As a follower of Christ in Scotland, with an online blog category called Faithful Steps to Freedom at bornagainchristians.org, I was stunned by various YouTube videos of ZOMBIES OF AMERICA showing the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia.
Since I came across this online, it has truly saddened me to see how people can end up in such difficult situations, all due to the battle’s life throws at them. Many individuals, out of curiosity or the need to escape, may start using drugs like fentanyl, xylazine, or nitazenes in Kensington.
However, it's important to recognise that deeper factors often drive addiction. For many, trauma from losing a loved one, a job, or a home is a harsh reality, along with the challenges of poverty (45% in Kensington) and mental illness (18.4% of the homeless population).
Additionally, shocking experiences like abuse or violence add to their struggles. All of these stressors can lead vulnerable individuals to turn to drugs as a way to numb their pain, often introduced through peers or prescriptions, which sadly traps them in a cycle of addiction.
Seeing men and women slump under the weight of fentanyl and xylazine, “Tranq,” a drug that eats flesh, amid needle-strewn sidewalks and homeless encampments. This crisis of extreme poverty, homelessness, addiction, and mental health breaks my heart, echoing a dark history: Britain’s 19th-century opium trade, which flooded China with drugs for profit.
As I reflect, I see God’s call to bring hope where despair reigns. This article traces Kensington’s plight from colonial greed to modern tragedy, urging the Church to proclaim Christ’s freedom.
In John 8:34-36, we see how sin can entrap us in its grasp, and these addictions can feel like the Devil's hold, controlling and dominating our lives and choices.
But here's the wonderful news: Jesus can help liberate you from the things that hold you back from becoming the amazing person God intended you to be. If you find that these drugs are restraining or controlling your life, I can relate. I once struggled daily with tumbler glasses of straight whiskey. But I want you to know that Jesus has the incredible ability to break that hold over your life.
Britain’s Opium Trade: A Colonial Sin
In the 1700s and 1800s, Britain’s East India Company grew opium in India and smuggled it into China to offset trade imbalances. By the 1830s, millions of pounds of opium addicted an estimated 4–12 million Chinese, despite China’s bans.
The Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860) saw Britain’s military force China to legalize the drug and cede Hong Kong. Families collapsed, economies suffered, and addiction spread, all for British profit. Missionary William Muirhead called it “the most nefarious traffic,” exposing its evil.
Britain also used opium medically at home, with laudanum prescribed for pain, coughs, and sleeplessness, hooking countless people: this dual role, opium as a colonial weapon and a medical norm, normalised addictive substances globally.
While not directly causing Kensington’s crisis, Britain’s trade set a precedent for exploiting vulnerable populations with drugs, this is a pattern, sadly seen in today’s opioid epidemic. It’s a sobering picture of human greed (James 5:4), twisting God’s creation for harm instead of healing.
The Opioid Crisis: From History to Horror
The Britain’s opium legacy spread to the West. In 19th-century America, opium and morphine were common, addicting thousands after the Civil War. By the 1890s, over 60% of addicts were women, prescribed opiates for “female complaints.”
The Harrison Narcotic Act (1914) drove drugs underground, with heroin, invented in 1898, fuelling addiction. Kensington, a textile hub at the time, escaped until the 1970s, when deindustrialisation slashed 75% of jobs, leaving a 45% poverty rate and crumbling streets.
The modern crisis began in the 1990s with pharmaceuticals like OxyContin, pushed as safe by Purdue Pharma, sparking 500,000 U.S. deaths since 1999.
When prescriptions dried up, users turned to heroin, then fentanyl, which now taints 70% of Philadelphia’s street drugs, causing 1,122 overdose deaths in 2023. Xylazine’s flesh-rotting effects create the “zombie” scenes in HaTTab’s video, haunting Kensington’s 80 open-air drug markets, where dealers earn $400,000–$600,000 weekly.
Kensington’s Despair: A Call to Compassion
Kensington is a battleground of systemic failure. Its 45% poverty rate, with incomes averaging $12,669, traps residents in despair. Hundreds live in encampments under the Market-Frankford Line, 18.4% battling serious mental illness like schizophrenia, worsened by addiction and trauma.
A May 2024 sweep cleared a two-block encampment, but only 59 people found housing or treatment, most scattered to side streets. Stories like Guillermo A. Santos’s, who lost his father to fentanyl in 2021, reveal a community crying out for hope.
Philadelphia’s police, short 1,300 officers, struggle to curb drug markets. Treatment reaches just 20% of addicts, and Mayor Cherelle Parker’s 2024 plan to close markets often displaces rather than heals.
Like here in Helensburgh with quieter drug struggles, but heavier use in Glashow, it is tied to deprivation. Kensington’s pain reflects a world longing for redemption (Romans 8:22). As a believer, I’m compelled to respond, not with judgment, but with Christ’s love.
Common Effects of Fentanyl and Xylazine, “Tranq”
In Kensington’s “zombieland,” fentanyl is injected, smoked, or snorted, often mixed with xylazine, delivering euphoria but also sedation and slowed breathing. Xylazine causes horrific skin ulcers and scars, even in non-injection sites, leaving deep wounds from neglected infections.
The “fentanyl fold”, users bent over, frozen in a semi-conscious “nod”, stems from muscle rigidity and sedation, worsened by xylazine. This posture, seen in YouTube videos, brings excruciating joint pain, trapping users in an addiction cycle.
These visible scars and hunched figures cry out for the healing only Christ can provide.
Psalm 147:1-6. These verses I post up on the blog should be underlined and pop up the scripture if you tap or click the link. But these verses are powerful in that sometimes we don’t understand how we got into this predicament of addiction, and it's hard to get out, like you're trapped in a bubble and can’t burst it to escape.
We often ask ourselves questions like, " What's wrong with me? " or " How can I escape this? " and " Where can I seek help? " One enlightening realisation, even more profound than drugs, is that God's understanding is limitless, meaning He comprehends us entirely.
If you're feeling distressed and can’t grasp why you're trapped in this dismal situation, keep in mind that God understands you perfectly and fully.
Redirect your attention from yourself and concentrate on God. Strive to be like Him; the more you discover about God and His ways, the better you will comprehend yourself.
Common Effects of Nitazenes
Nitazenes, synthetic opioids developed in the 1950s by Ciba AG as potential analgesics, were abandoned due to extreme potency and overdose risks. Chemically distinct from fentanyl, they are 2-benzylbenzimidazole compounds acting as potent μ-opioid receptor agonists, mimicking heroin but far stronger. Etonitazene and isotonitazene are up to 40 times more potent than fentanyl, while metonitazene matches it. In Kensington, nitazenes appear in powders or fake pills, injected, smoked, or snorted, often mixed with fentanyl or xylazine, intensifying the “fentanyl fold,” scarring, and overdoses, deepening the crisis’s despair (Psalm 147:3).
Christ’s Answer: Hope for the Hopeless
Jesus came “to proclaim freedom for the captives” (Luke 4:18), and His heart is for Kensington’s broken (Psalm 34:18). In Helensburgh, I saw this need up close during my 2011 outreach in the community centre.
I had the fantastic opportunity to visit a remarkable ministry led by Jan McKerrow from Teen Challenge Strathclyde. She has bravely faced challenges like poverty and distrust. Their excellent mobile bus delivered food, coffee, and a sense of hope to those struggling with addiction on Buchanan Road, while also guiding many towards recovery.
Kensington’s crisis may seem more pronounced, yet the solution remains unchanged: Christ’s transformative power. With 25 million Americans in recovery, we witness His influence as described in 2 Corinthians 5:17, which tells us that upon becoming Christians, we are entirely new within. The Holy Spirit infuses us with new life, making us fundamentally different; we are new creations! We are not just reformed, rehabilitated, or re-educated; we are genuinely new beings, living in beautiful unity with Christ Jesus.
Are you ready to know Christ?
Conclusion: From Greed to Grace
Britain’s opium trade flooded China with addiction, setting a precedent for exploiting the vulnerable, a shadow cast over Kensington’s fentanyl crisis. But where sin abounds, grace overflows (Romans 5:20).
Christ declares, “I am making everything new” (Revelation 21:5)
This is my burden for Scotland. I don’t want to see our streets like Kensington. I know if you're struggling with addiction, our willpower alone often falls short, but Jesus transforms hearts.
Jesus promised, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Whether you’re fighting addiction or watching a loved one struggle, Jesus offers victory and hope.
Our online ministry is here to guide you, one faithful step at a time.
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