Street-Wise

Last Spring, a traveling carnival came to Kansas City, Missouri. The side show featured an unusual exhibit. An 18-year-old boy--supposedly the victim of LSD--lay on the dirt floor of a cage, eating dead snakes. Outside, the barker lured crowds with the promise that they would see for themselves the effects of drugs on American youth. The ultimate bad trip.

The guy who came up with this gimmick believed that the exhibit would show many youngsters the true light and lead them from a path of drug abuse that might end in an institution.

Not long ago, this guy could have been the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency. His side show has a touch of that organization's former style. For years, the Government tried to frighten the populace into the proper attitude toward recreational drugs. Drug abuse was a sin like self-abuse. It would cause hair to grow on your palms and, yes, it could even make you blind. Remember the one about the four trippers who burned out the retinas of their eyes staring into the sun? The story, when it broke, made page one. The truth--that a director of a state program for the blind in Pennsylvania had made up the incident for fear of what might happen--probably didn't even make the local paper.

Of course, if you didn't believe those manufactured horror stories, then there were those who tried to convince you that your pleasure potions were actually poison. The whore with the heart of gold had venereal disease. Acid was cut with strychnine. Your grass might be laced with heroin and you could become an addict overnight. Don't touch that white stuff, you might be snorting Drano. Ironically, at the same time such stories were circulating, the DEA was hassling the first attempts by independent labs such as Pharm Chem to analyze samples of street drugs and publish newsletters on just what shit was going down in the streets.

Fortunately, clear heads have prevailed. The street labs are allowed to exist and their findings are published in underground newspapers. The drug consumers at last can get the straight dope about the chemicals they are putting into their bodies. In addition, drug crisis centers have begun to flourish. Street people can turn to their peers for help in chemical emergencies. They have learned how to treat themselves and pass that wisdom along. The experience has taught us several lessons. One of them is that some people shouldn't take drugs. The man who uses a gun to kill is a murderer; the gun is blameless. A hit-and-run driver is guilty; the car is innocent. That attitude should apply to recreational drugs, yet the new prohibitionists hold that when a violent person takes a drug and commits a crime, it is the drug that is to blame. Drugs are painted as villains. The world of street drugs is consequently filled with myths, misinformation, rip-offs and occasionally genuine danger. The message is still: Let the buyer beware, whether he is buying drugs or the legends surrounding them.

The three questions any person embarking on a recreational-drug trip should ask are: What is the purity of the drug? What is the dose? And what is the reality of the reputation that precedes the drug?

Marijuana

We know more about marijuana than we do about any other illegal drug, yet the myths abound. In the past few years, the marijuana opponents have pushed studies suggesting that marijuana leads to hard drugs, that marijuana causes birth defects, that marijuana impairs the body's immunity system, that marijuana lowers the body's testosterone level (i.e., sex drive), that marijuana wrecks your life by destroying your motivation. Each of these claims has been contradicted by less-publicized follow-up studies, so the new prohibitionists have had to call up new studies with which to treat Congressmen fearing an attack of rationality. In his forward to Marihuana and Health, the Sixth Annual Report to the U. S. Congress, Robert L. Dupont came up with a new risk: "Is marijuana use safe? We can offer a simplistic, but unequivocal, 'No.' There is good evidence that being 'high'--intoxicated by marijuana--impairs responses ranging from driving to intellectual and interpersonal functioning. . . . We now know that marijuana intoxication poses a significant threat to highway safety in much the same way that alcohol does."

The evidence? In a study of drivers involved in fatal accidents in the Boston area, doctors found a higher number of marijuana smokers than statistical probability had led them to expect. In a California study, police found that 22 percent of the drivers pulled over for "impaired driving" had marijuana in their blood.

The study is not exactly conclusive. The term impaired driving was not defined. For some law-enforcement officials, long hair is still a sign of impaired driving, criminal intent, etc. (There are contradictory studies that show driving after smoking a low dose of marijuana is far less dangerous than driving after drinking.) Whatever the evidence, it does not justify the current legal penalties for marijuana use. Obviously, some people shouldn't drive after using marijuana. They should not be locked up. Let them stay at home, blissed out inside their headphones.

Dupont was willing to admit that regular weed was probably harmless; in its place, he created a new specter of superweed: "To date, most American marijuana users smoke relatively low-potency material and only occasionally. The apparently benign picture presented by that type of use--aside from possible hazards related to functioning while intoxicated, few other specific health hazards have been definitively identified--may change if more frequent use of stronger materials becomes common. If laboratory finding of possible effects of the body's immune response, endocrinological functioning and cell metabolism prove to have serious clinical implication, marijuana's persistence in the body may make even episodic use risky."

Superweed? Well, the fact is that Americans have been smoking superweed for several years now. In the past decade, the varieties and potencies of Cannabis products have become vastly more complicated. Ten years ago, you could buy simple marijuana--with between one half and two percent active ingredient. Hashish, which was harder to obtain, more costly and a son of a bitch to keep burning, contained as much as eight percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).

Today, you can still find some of the old commercial-grade marijuana at prices from $10 to $20 an ounce. The smoke of choice comes from Colombia, costs from $40 to $70 an ounce and contains from four to seven percent THC. That potency level is matched by some high-quality, industrial-strength Mexican grass (such as Oaxacan). Of course, since the paraquat scare, no dealer will sell you "Mexican" grass. It's all Colombian.

But the story does not stop there: Scientific farming and new trade routes (continued on page 220) Street-Wise (continued from page 168) to the East have resulted in Thai sticks, which sell for $15 to $25 apiece (or $225 to $690 an ounce). Thai sticks are essentially a marketing gimmick. Better grass is grown in Hawaii (Maui Wowie, Kona Gold, etc.). These marijuanas may contain as much as 20 percent THC and typically check in at 10 to 12 percent. The price ranges from $160 to $350 an ounce--but on a dollar-per-milligram basis, they are probably worth the cost, especially in states that have decriminalized marijuana. A pound of cheaper commercial-grade grass or a few grams of hash might land you in jail for a year, but a very expensive ounce of supergrass, with the same amount of active ingredient, would get you off with a small fine.

The most potent form of THC comes in hash oil (as high as 60 percent), which is made from grass, not hash. It costs from $25 to $40 per gram. If someone tries to sell you pure THC, forget it. More likely than not, it's PCP. Or worse.

What are the dangers of overuse, of supergrass? Available studies from Costa Rica and Jamaica--where subjects smoked an average of about ten joints a day, with some persons smoking up to 80 joints daily on occasion--revealed no differences from a control group of non-smokers.

Cocaine

A couple of hits of cocaine make me feel like a new man. The only problem was the first thing the new man wanted was a couple of hits of cocaine.

--George Carlin

Cocaine is fast becoming the recreational drug of choice. It is also a favorite drug of people who generate myths about drugs. A week doesn't go by that some heinous coke pusher is busted on Baretta, Starsky and Hutch or Charlie's Angels. Some of the latest antidrug propaganda rivals that of the turn of the century, when cocaine first got its bad name. Researcher Robert Peterson points out that no less a venerable organ than The New York Times reported at that time that "cocaine resulted in mass murders by 'crazed [black] cocaine takers' whose marksmanship was markedly improved by the drug. . . . The drug was accused of being a 'potent incentive in driving the humbler Negroes all over the country to abnormal crimes. . . .' Most attacks upon white women of the South . . . are the direct result of coke-crazed Negro brain."

Now that coke has become as pure as the white middle class can afford to buy, the stories have become somewhat more subdued. Most attacks upon white women are by their boyfriends. One reason may be that in the amounts taken by most Americans, coke is relatively benign. It doesn't freak you out. You don't get sick. It's very difficult to O.D. Not only are there no adverse reactions, there are few reactions at all, making it the perfect drug for people who are afraid of drugs. In one study of recreational users, the most common description of the effect of cocaine was "subtle." The reason the drug is so subtle is that most people take amounts too small to produce clinical effects.

According to lab reports, the average purity of street cocaine these days is between 53 and 63 percent. It is cut with a variety of neutral substances (mannitol, lactose) or active substances (lidocaine and procaine--related anesthetics that produce a numbing sensation). The product sells for between $80 and $150 per gram. Add to that an average of $30 spent on coke paraphernalia--gold-plated razor blades, solid-gold straws, silver spoons, silver-plated vials, mirrors, scales, test kits, etc. Coke spoons hold an average of five to ten milligrams of coke. The average line of coke is about an eighth of an inch wide by one inch long and contains approximately 25 mg. of cocaine if pure or 14.5 mg. if street cut. If you snort 25 mg. of pure coke, you will experience minimal changes in heart rate and blood pressure. Significant euphoria is produced by doses of from 13 to 130 mg.

Without doubt, the coke ritual--the purchase, the cutting into lines with a razor blade, the snorting through rolled-up $100 bills--has become the new American tea ceremony. It is performed in a social setting with trusted friends. It is often accompanied by wine or marijuana use. The pure financial commitment to having a good time may produce the desired reaction. You pay for the placebo effect--the experience that comes from thinking you have taken something, whether you have or not.

The Government's chief concern with cocaine is its incredible potential for abuse. Cocaine is temptation incarnate. Dupont says: "We also know that cocaine is among the most powerfully reinforcing of all abused drugs. Although not physically addictive in the sense that the opiates are, there is good evidence that the desire to continue use when available is remarkably strong. The relatively benign picture presented by the occasional use of small quantities might be markedly altered were the single euphoric illicit dose now costing about ten dollars available at the licit cost of about ten cents."

Current research with humans suggests that were there an unlimited supply of cocaine, the body would take care of itself. White mice will self-administer cocaine until they die. Humans won't. Charles Schuster, a researcher at the University of Chicago, reports that there is a pattern similar to amphetamine abuse. "There have been descriptions in the literature of human speed freaks using amphetamines and cocaine. They take the drug at very high levels for three or four days, stop for a few days, then take it again."

The body crashes, burns, then recovers. Sometimes, so does your bank account. In the absence of any clearly defined danger, the new prohibitionists appear ready to try a new tactic. The folks at the National Institute on Drug Abuse are undertaking a two-year study to determine the feasibility of spraying coca plants with--you guessed it--paraquat. Way to go.

Speed

Toward the end of the Sixties, the Government and the counterculture co-operated in a campaign against amphetamine abuse. The message was: Speed Kills. A lot of folks, haunted by the image of a wired-to-the-gills, homicidal speed freak able to leap tall buildings at a single bound--top to bottom--turned away from uppers of any kind. Federal regulation cut down the number of prescriptions.

The result of this crackdown is that whereas a decade ago high-quality amphetamines could be purchased on the street for less than what they cost in a drugstore, today's speed freak is buying junk. According to lab reports, most of what is sold on the street as amphetamines is either caffeine or one of the decongestants that are labeled May Cause Difficulty With Sleep. These chemicals can be bought over the counter in a drugstore for about three cents to ten cents each--in potencies twice those of the street drugs, which cost about 20 cents per hit. Unless you get your speed from a doctor, don't bother.

Hallucinogens

According to NIDA figures, over 10,000,000 Americans have tried hallucinogens, with about 1,000,000 of them still involved in regular use. That's about the same number that formed the ranks of flower children at the height of the counterculture. For most, the drug of choice is LSD. Unlike other illegal drugs, the price of acid is about the same as it was ten years ago--from two and a half dollars to five dollars a hit. Before you praise the ethics of acid manufacturers, you should realize that the amount of acid in each dose has fallen from an average of 250 micrograms to less than 100 micrograms. The reduction in potency has the logical effect of greatly reducing the number of adverse effects. The drug today seems to be far more manageable. There are fewer bad trips (when was the last time you heard of someone trying to stop a train with his bare hands?)--and fewer cosmic trips (when was the last time someone you knew saw God?).

Despite all stories to the contrary, LSD does not contain and never has contained any strychnine or speed. While some older acid has degraded into more speedy by-products (such as iso-LSD) that cause stomach cramps, most of the negative effects of acid lie not in the drug but in the user. True, it is easier to say, "My acid had strychnine in it," than to say, "I can't handle my dope," but the latter is often the case.

Most hallucinogen users have dropped acid, not only because it is the most common one around but also because most, if not all, of the mescaline and psilocybin sold on the street is actually LSD. It is a simple operation to drop liquid acid onto a mushroom and up the price considerably. Mushroom-growing kits are offered for $15--$50 [see box on back of chart].

PCP

Angel dust. Elephant tranquilizer. White Cadillac. Dead on arrival. Tic. Rocket fuel. Krystal.

Name it and claim it. PCP is the up-and-comer, the down-and-outer of drugs today, slowly working its way to the top of the ten-most-wanted list. The horror stories that used to attach themselves to acid, speed, cocaine or marijuana are now riding like a monkey the back of the latest drug. Newspapers in need of a bit of investigative reporting regularly alarm parents with tales of drug madness among high school students. Sixty Minutes recently devoted 15--20 minutes to detailed PCP horror stories: the kid who nonchalantly murdered his parents with a rifle while under the effects of dust; a kid who seemed compelled to kill, like the drug-crazed berserkers of the Philippine wars. The police now approach a suspected PCP user as they would an armed and dangerous felon. In Los Angeles, an officer emptied his service revolver into a nude, unarmed dusthead who was walking aimlessly about his front yard. The officer claimed the man had assumed a martial-arts stance. More likely, he was just trying to cover his exposed parts. The police officer was cleared--the killing was justifiable, because the man was not a man but a temporary container for the dread chemical phencyclidine. Overkill. The policy of prohibition by fear takes its toll.

PCP is not a new drug. It first made its appearance in the late Sixties--usually as THC, angel dust or Peace Pill. The trip was not a particularly pleasant one--for the first hour, one experienced an anesthetic phase. A downer. The initial hallucinogenic period was often characterized by anxiety, panic and fear of death. That might give way to a two-to-six-hour high--but most heads preferred the ascending rush of acid. If the drug was used, it was used in low doses. If smoked slowly, you could pace yourself, get to the point of intoxication desired, then stop. There were few reports of violence associated with the drug.

The pattern of PCP use has changed in the Seventies. The drug is taken in larger doses, and by different routes, and by a different kind of head. The person who used to take barbiturates and heroin may now find his escape through the depressant effects of PCP. Users describe the first hour as an incredible way of "getting down." What follows is described as a mellow trip. For most users, PCP seems to be a compromise--it seems less dangerous than the heavier downs. You don't overdose, you just get wiped out. And sometimes an unstable person will take the drug and do something bizarre, violent and newsworthy. The atrocity will be attributed to the drug and not to the person.

As a result, some of the emergency facilities that are available to treat drug crises are afraid to aid the PCP user who gets in over his or her head. Expecting violence, they turn the cases over to the police, who have little or no training in such matters.

Overall, the PCP picture is grim. For what it's worth, the stuff you buy on the street for $60-$75 per gram is likely to be PCP. That is small consolation to one embarking on a high-risk excursion.

The Love Drugs

The search for an aphrodisiac continues unabated and, unfortunately, we must report that it continues to be unsuccessful. Three drugs are today being touted in this category and deserve mention, if only to put them in perspective.

The easiest to obtain is butyl nitrite. Almost identical to amyl nitrite, the butyl analog is available over the counter as a "room deodorant" in head and sex shops. Its attachment to sex comes in part from the fact that it is so easy to take prior to an orgasm, allowing you to get suddenly stoned prior to coming. It also has the effect of dilating smooth muscles, thus allowing easier anal penetration, giving it great popularity in the gay community. It is generally safe unless it leads to a blown blood vessel, in which case it can kill you. There has to be a better way.

Quaaludes, or Ludes, as they are affectionately known, work the same way that most so-called aphrodisiacs work: They reduce your inhibitions. If you are a strongly inhibited person, Ludes will greatly enhance your sex life. If you are uninhibited, the depressant effect of the drug will make you perform like a log. Their reputation was made in Ohio, the home of lots of inhibited people, and the myth spread far and wide. But they don't work as aphrodisiacs. And at the inflated price of three dollars to seven and a half dollars each, they have become a prime target for counterfeiters, who will substitute almost anything but generally give you Valium or Librium or both.

So on to MDA. This drug, sometimes called the love drug, is popular in esoteric circles that have access to it. While it appears all over the United States, it seems to be in short supply and yet is relatively inexpensive (usually under five dollars a hit). Surprisingly, most of what is sold as MDA is MDA, or its kissing cousin, MDM. MDA is an amphetamine-based drug similar in structure to mescaline. Most users report that it increases sensuality rather than actual sexual performance. Women, especially, report enjoying their mates' using the drug, saying it slows them down and lets them enjoy more tenderness. The drug has been listed in one major work on sex therapy as a possible aphrodisiac, but then, at one time, marijuana and LSD were listed that way. Nonetheless, it is probably the closest thing we have found to a true aphrodisiac.

The Future

In recent years, chemists have been coming up with new and interesting drugs at the rate of almost one a year. They have been assisted royally by anthropologists and botanists who have been identifying naturally occurring drugs used in other cultures. And the future seems to be more and more directed toward the organic substances.

Despite the difficulty being experienced now, more and more hallucinogenic mushrooms are being grown. The magic mushrooms will probably be the drug of choice for those who like the hallucinogens, as well as for some who would normally stay away from them. The frequency of these drugs on the street is already up and it can be expected to continue to rise.

Of course, as more and more people become aware of the ease with which marijuana of the highest quality can be grown, and especially when cultivation bills make growing it punishable by simple fines, home-grown high-potency marijuana will become extremely important on the drug scene. It will do so with a minimum of cost to the user and will make the American way of life, where one pays more for quality, stand on its head.

And, finally, while there is none now, we expect to see use as a drug of the leaves of the coca bush, from which cocaine is made. Coca can be grown in the United States and the leaves can be purchased in Colombia for almost less than marijuana. Properly prepared and chewed, they become a mild stimulant that can be used all day with few or no unpleasant side effects.

Perceived Dangers and Actual Use of Legal and Illegal Drugs

On March 2, 1978, Louis Harris and Associates released the findings of a nation-wide poll on drug use. They found that most Americans perceive prescription drugs such as pep pills, tranquilizers and painkillers as more dangerous than marijuana. Saccharine, which has been linked to cancer, is not considered as being particularly dangerous. Harris then projected the number of users based on 145,000,000 adults 18 years and older in the U. S. He found that perceived danger had a limiting effect on the number of users but that temptation far exceeds education. People know what they like, and take it, regardless of danger.