Stolen Blocks

For decades, communities like Camden, New Jersey carried the heaviest burden of America's drug policies. As factories closed, jobs disappeared, and mental health care went untreated, addiction was criminalized instead of addressed-leaving generations of families fractured by incarceration, stigma, and loss.

Written from lived experience, this book traces the shift from the War on Drugs and mass incarceration to today's harm-reduction model, asking difficult but necessary questions along the way. What happens when punishment replaces care? When leadership is systematically removed from communities? And when reform arrives decades too late for those most harmed?

Drawing on firsthand observation, clinical work as a Licensed Practical Nurse, and the realities of reentry, this book examines addiction not as moral failure, but as a predictable outcome of policy, economic collapse, and untreated trauma.

This is not an abstract policy critique. It is an honest reckoning with what was taken, what still hasn't been repaired, and what justice could look like if we were willing to confront the full cost of our decisions.

Essential reading for those interested in criminal justice reform, public health, addiction, and the long shadow of the War on Drugs.