USA Today · Jul 19, 2016
Cracklands: Where drug abuse meets the Olympics
A mile from the site of the Rio Olympics opening ceremony hides a drug-riddled apocalypse. USA TODAY Sports' Martin Rogers reports on the Cracklands of Rio de Janeiro.USA TODAY Sports
(Photo: Sandy Hooper, USA TODAY Sports)RIO DE JANEIRO – Less than a mile from Maracana Stadium, where the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics will be staged Aug. 5, lies the most hopeless place imaginable.
Cars pass by a squalid sidewalk where Rio’s undesirables go to feed their cocaine habit. Prostitutes, some of them pregnant, sell their bodies for a couple of rocks of crack or a few reals, the equivalent of less than $5. Dozens of people ingest the drug in open view. No one pays much attention.