Pubdate: Sun, 27 Jul 2008
Source: Tribune Review (Pittsburgh, PA)
Copyright: 2008 Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/460
Author: Jill King Greenwood
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

CRACK KEEPS GRIP ON LIVES, FAMILIES, CITY NEIGHBORHOODS

Twenty years ago, Roy put a crack pipe to his lips,  flicked a 
cigarette lighter and breathed the  sweet-smelling combination of 
powder cocaine and baking  soda deep into his lungs.

A lifelong drug user who has struggled with addictions  to marijuana, 
heroin and alcohol since age 10, Roy said  it was crack that took 
over his life. He married and  divorced four wives. Only two of his 
five children  speak to him. He lost every job he tried to hold 
onto,  and has been homeless on and off for years.

Today he's broke, financing his habit by scoring crack  for other 
addicts in exchange for a few pieces of rock.

"Crack cocaine is so evil," said Roy, whose last name  is not being 
used to protect his identity as a police  informant.

"I've watched it destroy this city, neighborhood by  neighborhood, 
for the past 20 years. I've seen it ruin  lives. I've lost everything 
important in my life  because crack mattered more. That's what crack 
does. It  makes you love it more than you love anything else, 
including your own life."

It was the summer of 1988 when crack cocaine came  blowing into 
Pittsburgh, first popping up in low-income  black neighborhoods. By 
fall, the drug and its effects  could be seen in nearly every city 
neighborhood and had  a hold on people from a wide range of 
backgrounds and  lifestyles -- many of whom never touched crack only 
months before, said city police Chief Nate Harper.

"We knew crack was coming our way, because we were  watching it 
destroy New York, Los Angeles and other  cities, and Pittsburgh is 
usually a few years behind  whatever is happening there," said 
Harper, who was a  sergeant in the narcotics unit when the drug 
surfaced here. "It hit the streets so fast and cut a swath  through 
the city. You could see the destruction it left  behind."

Today, crack still holds the top spot as the most  abused and 
sought-after drug in the city, Harper said.  The problem isn't 
isolated to Pittsburgh. Addicts from  across Allegheny County and 
surrounding counties travel  into the city to score crack, Harper 
said. Users have  been known to take a bus from another county to buy 
crack for several addicts, return home and sell it at a  higher 
price, said city police narcotics Sgt. Doug  Epler.

Harper estimated that 95 percent of all crimes are  somehow 
drug-related, and crack is the underlying  reason behind most.

The great equalizer

In the early 1980s, detectives mainly battled powder  cocaine, heroin 
and marijuana in Pittsburgh, Harper  said. Most heroin users were 
black, and powder cocaine  was a drug of choice for wealthier white 
people and  successful businessmen, Harper said, because it was 
expensive and considered an accessory of the Hollywood  elite.

Crack became the great equalizer, said Craig Edwards,  who retired 
from Pittsburgh police as an assistant  chief in 1995 after 27 years 
on the force. He was  working as a night watch commander in 1988.

"People who spent a lot of money on powder cocaine at  first looked 
down at anyone who did crack," Edwards  said. "Then they heard how 
intense and fast the high  was from smoking crack, and before you 
knew it, they  were hooked.

"We saw crack addicts from affluent and poor  neighborhoods, black 
and white, old and young, mothers  and fathers and people who had a 
pretty good life  before they picked up crack. It seemed like no one 
was immune to it."

Police began seeing mothers on the street working as  prostitutes 
with their children nearby, and fathers out  buying crack and 
immediately smoking the drug while  their sons and daughters sat 
watching in the passenger  seat of cars, said narcotics detective 
Pete Grbach, who has been with the department since 1987.

"You had people who swore they would never do things  like sell 
themselves, or sell their kids for sex, but  they were," Grbach said. 
"There was no profile for a  crack addict. There still isn't."

Addiction specialists were alarmed by how insidious  crack was, said 
Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of  Gateway Rehabilitation, whose 
specialty is addiction  psychiatry.

Crack delivers a powerful high that lasts fewer than 10  minutes, 
followed by a hard crash that usually brings  depression and suicidal 
thoughts, Capretto said. A  heroin high is less intense but can last 
for hours,  Capretto said, and heroin addicts tend to be more  mellow.

Crack cocaine immediately flows to the center of the  brain where it 
stimulates production of dopamine,  giving the user intense, 
tremendous pleasure, Capretto  said. Dopamine, a chemical similar to 
adrenaline,  affects the ability to experience pleasure or pain. 
Neurons containing dopamine are clustered in the  mid-brain.

Many first-time crack users experience an orgasm, said  narcotics 
detective Glenn Hairston, who has been with  Pittsburgh police since 
the late '80s.

"A really good piece of cheesecake might raise your  dopamine levels 
to 200, and the best sex you've ever  had might raise them to 400 or 
500," Capretto said.  "Crack cocaine raises them to 1,000 or more."

Even rats get hooked

Capretto said studies involving caged lab rats found  that, given 
levers to press to deliver food, water or  crack cocaine, it did not 
take long for the rats to  push only the levers for the drug.

"They would choose the lever for crack until the point  of death," 
Capretto said. "Crack overrides the basic  survival mechanism that 
exists in every living  creature. There's nothing else out there like 
it, and  that was shocking to us. Usually, someone will do  something 
destructive, but eventually they'll get back  around to tending to 
the basic things that keep them  alive. But not if they're using crack."

Capretto said addiction specialists started seeing  longtime heroin 
addicts quit that drug for crack, which  was hooking users more 
quickly than any drug previously  seen.

Crack addicts neglect hygiene, eating and sleeping  habits, leading 
to open sores on their skin, broken and  missing teeth, severe weight 
loss and numerous health  problems, said narcotics Lt. Bill Mathias.

Because crack addicts chase that intense high all day,  they become 
agitated and desperate, Capretto said. They  will do just about 
anything to score another hit,  including stealing from relatives and 
strangers,  Hairston said.

Dawn Littlejohn, 44, of Crafton has been hooked on  crack for eight 
years. Her adult rap sheet travels back  22 years and is a case study 
in addiction, shoplifting  and public drunkenness, with four 
prostitution arrests  since 2000. She was quickly pushed into 
prostitution to  feed her crack habit, she said.

According to court records, Littlejohn completed drug  and alcohol 
treatment in 2000, and finished another  court-ordered round of 
therapy in 2007. Shortly before  her June 26 arrest by Pittsburgh 
vice squad detectives  on the Uptown corner of Moultrie Street and 
Fifth Avenue, Littlejohn said she'd been sober for more than  a year, 
the longest span since she first picked up a  crack pipe.

She started smoking crack again recently and within  "three days" was 
back out on the street, selling  herself for crack money.

She credited Narcotics Anonymous with helping her fight  the urge, 
and pledged to go back to meetings to stay  clean.

"I have no warrants. I've been going to meetings and  stuff. I've 
been staying away from here. But I don't  need to go to one meeting. 
I need to go to a whole lot  more," she said.

New game, new rules

When crack surged into Pittsburgh, investigators saw a  sharp 
increase in crimes, particularly violent ones,  Edwards, the retired 
policeman, said.

"Crack changed the rules of the game," Edwards said.  "There used to 
be a code among drug dealers and users  that they wouldn't do certain 
things in front of  children or elderly people, and there was a basic 
respect underlying it all. Once crack hit, the rules  went out the 
window. They'd do anything in front of  anyone.

"Crack made people very aggressive, and very desperate.  Addicts got 
violent, and dealers knew the addicts were  agitated and that put 
them on edge -- and before you  know it people are shooting people 
dead over crack,  holding up stores at gunpoint and stealing from 
their mothers. It was out of control."

Crack cocaine ushered in an era of younger drug  dealers, Edwards 
said. Dealers used to be a bit older  -- not typically teenagers -- 
and the drug-dealing  business in Pittsburgh was well-controlled from 
within,  Hairston said.

Crack "opened up the game to anyone" because the drug  was so cheap 
- -- a rock can sell for $5 and provide a  high of about 9 minutes -- 
and easily made, Hairston  said. A stamp bag of heroin costs about 
$15 and provides a high for hours. Boundaries and drug  territories 
were up for grabs because crack was moving  so rapidly across the 
city and the demand was so high,  Hairston said.

"Before you know it, we're pulling crack dealers out of  middle 
schools," Edwards said.

Lethal combination

It would be a few years before gangs began playing a  stronger role 
in organizing and controlling the crack  cocaine market in Pittsburgh.

By 1993, Allegheny County had a record 118 homicides,  83 of them in 
Pittsburgh. That year, the lethal  combination of crack cocaine and 
street gangs became a  fact of life in the city's predominantly black 
and poor  neighborhoods.

Edwards recalled a 14-year-old crack dealer he arrested  in the late 
'80s in a now-defunct West End housing  project whose mother was 
strung out on the drug. The  teenager was responsible for caring for 
several younger  siblings, who were in a home with no food in the refrigerator.

"Crack started to destroy entire generations," Edwards  said. "The 
mama was doing it and started making her  sons sell it to feed her 
habit, and no one is caring  for the younger kids at all. But they're 
watching all  this and learning, and they think this is normal  behavior.

"So they grew up to do the same thing, and the cycle  was born. We 
have crack addicts today who are  grandparents doing it right 
alongside their teenage  grandkids."

In many ways, Pittsburgh in the late 1980s was ripe for  crack to 
take hold. The economy was depressed, as steel  mills closed and 
people found themselves out of work,  Harper said. The job market was 
changing; many people  who came from generations of mill workers or 
other  skilled manual labor jobs found themselves  unemployable, and 
many became depressed, he said.

That combination is, in many ways, the perfect breeding  ground for 
drug addiction.

"When things in a person's life are that low and  they're depressed, 
if they tend toward addictive  behaviors they might reach for drugs 
or alcohol to help  them escape," Capretto said.

In the late 1980s, people were fleeing the city for the  suburbs, 
leaving empty homes behind. Older people died  or moved and left 
their homes to adult children, some  of whom became addicted to crack 
and turned the homes  into crack houses.

"Suddenly, there were entire stretches of streets in  neighborhoods 
with abandoned and dilapidated homes that  were being taken over by 
crack addicts," Harper said.  "And the good folks who still lived 
there ended up  leaving, because they didn't want to live next to 
that,  but they couldn't sell their homes because no one else  wanted 
to live next to that either.

"So the vacant homes piled up and the businesses  boarded up and 
moved, and the destruction began."

There continues to be no solid profile of a typical  crack user.

Another police informant, who first picked up crack in  the early 
1990s when his wife left him and took their  young son, is educated, 
holds a good job and has a nice  home. He's not gaunt or sickly 
looking and doesn't  resemble the stereotypical image of a skinny, 
jittery  crack addict.

And he has a personal code by which he abides: He  smokes crack only 
on weekends.

"I'm pretty disciplined about it," said Bill, who  agreed to talk 
only if his last name was withheld.  "Sometimes I even put it down 
and walk away from it for  a week or two, because I know if I don't, 
I'll lose my  job or be dead from it.

"But I always come back to it. Crack has a hold on me,  and it won't 
let go. Don't ever even pick up crack and  try it. If you do, forget 
it -- you're done. All of the  chapters of the rest of your life are 
written by crack.  You'll never get back to where you were."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom