Choose Your Poison

By Jill Smolowe

In New York City's Spanish Harlem, the highs come cheap. To create a "blunt," teenagers slice open a cigar and mix the tobacco with marijuana. To enhance the hit, they fashion "B-40s" by dipping the cigar in malt liquor. In Atlanta, police observed 100 teenagers and young adults at a rave party in an abandoned house -- the rage among middle-class youths everywhere with money to burn -- and their rich assortment of hooch: pot, uppers, downers, heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy, a powerful amphetamine. In Los Angeles, Hispanic gangs chill out by dipping their cigarettes in PCP (phencyclidine, an animal tranquilizer), while black gangs still favor rock cocaine. Some of the city's Iranians go in for smoking heroin, known as "chasing the tiger," while Arabs settled in Detroit prefer khat, which gives an amphetamine-like high and is also the drug of choice in Somalia.

The high times may be a changin', but America's drug scene is as frightening as ever. Last week the University of Michigan released a survey showing a rise in illicit drug use by American college students, with the most significant increase involving hallucinogens like LSD. Meanwhile a canvas of narcotics experts across the country indicated that while drug fashions vary from region to region and class to class, crack use is generally holding steady and heroin and marijuana are on the rise. Junior high and high school students surveyed by the government report a greater availability of most serious drugs. Law officials and treatment specialists on the front lines of the drug war report that the problem transcends both income and racial differences. "When it comes to drugs, there is a complete democracy," says Clark Carr, executive director of Narconon Professional Center in North Hollywood, California.

The government paints a much brighter picture. According to the 1992 Household Survey on Drug Abuse, released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services, the nationwide pattern of drug abuse is in decline. The study shows an 11% dip in illicit drug use by Americans 12 years or older, from 12.8 million in 1991 to 11.4 million in 1992. The drop is pronounced in all age groups except those 35 and over, who use drugs at a rate comparable to 1979 levels. Yet the number of hard-core abusers remains unchanged. And a smorgasbord of nouvelle intoxicants is being served up to a new generation of users.

The frenetic '80s infatuation with stimulants has become the mellower '90s flirtation with depressants. Heroin, which has a calming effect, is gaining on crack, which produces high agitation. Some drug experts sense a sociological sea change. "It's really relevant that in the '80s the drug of choice was one that the second you did it, you wanted more," says Carlo McCormick, an editor at a culture and fashion monthly who was the host of LSD parties in New York City in the '80s. "At this point with the current crop of drugs, you're set for the night." Others have a wider perspective. "If you look historically at a large population that has been using a stimulant like cocaine," says James Nielsen, a 26-year veteran with the Drug Enforcement Administration, "they will then go on to a depressant like heroin."

Ironically, the heroin surge also reflects a new health consciousness on the part of drug abusers. Youthful offenders, scared off by the devastation of crack, are dabbling in heroin instead, while chronic crack addicts are changing over to heroin because of its mellower high and cheaper cost. Among both groups, fear of HIV transmission has made snorting, rather than injection, the preferred method of ingestion. "The needle is out, man," says Stephan ("Boobie") Gaston, 40, of East Harlem, a 26-year abuser. "All they're doing is sniffing." Even so, the risks remain high. Heroin-related incidents jumped from 10,300 during a three-month period in 1991 to 13,400 during a comparable period in 1992, according to a Federal Drug Abuse Warning Network survey of hospital emergency rooms. Heroin-treatment admissions have also increased over the past year.

The turn toward heroin is coupled with a sharp recognition among youthful abusers of the dangers of crack. Anthony M., 13, who is detoxifying from a marijuana habit at the Daytop Village Bronx Outreach Center in New York City, estimates that 20 or so of his 200 classmates use heroin or other drugs, but among them, only one goes in for crack. "That kid wanted others to do it too," he says, "but the other kids were like, 'Nah,' because some of the kids, their parents had died because of crack."

Other hard-learned lessons seem not to affect young people today. LSD use among high school seniors reached its highest level last year since 1983, according to an annual study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. In the rave clubs of Los Angeles, $2 to $5 buys a teenager a 10-to-12-hour LSD high. "LSD may be a prime example of generational forgetting," says Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator for the study. "Today's youngsters don't hear what an earlier generation heard -- that LSD may cause bad trips, flashbacks, schizophrenia, brain damage, chromosomal damage and so on."

Marijuana, usually the first illegal drug sampled by eventual hard-core abusers, is also back in vogue. Of the 11.4 million Americans who admitted to using drugs within a month of the 1992 Household Survey, 55% referred solely to pot; an additional 19% abused marijuana in combination with other drugs. "Cannabis is the drug that teaches our kids what other drugs are all about," says Charlie Stowell, the DEA's cannabis coordinator in California. He says today's marijuana is considerably more potent and expensive than the pot of the '60s because the amount of THC -- the ingredient that provides the high -- has risen from 2% or 3% to 12%.

The '90s has also ushered in some drug novelties. Since the turn of the decade, gamma hydroxy butyrate, known as GHB, has been used illegally in the body-building community to reduce fat. Recently, however, youths have begun to abuse the drug to achieve a trancelike state. In New York City kids concoct a "Max" cocktail by dissolving GHB in water, then mixing in amphetamines. A different mix resulted in several overdoses in the Atlanta area in the past few months. Manhattan's hard-core sex community has also turned on to "Special K," or Cat Valium, an anesthetic that numbs the body.

The Administration appears to be pursuing several drug strategies simultaneously. The President has asked for a 7% rise in the budget for law enforcement as well as $13 billion for drug-control programs, an increase of $804 million over the current year. Last month Lee Brown, the Administration's drug czar, told a Senate subcommittee that the drug-control programs would now emphasize "demand-reduction programs" would now emphasize young people. Attorney General Janet Reno has also adopted a high profile on drugs, campaigning for a "national agenda for children" that would attack the root causes of drug abuse and violence.

Meanwhile the daily challenge of containing the drug epidemic falls largely to local cops and DEA field offices. Ingenuity is the name of the game. In California, where 19% of the state's marijuana is grown indoors to evade detection, the DEA tracks purchases of illicit equipment, such as high- pressure sodium lights, to pick up the trail of growers. Minneapolis police have grown more sophisticated in tracking crack dealers who no longer keep cars, residences or bank accounts in their own names. "We've begun using financial records and become more knowledgeable in accounting and the flow of money," says Lieut. Bernie Bottema, supervisor of the city's narcotics unit. "We've had to rise to the level of our competition." It appears that level is not going to drop off anytime soon.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/ Washington, Massimo Calabresi/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles