But as in the legitimate economy, experts say, such wealth is largely limited to those at the top levels of the heroin trade. At the bottom, the so-called "corner boys" who sell on the street can be making as little as minimum wage, according to economists who have studied the market and those who have plied the trade themselves.
"Nobody's getting [rich] if they're on the corner," said James Wooding, 51, a former heroin dealer and addict who works as a janitor at Tuerk House, the treatment program in West Baltimore that helped him get clean two years ago. "They're just making sneaker money, or for some girl, diapers for the baby."
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