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And is the city’s high ranking fair ? People working in addiction recovery explain the various factors at play in Wilmington. By Taylor Knopf By some measures, Wilmington, N.C. ranks number one in the nation for opioid abuse . But for all its problems, the city’s residents and those in the addiction recovery community say that reputation is a bit unfair. “There are a lot of different theories about why it’s so problematic in Wilmington specifically,” said Michael Page, a North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition worker who helps operate a mobile needle exchange in Wilmington. NC Harm Reduction Coalition ’s Michael Page. Photo courtesy Michael Page . “I feel that it has a lot to do with the polar opposite, which is recovery. Wilmington is a mecca for recovery,” he argued. Page and others in the area say that there are close to 300 twelve-step meetings a week in the city. It’s filled with halfway houses and substance abuse outpatient programs . It’s also important to note that accordin...

Photo by Andrea Yori | CC BY 2.0 In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington pursued its elusive enemies across the landscapes of Asia and Africa, thanks in part to a massive expansion of its intelligence infrastructure, particularly of the emerging technologies for digital surveillance , agile drones, and biometric identification. In 2010, almost a decade into this secret war with its voracious appetite for information, the Washington Post reported that the national security state had swelled into a “fourth branch” of the federal government — with 854,000 vetted officials, 263 security organizations , and over 3,000 intelligence units, issuing 50,000 special reports every year. Though stunning, these statistics only skimmed the visible surface of what had become history’s largest and most lethal clandestine apparatus . According to classified documents that Edward Snowden leaked in 2013, the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies alone had 107,035 employees and a combined “b...