The spreading heroin problem is being described as cheap, powerful and plentiful, and it's probably in your backyard.

Pictures from security cameras taken last summer near a methadone clinic in Baltimore show an apparent open-air market for prescription painkillers. Cash and pills exchange hands in the middle of the day around a busy bus stop.

The pictures put the country's opioid addiction crisis in full view, and today's pill abuser is likely tomorrow's heroin user.

"(I) started using prescription pills, which led to heroin, which, you know, put me where I am at now," said a woman who asked the I-Team to identify her as Tiffany.

She's on the street, panhandling to survive.

"The pills became harder to get a hold of. They became more expensive. Doctors started cracking down on the amount of prescriptions that they were putting out. And the heroin was a lot easier and cheaper," Tiffany said.

Asked how hard heroin is to get, Tiffany said, "Extremely easy. You can get it anywhere."

In Harford County, the rising number of heroin overdoses is now put on signboards by the Sheriff's Office. There's no hiding the problem.

"It's the perfect trifecta. Heroin has never been more plentiful, it has never been more cheap and it has never been more pure," Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said.

Gahler tracks heroin overdoses on a map. Through the third week of April, there were 72 overdoses, compared to 47 during the same time period last year.

"The Bel Air ZIP codes (are) where we see our most overdoses, but it's in every community here in Harford County, and anyone who does not think so is being naive," Gahler said.

Sheriff's deputies now treat overdose scenes as a crime scene, not to target the addict, but to try to track the dealers. Investigators call them commuter dealers, getting their supply in Baltimore, then selling in public places throughout the county.

"Restaurants, Walmarts, we have had several in Walmart bathrooms, and in some of our local convenience stores, gas stores, and again, the addicts are meeting the dealers there inside, and they go in the bathroom and overdose," said Capt. Lee Dunbar, with the Harford County Drug Task Force.

Sheriff's deputies provide referral cards to addicts with a goal to push them to treatment, not to jail.

Since 2005 statewide, the number of methadone clinics has nearly doubled, from 42 to 74 in 2015.

But, as the security video seems to show, sometimes methadone becomes currency, too, as addicts entitled to get it sell it on the street. And the flow of heroin just keeps coming.

"There is no shortage of supply. Sometimes we say, in law enforcement, we can pick off multiple kilos of heroin at entry points in the U.S., be it New York or L.A., and only see a few days disruption before the supply is right back on the street again," Dunbar said. "It's almost like sticking your hand in a bucket of water, you know, you put it in there and it's displaced for a little bit, and as soon as you pull your hand out, it immediately comes back in."

Out on the street, Tiffany said she knows few treatment success stories.

"Most of them relapse. I can't think of anyone that I know personally who stuck with it and stayed clean. Everyone that I am close to, that I know, has relapsed, overdosed," she said. "It does make you feel hopeless, because if, you know, 30 other people that you know couldn't pull it together and get their life straight, am I going to be able to do it? I mean, it really is a nightmare to be an addict."

Tiffany added that being an addict is also easier than trying to get back everything she has lost.