With the legalization of marijuana in a growing number of states, drug cartels were champing at the bit to meet the demand for heroin, a market they needed to grow. “They were looking at a thirty to forty percent reduction in profits because of legalization,” explained Joe Crowder, a Virginia state police special agent and part of the federally funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program that designated Roanoke a heroin hot spot in 2014. “Between the pill epidemic and the less liberal prescribing of pain meds, cartel leaders said, ‘Guess what’s purer, cheaper, and we can make it all
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