The neighborhood of MacArthur Park, near downtown Los Angeles, has one of the highest concentrations of fentanyl use in Los Angeles. The synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin, is so addictive that users begin feeling sick and in need of the drug within two to three hours of smoking fentanyl. People are often drawn to the area because they can make money for the drug by selling “boosted” or shoplifted goods to vendors around the park. Elliot, a 24-year-old living on the streets, says he must come up with $50 a day to avoid fentanyl withdrawal, a debilitating pain that “feels like dying.” For someone with no phone, no home, no job and no more possessions than can fit into a backpack, this is no easy task. So Elliot, like many others battling addiction, makes money for fentanyl by selling shoplifted goods to street vendors around MacArthur Park. “I have tried (quitting fentanyl),” Elliot says. “I thought kicking heroin was bad, uh-uh, no. I could kick heroin; kicking this, not going to happen. Quitting cold turkey would physically kill me,” he says. Fentanyl, which can be lethal in quantities as small as a few grains of sand, became L.A. County’s deadliest drug in 2022, killing more than 1,900 and overtaking meth as the leading cause of overdoses.