Conway unveils SOAR plan to combat Baltimore open-air drug markets

Baltimore City Councilman Mark Conway said open-air drug markets have gone unresolved for too long, unveiling a plan he says would force City Hall to move from scattered crackdowns to a sustained response on the blocks where addiction, blight and public disorder are most visible.

Conway’s proposal, called SOAR, short for Sustained Opioid Action and Recovery, was framed as a direct challenge to the city’s current approach. He said he had waited more than a year for a coordinated strategy and described the effort as personal, shaped by what he has seen in the community. “I’ve personally come into contact with a number of folks who have overdosed in front of my office,” he said.

The plan is aimed at more than police enforcement. Conway cast it as a broader effort to bring together recovery services, addiction treatment and neighborhood-level intervention in places where open-air dealing has become tied to fear for nearby residents and business owners. The question for Baltimore is whether that mix would change daily conditions on blocks near schools, transit stops and struggling commercial corridors, or simply rename a problem the city has already promised to confront.

The timing matters because Mayor Brandon M. Scott already released the city’s finalized Overdose Response Strategic Plan for 2025-2027 on March 19, setting a new goal of reducing fatal overdoses by 50% by 2040. The city said that plan reflected resident feedback from four listening sessions held in Cherry Hill, Penn North, Park Heights and East Baltimore, along with newly received 2024 final data and preliminary 2025 overdose data.

Those numbers show why pressure on City Hall is not easing. The Maryland Department of Health said the state’s overdose dashboard launched in July 2024, and that Maryland recorded 1,315 fatal overdoses in 2025, the lowest level in 10 years and a 53% drop from the 2021 peak of 2,800. Baltimore City’s overdose needs assessment dashboard lists 597 preliminary overdose deaths for 2025, and says city deaths fell 43% from 2023 to 2025.

Conway has been pushing for a written coordinated plan for months. In September 2025, he told the Public Safety Committee he had been asking for one for 364 days and expected it within 60 days. Police Commissioner Richard Worley said then that Baltimore Police Department had a plan, but also said not every open-air drug market could be shut down.

Now Conway is pressing for something more measurable, with timelines and accountability attached. City staff have already responded sharply to his proposal, and the clash leaves the same central test in place: whether SOAR becomes a real blueprint for the hardest-hit corners of Baltimore, or another rebrand of a fight residents have heard about before.