. Drugs were being sold everywhere including the parks were the children play. A little boy Anthony mentions a "nervous feeling" he gets when he walks by the little park and sees the drug dealers selling drugs. George Calderon was a leader of a heroine trade, until May of 1992 when he got shot dead. Calderon was only 35 when he died. His sister then took over the trade but she was murdered as well two months later. Drugs were sold everywhere including little bodegas which are Puerto Rican stores. Drugs were sold along with food.
As for the woman in these impoverished urban neighborhoods they had one root open to them which was prostitution. If you would see a smart, innocent young girl you would not know what to think of her ten years down the line, will she be on her way to Harvard University or will she be scrubbing floors or climbing into some truck? As stated on page 67 "Many of the customers for the prostitutes are truckers. But you also see some men in cars, men of all races, every kind. The woman climbs right in, does what she has to do, then goes and gets a hit, then back out on the street to find another one, sometimes they make him buy the drugs first". .
One of the biggest problems health wise is respiratory. Asthma is one of the greatest. Mostly everyone carries an asthma pump in there pocket. Asthma pumps were even sold on streets by drug dealers for less money to those people who did not have Medicare to cover for it. Some asthma pumps that were given out were expired already and people were not aware of this. There were high rates of death from asthma in poor neighborhoods like the South Bronx.
