COCAINE RETURNS TO WALL STREET

ADDICTION: Lawrence Kudlow was earning almost $1 million a year as a senior
Wall Street economist when he first started snorting cocaine. Young - he
was 25 when he landed a top economic post - loaded and successful, the
former adviser to president Ronald Reagan said he felt "indestructible".

But by 1994, a decade of cocaine abuse had taken its toll. "Handling large
sums of money can sometimes mislead people into thinking that they are
powerful," he says now. "They are not." Kudlow lost his job as the chief
economist of investment bank Bear Stearns after missing one too many client
meetings. Faced with a divorce threat from his wife and mounting debts, he
underwent a five-month rehab programme in 1995 and became a devout
Christian. Six years after kicking the habit, Kudlow, now 53, is back on
Wall Street in a prominent position. So, however, is cocaine.

Last month, it was reported that Marc Weill, son of one of the world's most
powerful financiers, had left his $2 million-a-year job as the investment
chief of Citigroup because of a cocaine addiction. The firm, which is run
by Weill's father, Sandy, and is the most profitable financial services
company on the planet, has refused to talk about his departure, but reports
have surfaced of the 44-year-old behaving erratically as the head of the
group's $113bn investment portfolio. According to the Wall Street Journal,
the father of two, who was known for his 12hour working days, had been
falling asleep during high-level meetings. Last week, his ex-wife admitted
he was being treated for addiction. Weill has refused to comment.

He is the highest profile Wall Street figure to fall due to alleged cocaine
addiction in recent years, but insiders say such high-profile dependency is
far from unusual. Other Wall Street firms have been hit by allegations of
endemic drug use in the past few months; in one case, a woman who had
jointly managed the trading desk of a small brokerage firm with her husband
accused the company of using drugs to win business. Her estranged husband's
$500-a-day cocaine habit had been condoned for three years by the firm, the
woman said, because it helped win business from those willing to take
sweeteners in powder form.

After almost a decade of unparalleled economic growth, the boom times are
back on Wall Street. Cash tills are ringing, furs have returned to the
glossy magazines and cocaine, the party drug of the 1980s, is back in
fashion among the moneyed classes. Although statistics about drug use are
difficult to come by, anecdotal evidence suggests that cocaine use on the
trading floor is returning to levels unseen since the days of Gordon Gecko.

Cocaine supplies in general have shot up in the past five years, coinciding
with a halving in price to about $30 a gramme. The most recent National
Household Survey found that 10 per cent of the wealthiest members of
society - those earning more than $75,000 a year - admitted to using
illegal drugs.

It is not difficult to appreciate the appeal of cocaine to hardbitten Wall
Street execs. The drug, which sends the blood racing around the central
nervous system, was described as "better than taking a four-hour nap" by
one foreign exchange trader.

Dr Arnold Washton, a Manhattan-based addiction specialist who set up the
US's first cocaine hotline in 1982, believes the raging bull market of the
past two years has sparked the latest boom. Use of the drug went
"underground" after it claimed its first wave of high-profile victims at
the end of the 1980s, says Washton.

"It was almost treated as passe for a while," he says, "but now there is a
resurgence. There's a new crop of young, ambitious professionals who find
this drug suitable. It fits right in with the tenor of the times." About
one-third of his clients work in senior Wall Street jobs and use the drug
to feel more "energetic, powerful, sexy and on top of the world".

Lawrence Kudlow's rehabilitation appears to be complete, after being
appointed as the chief economist at ING Barings earlier this year. But with
some observers speculating that Weill's career may be finished, Kudlow
advises caution to those seduced by belief in their own invincibility. "I
have never blamed Wall Street," he says. "It's an attitude, not the
pressure. People believe they can turn it on and turn it off and, sooner or
later, they realise that they can't."