Pubdate: Wed,  5 Jun 2002
Source: Independent  (UK)
Contact:  2002 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Author: Ian Burrell, Home Affairs Correspondent
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

ANALYSIS: CRACK COCAINE - THE DANGER BRITAIN CHOSE TO IGNORE THAT IS NOW
REACHING AN EPIDEMIC

Thirteen Years Ago, The Warning Of An American DEA Officer Was Dismissed As
Outlandish. Now His Fears Have Been Vindicated

Thirteen years ago, Robert Stutman, an officer of the United States Drug
Enforcement Agency, arrived in Britain as a prophet of doom. The subject of
his prophecy was a substance many in his audience of senior British police
officers had not heard of, a highly addictive cocaine derivative called
"crack".

Mr Stutman warned that these small, off-white crystals would soon be
wreaking havoc in British cities, tearing the hearts out of neighbourhoods
and fuelling often-fatal violent turf wars for the illegal profits they
generate.

The British media promptly turned their attention to America, from where
horrific stories emerged of crack-addicted babies born to mothers unable to
stop "piping" the drug during their pregnancies.

To some drug experts, the warnings seemed outlandish and sensational.
Britain's drug-taking culture was different, they said, and there was little
likelihood that our more moderate society would succumb to a product that
was clearly so destructive.

In one sense, the voices of caution were right. Mr Stutman's gloomy
prediction in 1989 was that Britain would be gripped by crack within two
years. It took a bit longer.

This month, senior police officers, health officials, addiction treatment
specialists and community leaders will gather in Birmingham for the British
Government's first crack summit. The two days of talks will try to address a
deepening problem involving a drug that the Home Office minister Bob
Ainsworth says is doing "massive damage ... to certain communities and
inner-city areas". Crack is seen as the principal reason for a wave of
black-on-black gun crime across London, with 171 shootings last year,
including 18 murders and 81 attempted murders.

Among those addressing the Birmingham meeting will be Lee Jasper, adviser to
Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, on police and race issues. Mr Jasper last
week spoke out against the rising number of shootings and appealed to the
community to call police "and tell them who is carrying guns".

Specialist police operations to fight crack-related crime have been set up
in many other British cities including Bristol, Leeds and Leicester. But
crack is no longer just a problem for the big urban areas. Recent police
operations have seen notable seizures in the apparently genteel Bath and in
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

For a drug that was initially depicted in tabloid reports as being
"instantly addictive", the spread of crack through Britain has been gradual
and insidious. Perhaps the early scare stories of the drug's "deadly" nature
acted as a deterrent.

The warnings coincided with the explosion in dance music culture, and many
younger drug users were too busy chasing the happy, beat-enhancing highs
associated with ecstasy to show interest in the new "danger drug" from
America.

Yet crack already had a small foothold in Britain, among a few members of
African-Caribbean communities and others with transatlantic connections who
had experienced the drug while living in America or visiting friends or
relatives.

Drug users began to learn the recipe for "washing" regular cocaine powder
(the salt form, cocaine hydrochloride) into "rocks" of purified base cocaine
(crack), by using baking powder and common kitchen utensils, a frying pan or
a microwave.

Smoking, or "freebasing", cocaine had traditionally been a complicated and
potentially dangerous business requiring knowledge of chemistry. But
awareness quickly spread that the crystals of crack could be easily made and
smoked through a hole in a tin can or plastic drinks bottle.

But what really aided the growth of crack was the increasing availability of
its raw product, cocaine powder. In the five years to 1992, seizures of
cocaine at British ports and airports increased five-fold to 2,250 kilograms
a year, as South American cartels switched their efforts from the
increasingly saturated North American market to Europe.

Through the Nineties, the demand for cocaine in Britain grew and grew. And
the supply has increased to more than meet it. Most cocaine reaches Britain
through Spain, with whom the Government has signed a joint initiative to try
to curb it.

Smaller but substantial amounts are brought in on flights from Jamaica by
couriers. Britain has supplied the Caribbean island with detection equipment
to identify the drug "mules" and is receiving help from the Jamaican
authorities in penetrating the Yardie gangs that control much of the
street-level crack trade in Britain.

The drug is increasingly prevalent. The Government announced last month that
seizures of crack increased in 2000 by 8 per cent. Figures from the National
Criminal Intelligence Service show that in the past 12 years, in spite of
inflation, the price of cocaine has tumbled from UKP87 a gram to UKP60.
Crack has fallen from UKP20 for 0.2 of a gram, to double the amount for the
same price. Anecdotal evidence suggests some dealers are offering crack for
the equivalent of UKP30 a gram, a new low.

As greater numbers of cocaine users have become comfortable with "snorting"
powder into the membranes of their nostrils, a growing minority have been
tempted to seek out the more immediate and intense rush of smoking the
crystal, taking the drug into the bloodstream via the lungs.

Heroin addicts, who had showed little interest in the "champagne drug"
cocaine, have become increasingly attracted to its powerful crystalline
derivative, sometimes using the stimulant and the opiate in quick
succession.

Scotland, gripped by a heroin epidemic in the Eighties and with a tradition
of injecting- drug use but little history of cocaine, is now reporting an
increased prevalence of crack.

In clubs and fashionable bars in some cities, young people find it more
convenient to smoke crack - often disguised as a cannabis spliff - than to
sniff cocaine, particularly in toilets where flat surfaces have been
purposefully removed by the management to discourage drug use.

Adam Frankland, a drugs worker based in west London for the charity Turning
Point, said crack was becoming more attractive to a younger and more
affluent crowd. "We are seeing crack infiltrate the normal cocaine users.
They are mostly white males aged 16 to 25, who are not socially excluded and
are in employment. It is getting close to the epidemic stages that guy [Mr
Stutman] was warning us about. It has just been a more gradual evolution."

In 1993, after the first signs of crack turf battles in Bristol, Nottingham
and south and east London, Mr Stutman said he had expected the scepticism
with which his words had been initially received. "I was accused of being an
over-zealous reactionary," he said.

"They said, 'We are different, we are not prone to that kind of violence and
our slums are not as bad'. I had heard that same argument in 1987 from
Americans who said they could not suffer the same problems as New Yorkers
had."

In America, there are signs that the crack epidemic is waning. A younger
generation is turning away from a drug that caused so much damage to so many
parents and elder siblings. In Britain, the problem is growing. Roger
Howard, chief executive of the drug treatment charity DrugScope, said
successive governments were culpable for failing to head off a problem that
has been foreseeable for a long time.

Instead of spending sufficient money on educating and treating those who
would come into contact with crack, ministers acted only after users began
appearing in large numbers before the courts, he said.

He said: "The legacy of years of under-investment and lack of forward
thinking has led to the criminal justice system being called upon to find
solutions to the problem."
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