They seem to bounce and wobble from one side to the next.  The drugged-out, half-alive skeletons of Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia make their way past erected tents and filthy sidewalks en route to their next fix.

How Kensington Avenue, a poverty-stricken place in one of the most impoverished cities in the country, gets away with brazenly being the center of one of the largest open-air narcotics markets in the United States is frightening, bewildering, and telling.

It's a race to the city morgue for many inhabitants of Kensington injecting themselves in broad daylight.  And with so many new places like Kensington popping up across the country, the question is, which Democrat-run city will emerge as the most prolific killer of American youths?

Kensington is an atrocious evil disguised as benevolence.  This sickening eyesore and open wound is the poster child of poor policies by leadership, who believe that caring means enabling young adults, hallucinating and covered with skin ulcers, to receive free crack pipes and sleep in human waste.

According to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 12 months ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before.

Anyone with a pulse realizes that the lethal drug fentanyl is a primary contributor to the high death rates of young Americans.

CNN reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection saw a 1,066% increase in fentanyl seized in south Texas in 2021.  This synthetic opioid, originating from China, which is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, gets into the bodies of soon-to-be-dead Americans mainly through the open southern border with Mexico.

Drug addiction leads to homelessness.  Clearing out homeless encampments in Kensington is like taking a bucket to move water from one area of the ocean to another.  As day disappears into the night, these forgotten outcasts of the "City of Brotherly Love" evaporate into the city's decay.

Morning on Kensington signals the start of another monotonous reality, where survival is not assured.  It's a compounded tragic reality that Kensington Avenue also has a violent crime rate 30% higher than the rest of the city.

Eventually, these street travelers will arrive at the last stop, which is the fatal overdose.  According to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, 639 people died of a drug overdose in Philadelphia between January and June 2021.

Kensington is more a state of mind than a place found on Google maps.  More and more cities run by the same kind of liberal system are well on their way to creating their own Kensington Avenues.

Kensington Avenue is not part of some foreign, third-world country; it is America.  To watch the human horror and be convinced that any progress is being made takes a level of denial previously reserved for those believing in a flat earth.

Many people refuse to believe or acknowledge that contributing factors that destroy lives in places like Kensington exist because leadership in America finds it politically advantageous to keep the southern border open.

And the same hypocritical politicians who preach against racism are aware that the death rates from drug overdoses primarily come from the minority community.

The Pew Research group released a January 2022 report that stated that there were 54.1 fatal drug overdoses for every 100,000 Black men in the United States in 2020.  As a result, Black men have overtaken White men.  They are now on par with American Indian or Alaska Native men as the demographic groups most likely to die from overdoses.

While stuck in a drug-induced haze, America's youths encamped on Kensington cannot help themselves.  They are left to suffer prolonged pain on the streets until their emotional deaths transform into physical ones.

Rick Hayes is an award-winning New York City-based journalist with 20 years of experience within the major news industry.  He holds a B.S. degree from St. John's University.

Image: Simon.