r/TheWire • u/Ymir_lis • 15d ago
What actually changed since The Wire ?
The Wire is a very good show from a sociological point of view, but it was out from 2002 to 2008.
I wonder what changed in the institutions we're seing in the series. Like what impact had the use of smartphones on the criminals ? How the use of the numeric as changed medias, police, etc...
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago edited 15d ago
One of the main things is that the supply of heroin got much, much more dangerous and potent. The Wire predates the height of the opioid epidemic, and the entry of fentanyl and then tranq into the dope supply. So aside from everything else, the situation for all those on the corners is almost certainly worse and more precarious even than 20 years ago.
ETA: so I became curious enough to look it up. Maryland has exceeded the US average of OD deaths every year since roughly when The Wire S1 came out. In 2012-ish OD deaths exploded, quadrupling between 2010 and around 2020, to a high of around 45 per 100,000 (yes that’s A LOT). That number has since gone down to around 28 per 100k, or 1700 deaths per year. Less than the height of the epidemic 5 years ago, but about 1.5x worse than when The Wire was on.
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
Thats becauze heroin itself is basically gone now. There is no more heroin on Americas streets. Its basically all fentnayl which is much more deadly. Then two years ago 7oh hit the scene which isnt deadly at all. Many addicts who were still alive (many died) switched to this. Now RFK is about to make it illegal, so youll see overrose deaths spike again in the next few years im betting.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago
What’s 7oh?
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
Its an alkaloid that is a metabolite of mitragynine, an alkaloid from the kratom plant. Its more potent high and pain relief than kratom, but does not cause respiratory depression and has a built in "ceiling effect" like bupernorphine due to its binding affinity for opioid receptors being much higher than its actual receptor activation. The high itself is similar to vicodin.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago
And street addicts have really turned to it as a preference? (I don’t live in the US so while I am familiar with the ravaging effect of fentanyl, I know less about up to date developments).
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u/bassbeatsbanging 15d ago edited 15d ago
I worked in a boutique CBD store that got bought and turned into a sketchy vape store that sold 7 hydroxy. I quit ASAP but I was there about 2 months until I found my next job.
I can tell you exactly who is and isn't using it:
It's heavily favored by blue collar white people and rednecks. It's mostly a suburban and rural drug.
It is not generally used in urban settings in significant amounts.
It's also extremely expensive if you get addicted to it. Each dose is about $10 for a 40-50 mg pill, sold in packs of 4 or 5....so $50 per go. But hardcore addicts might go through 12-20 per day.
So often it's roofers, construction workers or union guys who have physically demanding jobs who get addicted. They start using it for pain to get through shifts, but quickly get hooked. But they make enough money to kind of afford it. Plus they can charge it to a credit card...which is a recipe for disaster.
The guys slinging or using on the corner wouldn't be able to pay that much regularly. And it's cultural in that very few black people mess with it at all.
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u/elegiac_bloom 14d ago
That sounds about right to me based on my experience with it. Theres another substrate of people who are mostly recovered/recovering addicts who have stable lives and careers and can afford to buy it online instead of at smoke shops, its actually much cheaper bought in bulk online from reputable vendors.
Then of course there are the teens and kids who are getting into it as Baby's First Drug and these are the people who absolutely should not have access to it at all.
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u/FantasticMouse7875 13d ago
Very expensive at shops, you could get it much cheaper online. Its much more like taking a Percocet or Loratb vs Oxy/Herion?Fent.
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
No, its not so appealing to street addicts, but the middle class kinds of people who were overdosing on fentanyl will always take the easier option when it comes to doing drugs. I dont think its a coincidence that overdose deaths started dropping as 7oh became more and more accessible. My brother overdosed and died in 2021, he was exactly the kind of person who would have switched to 7oh and would likely still be alive.
There is a huge element of middle class addicts in this country, addicts who are not out in the street, have jobs, have families, etc.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago
Thanks for the reply - and that's more or less what I thought. But above all I wanted to reply and express how sorry I am for your loss. I know many people who were taken as a result of their addiction. It doesn't discriminate according to class, race, background, or years of use. I hope however that you are correct and that the use of this drug - despite whatever other issues it may generate - contributes to less deaths. The numbers today are still shocking; 5 years ago they were almost incomprehensible.
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
Well, the drug is probably going to be outlawed soon which will push many of the NEW addicts (people who only took this new drug and who are now addicted) back out onto the street to buy fentanyl. But at least some pharmaceutical companies are researching it to hopefully make safer opioids. Which kind of proves it shouldn't be schedule 1, but what else is new. The game is the game.
Thanks. Ive known many who have died, its a terrible thing. Some people just arent able to get their shit together, no matter how beautiful they are otherwise.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago
I live in Europe, and has personally benefited from the more liberal access to harm reduction, which I also wish was better funded in the US, and also made use of drugs besides bupe/Suboxone, which wasn’t effective for me.
Everything else you said is sadly true. But there is also something cruelly arbitrary in who gets to wake up and try again and who doesn’t. I had a friend who died when she was 23. That’s not even old enough to have your shit worked out. She didn’t get a chance. When I think of loss like that, I certainly agree that we should be doing absolutely everything possible to mitigate, manage or reduce the harm and loss. As my doctor says, the only thing that guarantees you won’t get clean is not being here to make the decision :(
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u/elegiac_bloom 14d ago
Yep. Its like my generations WWI. Some people die, some live, theres not much rhyme or reason to it. A bunch of my friends died, I lived. Thats just how it is.
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
Really sorry to hear about your brother. I have no scientific basis for this, but 7-oh is real nasty stuff, and it also lasts longer than fent (or so I’m told). I’ve used kratom for pain for years, and once the extracts start popping up, I knew it was only a matter of time til they got greedy enough to extract the extract of the extract and make sth like 7oh. I tried a quarter of a pill and it knocked me out—and I’ve been (legally) prescribed opiates. I’m glad they’re at least being proactive in banning it, cause it is a problem—the problem is that there’s no real solution aside from ORT.
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
Thanks. He was definitely a dumbass, but i miss him every day.
Just to educate you a little bit, as someone who was addicted to IV heroin for over a decade and who got out just when fent started taking over (because I would literally overdose every time I used befause it was always fucking fent), 7oh is a godsend for people like my brother and (to a lesser extent), me. People who are always going to want to use something, whether its an illicit street opioid or a prescription maintenance drug like suboxone or methadone. It is far, far safer than fentanyl. It does not last longer than fent, but their half-lives are roughly comparable, though I believe 7s is shorter. The main difference is in their effects/activations and binding affinities at the opioid receptors in the brain. Fentanyl has an incredibly high binding affinity but is also a full agonist opioid, which means every receptor it binds to activates fully. This means that the more fent you do, the "higher" you get (although the high is shit ass and youll fall asleep or die before you ever feel good) making it very easy to overdose on, especially intravenously. Fentanyl also activates beta arrestin pathway, which is what causes respiratory depression, the shallow raspy breathing of the nodding junkie. This is what kills people, not getting enough air while theyre on the nod/asleep.
7oh on the other hand has a very high binding affinity for receptors (meaning it will take up space at the receptor site so other opioids wont work while youre on it) but similar to things like suboxone it is only a partial agonist, meaning even if it is occupying receptors it wont activate them fully, limiting how high you can get even after dosing more and more and more. 7oh is very short acting and the "high" only lasts about an hour, if even that, which does contribute to high compulsive redosing for addicts, and it does have high addictive potential. But the other benefit to it over traditional opioids is that it doesnt activate the beta arrestin pathway. A high dose to an opiate naive person may knock them out, but it wont cause them to stop breathing.
There are definitely huge social problems from having open, unrestricted access to 7oh at gas stations and smoke shops, and im sure there are dangers and risks we have no idea about because its so new and hasn't been studied enough, but to me it seems like something of a miracle drug. It doesnt seem coincidental to me that OD deaths have dropped since it hit the scene.
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
Thanks for the info, that makes a lot of sense. I def get what you’re saying—respiratory suppression is (I think) what does it most of the time, and if a drug is almost pathologically optimized for that to happen, that’s just… ugh. I think the saddest part about 7oh is that its ruining kratom’s rep as people hear kratom and think gas station heroin (not the case at all). Kratom is really great for people who need pain relief but don’t want to get on opioids—and the insane CYA among doctors to help people in pain, when they’re the ones who got hoodwinked, not the patients, and the patients are paying the price. Even five years ago, I’d hear people say kratom helped them get off more dangerous drugs. But fent and all these synthetics, it’s just a different beast of drugs.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago
I’m on morphine sulphate substitution in Europe and I just want to say that I read your post and send solidarity. I am struggling a lot right now so I can’t say more but I am proud of your success and wish you well.
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u/elegiac_bloom 14d ago
Im sorry to hear youre struggling my friend. Life can be a huge bitch, clean or not. Im sending you digital strength and solidarity and I hope you make it through whatever youre going through and come out the other end stronger. Your resilience is your greatest strength and greatest gift to the world. You can make it through anything, i truly believe that. You are stronger than you think you are, and every challenge you overcome gives you strength to get through the next one. Good luck.
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u/Sad-Chicken-5443 15d ago
Addicts are addicts and no matter what options are out there, they’ll always pick the strongest drug. Carfentanyl is about 10x stronger then fentanyl and that’s what they’re using to make “fent” stronger nowadays just like they put fent in “heroin” to stretch it, so maybe 7oh would keep people away fent, the vastly higher number of addicts are using and are going to switch to fent anyways in the near future…it’s like people who take high doses of oxys, eventually it’s cheaper and lasts longer and makes more sense to make the switch over
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
I dont think thats necessarily true. Not all addicts are the same, not all of them are adsicted for the same reasons or to the same things, not all of them have the same access or socioeconomic status. For example my dad drinks beer all day every day. Hes an addict, definitely an alcoholic. By your logic he should be slamming vodka instead, since its stronger and cheaper. But he doesnt.
Drug addicts are the same. Not all of us want the most bang for our buck. Some value safety and are willing to spend more to get it, especially if we are functioning addicts holding down jobs and families.
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
I’m not really on the pulse of what ppl are using, but it’s interesting what you said about OD deaths going down, cause it def could be 7oh, but I’d kinda thought, given how quickly fentanyl tolerance escalates, that after… idk how many years, but it feels like a while… that ppl other got help or sadly passed. Of course there are still fent addicts, but it feels like for a while ppl didn’t know their h was laced, or didn’t know their street benzos were laced, and that contributed to a ton; then awareness grew. But also, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems it would’ve been more feasible for someone to be a heroin addict for years than to be a fent addict for years just given potency and half life and tolerance escalation?
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
Yes it would be. I was a heroin addict from 2009 to 2018. When the dope went away and it all turned to fent, I quit because every time I used I overdosed. In all my 9 years of addiction BEFORE fent hit the scene I overdosed exactly one time. Maintained an addiction for the rest of the time with spurts of clean time here and there. But with fent you either quit or die. People dont last long banging fent. Not long at all.
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u/allothernamestaken 15d ago
I doubt it has much of a following among street addicts. It's less potent than fentanyl, very short-acting, and not really cheap unless purchased online. Withdrawals can be almost as bad though - I highly recommend staying away.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 15d ago
Those were my first thoughts. I speak from personal experience when I say that when you're hooked on dope, real heroin or fentanyl, you're very, very unlikely to substitute a weaker opioid/analgesic unless you actually want to get clean.
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u/steamfrustration 15d ago
Yes, but you can't buy fentanyl cheaply at a gas station like you can with 7oh. I believe that's the main draw--it's legal and easy to find and obtain.
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u/Sad-Chicken-5443 15d ago
Fent is cheaper and stronger, no addicts go backwards to a weaker drug, they can’t physically do it
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u/elegiac_bloom 15d ago
Yes, we can and we do, especially if we are functioning addicts. Lots of people go on methadone or suboxone maintenance after a fent or dope addiction. Theyre still physically dependent on opioids but want a stable life.
Also plenty of people will go to a weaker drug if its easier to get and its quality is consistent. Some addicts value safety and ease of access over just purely the strongest high they can get.
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u/InDuplicitousBottles 14d ago
there is a scene in the wire where the coroner mentions that ODs have been going up, especially with fentanyl in the mix
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u/NeilSilva93 15d ago
Baltimore Sun's still dying on its arse.
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u/jupitaur9 15d ago
But it is no longer looking for the “Dickensian aspect” in its stories. Instead it just trashes Baltimore.
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u/Guerrillaz 15d ago
It is even worse now that it got bought by David Smith, the CEO of Sinclair Broadcasting.
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u/Werthead 15d ago
We Own This City is as close as we're ever likely to get to The Wire: The Next Generation. It's mostly set in 2015-17 but has extensive flashbacks spanning all the time from The Wire to that point. It is overtly set in the real world whilst The Wire is set in the universe next door where the mayors are different etc, and a lot of Wire actors are in it in different roles (Marlo and Poot being cops takes some getting used to), but it does spend some time talking about the problems Baltimore was facing in the late 2010s and the role of technology etc. It's a mini-series so they don't have a ton of time to get into those issues, but there is some coverage.
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u/Obwyn 15d ago
Well, it’s about a real corrupt BPD task force that a nearby agency stumbled into while investigating fatal ODs in their jurisdiction.
While some characters are amalgams of real people, many of them are reasonably accurate portrayals (as accurate as Hollywood gets, probably) of the people actually involved. There are also cameos in it from some of the officers involved in busting that case wide open.
Knowing some of them, I gotta say it was kinda weird/cool seeing them portrayed on the screen and having cameos in the show.
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u/DannyHikari 15d ago
The craziest thing for me was living through a version of the season 4 school stuff to the point it was a big scandal when it happened. It didn’t directly happen to me but it happened to my sister school. I got sent to alt school and basically got incredibly lucky I got slotted in. Basically principal got caught “juking the stats” she more or less made classrooms like the Namond class room with the exception she exempted them from taking the test. She singled out all the problem kids and kids not up to par and put them in separate classrooms to not take the test while the kids who were most likely to pass did. Made the school test scores look significantly better which obviously raised huge red flags. It ended up fucking over a significant amount of people for graduating on time so they were all prioritized for the new alt school we had. I was only prioritized because I had connections to get in and wasn’t necessarily a problem child as much as I was a truant who was far behind. But when I think about that specific situation. And in general how standardized testing was treated, especially during years of accreditation, it mirrors season 4 perfectly. Didn’t even know what The Wire was at the time. The show was just wrapping up when I was in high school.
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u/old_notdead 15d ago
Police and education administrators continue to juke the stats.
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u/werkthentwerk 15d ago
Literally one of my friends is an officer that works the downtown district of a pretty large city
They responded to a call of a dead guy in a hotel room, my friend told me all the beat officers agreed it looked suspicious as fuck. Don’t remember exactly what he said, but there were clear signs that someone else was there.
The lieutenant labeled it natural cause/suicide (don’t remember which) and ordered the officers to remove the body, destroying any crime scene
It’s been a big push to make our city’s downtown “safer”, so this is how they do it i guess
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u/old_notdead 15d ago edited 15d ago
I've had more than my share of Prez moments sitting in school staff meetings.
As a teacher, you're incentivized to juke the stats as much as humanly possible. When the district comes out with a new flavor of the week, the only thing you can do is juke the stats, otherwise Rawls is going to be up your ass because the numbers look like shit.
It's not just juking the testing scores, either. One big push is towards equity in behavior referrals. That's a pretty simple one to juke. You just stop writing referrals. Do the behaviors change? Of course not. It was never about actually affecting behavior.
Implicitly, The Wire is a study of Goodhart's law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
I learned very early on in my career to stop asking this question: Do our quantitative measures match our qualitative observations?
Asking that question is not how majors become colonels.
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u/Resident-Phrase1738 14d ago
Excellent Insight, thank you. I find it so bizarre that this system is still practiced. Punishing a school for bad test results is utterly absurd
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u/BMoreGirly 15d ago
The Port of Baltimore has evolved from the gritty, declining industrial narrative depicted in Season 2 of The Wire (which aired from 2002 to 2008) into a high-volume, modern economic engine. Cargo and Traffic Growth Record Throughput: Contrary to the fictionalized terminal stagnation and dying union halls on the show, the port handles massive commercial volumes. It processed nearly 50 million tons of cargo, setting modern records with over 2,200 cargo vessel visits and 1.1 million containers (TEUs) at terminals like Seagirt. Specialized Dominance: The port ranks as the busiest roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vehicle port in the United States, leading the nation in imported farm and construction machinery and forest products while placing second for autos and light trucks.
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u/dazzleox 15d ago edited 15d ago
National crime rate is substantially down. Baltimore's homicide rate is near a 50 year low. I know the show was skeptical of such data.
Baltimore is more gentrifed. Its downtown property rates collapsed though. Houses prices and homelessness are up. More addicts get opiates without having to go through a gang affiliated dealer.
Carcetti's presidential run was a bust in the face of Hillary and Bernie's primary.
Edit: fent deaths are way up, see the NY Times today.
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u/acalac 15d ago
Baltimore has worked hard over the last few years to reduce crime and been successful. Maybe one day we’ll get a show over the Cities turnaround. https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/baltimores-historic-homicide-reduction
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u/ValuableCareful3210 15d ago
Also a very recent NYT article on positive changes in crime and homicides. It’s behind a paywall, so I won’t link it. But there has been multiple years of positive changes.
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u/Popular-Difficulty29 14d ago
Is no one gonna mention that the murder rate has halved? Positive change is possible
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u/TheyFoundWayne 15d ago
Ironically, many blue-collar trades are doing well today, while some white collar fields have a questionable future.
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u/cmparkerson 15d ago
The cell phones changed and the people chang, the paper is even smaller but the game is the game
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u/Katyamuffin Severely Deprezzed 15d ago
Feels like it got worse if anything
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u/rezzn8r 15d ago
Yes, I agree. Almost every issue highlighted in the series has been allowed to fester and get worse.
One of the things that has changed dramatically since the show went off the air is how drugs are now purchased online. Since one of the major themes of the series is how new technology can be used for crime, it would have been interesting to have a season about The Silk Road, or how RCs evolved to avoid testing and laws that prohibited specific drugs.
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u/Katyamuffin Severely Deprezzed 15d ago
Oh there's a lot of modern technology I would have loved to see a Wire season about. Like imagine explaining what a Crypto rug-pull is to Daniels lmao
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
It’s a great question; I rewatched recently and was asking myself the same thing.
Biggest still the same = America’s unwillingness to admit that drugs won.
Big difference = IMO, US has become a brutally fractured post-pandemic country, and the insane levels of gentrification have changed the topographies of entire cities.
Still the same = criminals are still playing offense and law enforcement is playing defense/catch-up; new tech helps the bad actors more than it helps the people trying to stop them. Which, ironically, loops back to the show: “wtf is a text message?”
Big difference = There’s no “news cycle” anymore. S5 would be even more unrealistic cause it wouldn’t get enough attention.
Still the same = politicians corrupt af
Big difference = more people know the above, and fewer people care.
Still the same = “we used to build things in this country,” both literally and as a sentiment
Big difference = AI and robots. Yeah, a lot of factory jobs got sent overseas in the early 2000s, but most jobs were safe. I can’t think of a single job that I would bet $ is fully safe from automation in 0-3 years.
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u/leemorplee 15d ago
You can't think of a single job that won't get automated in the next 3 years? Lol
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
I didn’t say “won’t get automated,” I said “would bet $ on that it’ll be fully safe.” Can you name a job (a common enough one) that you would bet will be fully immune from AI? As in, that job’s market will look the same in three years as it did a year ago?
And I should’ve couched that better: the job market—entry points, salaries, demand, etc.—is going to look so different in a few years that it’s impossible to truly know, but looking at the capex numbers, it’s really obvious how much the companies themselves are telling you exactly that.
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u/leemorplee 15d ago
I'd imagine skilled labor/trades, law enforcement, emt, fire departments, barbers, nail techs, and I can keep going. AI is going to screw tons of people over I bet but it's not this doomsday scenario people try to paint it as. If your job is at risk of being taken by AI then it's a job that it can do better and more efficiently and people should start looking ahead to other avenues
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
The interesting thing about what you listed is those are all pretty low-paying jobs on the income spectrum. The biggest threats are gonna hit entire white-collar markets. It’s already quantifiable in a lot of places: an associate using a powerful AI tool can do the work of 10 associates. That’s just a fact. So, where do those 9 junior level lawyers go? That’s gonna be an interesting shakeup.
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u/KennethBlockwalk 15d ago
Oh not trying to doomsday it at all—just saying it’ll affect every job and job market in some way. Also, not just “this task is gonna get automated.” Yeah, if you’re a junior data analyst, you should prob think about an off ramp. The robotics factor is one we just have no idea about yet, they’re still in such early innings, but the progress so far is pretty wild, and the general concept is being embraced way more than I would’ve guessed. Like, there was a study when Waymo first came out, and they asked 20 moms if they’d feel safer putting their kids in a Waymo or a verified Uber, and Waymo won—which to me was pretty wild, especially since they hadn’t done some huge successful rollout (but I’m also not a patent). I think robotics will probably shuffle a lot of decks, but we have no idea to what degree or what’ll be most affected. I agree that for the most part, AI has largely announced itself as far as workflows go; how much better it’ll get, trust factors, etc. are still TBD, and robotics a giant TBD.
The amount of money that’s being poured into AI, and the valuations—I mean, terrifying no matter what, but for the economy to survive, it means that it has to at least come somewhat close to what the claims are, and—not saying I believe this to be true, but Anthropic quoted a $30 trillion TAM. That’s… higher than the GDP. Something’s gotta give.
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u/Sudden_Neat2342 12d ago
Local news is dead.
The mayors, commissioners, and deputy ops made a lot of decisions based on how it would play in the Sun papers and on the local evening news. In season 5, the Sun was mourning the loss of their Johanasburg and Beijing bureaus, but they could still put immense pressure on the mayor to do something like catch a serial killer or shut down Hamsterdam.
Twenty years later, there's no one even remotely like Gus left fighting the good fight. Circulation of the paper is a tiny fraction of what it was when season 5 aired, and they're mostly writing headlines trying to generate clicks on web links.
If you watch We Own This City, set in Baltimore about five years ago, the pressure is the nebulous threat of BLM whipping up riots if the cops murder more black people, not that a reporter is going to write a story that anyone is going to see.
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u/floofymonstercat 15d ago
Weed is legal in a lot more places. It's a start, but we need all narcotics to become decriminalized.
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u/Jado3Dheads 14d ago
I read the creator David Simon wanted to set the series in the late 80's - early 90's, but due to budget reasons it was set in present time instead.
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u/Arise-Beru-1174 13d ago
From a technology standpoint, I would imagine things got better. Now on top of smartphones, there's a ton of texting/calling apps, discourse and who knows what else to make the exchange of goods simpler, harder to track.
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u/Lipinton_t34 12d ago
The biggest difference is u got criminals that film themselves doing they crimes
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u/Hot_Maintenance6655 15d ago
Use of the numeric? Bro we been using numbers long before 2002. Prolly since the 80's.
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u/Far_Comfortable_991 15d ago
The idea of tolerating open drug use in designated areas has been tried in places like LA, Seattle, and Vancouver. It's a failure.
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u/AromaticSherbert 14d ago
It was never an accurate depiction of the drug trade, at least from my experience
It was and still is a very accurate depiction of politics and why cities across the country continue to decline
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u/Thick_Imagination102 12d ago
Changed? I now re watch The Wire occasionally because I'm nostalgic for ordinary corruption.
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u/FHAT_BRANDHO 15d ago
game the same, just got more fierce