Inside ‘methadone mile’ as zombie addicts roam metropolis the place England play Ghana

England fans face a real-life horror show in Boston, where ‘zombie’ fentanyl addicts roam a notorious area known as Methadone Mile

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Football fans flooding into the US for England’s World Cup clash tonight are being warned of a real-life horror show unfolding just a few miles down the road. As thousands of supporters descend on Boston to watch the Three Lions take on Ghana, a grim drug epidemic is ravaging an area nicknamed “Methadone Mile”.

The notorious district, a hotspot for synthetic opioids, lies just 20 miles away from the ultra-modern Boston Stadium, which is set to host seven tournament fixtures.

Known locally as “Mass and Cass” (the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard), the neighbourhood has become the grim epicentre of the US fentanyl crisis.

For years, the area was overrun by sprawling tent cities and open-air drug markets. While authorities cleared the camps last year, the streets are still haunted by desperate users.

Visited by shocked vloggers, the area has been described as a “scene out of The Walking Dead,” where dealers brazenly shout out their illegal products.

Dr. Jessie Gaeta, medical director of Health Care for the Homeless, told The Boston Globe that the area had “for a very long time been a place where poor people in Boston receive services”.

Meanwhile, Sue Sullivan, head of a local business association, told WBUR News: “The depravity that’s happening, I can’t be party to. People are being harmed.”

The area earned its “Methadone Mile” moniker due to the high concentration of clinics offering the heroin-substitute treatment. However, experts warn the US system is failing those trapped in the cycle of addiction.

Dr Chelsea Shover told The Sun: “The unregulated drug supply in Boston is dominated by fentanyl with tranquillisers, xylazine, and medetomidine.”

Blaming a lack of proper support from local authorities, Dr Shover added: “There are some glaring ways the US has moved counterproductively and failed to act on evidence.

“The US has not responded to the rising use of illicit opioids the way many European countries responded to their past heroin crises last century.”

She admitted that “no country is perfect” but insisted the US had handled it “really badly”, warning that “people have died and will keep dying as a result”.

According to Dr Shover, a major issue is the strict federal policy surrounding treatment. She said: “Methadone is an evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder. It cuts mortality from overdose by more than 50 per cent.

“It is wildly effective, as far as public health interventions go. But in the United States, it is incredibly hard to access due to federal policy.”

She added: “Only relatively few special clinics can dispense it. People often have to go every day to pick it up, even if they live very far away. This disrupts the ability to have other factors that promote recovery, such as a job and family caring responsibilities.”

With the eyes of the world on the city, local police have launched a massive pre-World Cup blitz to clean up the streets.

Cops have given users ultimatums to choose between rehab or jail, while launching major crackdowns on violent drug gangs.

Earlier this month, nine suspected members of the notorious Trinitarios gang were arrested, with officers seizing guns and kilos of deadly fentanyl.

Dr Traci Green, an opioid abuse researcher, told The Sun: “The city has been putting on a full court press of beautification, street cleaning, increased public safety presence.”

She added that “entrenched challenges” like skyrocketing housing costs have worsened the crisis, but noted that major progress is being made to keep people alive.

She said: “It is through all the hard work and investments in public health that we have seen major progress on reducing deaths from overdose, which is the leading cause of death for people who are homeless in Boston, and for people 18-44 in the US.

“This is tremendous progress. It also means that people using opioids like fentanyl are alive and surviving, and they need help.”

As England fans prepare for the Group L showdown, city bosses will be praying their actions are enough to keep the horrors of Methadone Mile out of sight.