KILLER DRUGS

Is PCP Guilty of Homicide?

"Everything people used to say about marijuana is true of angel dust."
So claimed Robert DuPont, director of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, in 1977.

DuPont's comment is worth revisiting now that Washington, D.C.'s
police chief is citing "angel dust"--the veterinary anesthetic
phencyclidine (PCP)--as an explanation for his city's rising homicide
rate. End-of-the-year figures show that homicides in D.C. jumped 12
percent between 2001 and 2002, and Police Chief Charles Ramsey says
increased PCP use is one reason.

"It's really alarming," Ramsey told The Washington Times in December.
"We are seeing PCP use on the rise, and when you couple that with the
number of weapons on the streets, we are seeing an increased number of
homicides."

Robert DuPont's 1977 warning about PCP suggests one reason to be
skeptical of this theory: Back in the 1920s and '30s, police spoke
just as confidently about a link between marijuana and violence. The
Federal Bureau of Narcotics portrayed marijuana as "the killer drug,"
giving men "the lust to kill, unreasonably and without motive."

One of the first such reports came from a Texas police captain who
claimed habitual marijuana users "become very violent, especially when
they become angry, and will attack an officer even if a gun is drawn."
He added that they "seem to have no fear," are "insensible to pain,"
and display "abnormal strength," so that "it will take several men to
handle one man."

This description is eerily similar to contemporary stories about PCP
users, whose rage and superhuman strength are said to resemble those
of the Incredible Hulk. Of course, the fact that the authorities were
wrong about marijuana does not mean they are wrong about PCP. But a
careful examination of the evidence provides little support for PCP's
reputation as a Dr. Jekyll potion that unleashes the monster within.

In a 1988 review of 350 journal articles on PCP in humans, the
psychiatrist Martin Brecher and his colleagues noted that high doses
of PCP can produce "severe agitation and hyperactivity," along with
"cognitive disorganization, disorientation, hallucinations, and
paranoia." Combined with the drug's anesthetic effect, which makes
users less sensitive to pain and therefore harder to restrain, such
acute reactions have contributed to PCP's fearsome image.

Yet in their search of the literature, Brecher and his co-authors
found only three documented cases in which people under the influence
of PCP alone had committed acts of violence. They also noted that
between 1959 and 1965, when PCP was tested as a human anesthetic, it
was given to hundreds of patients, but "not a single case of violence
was reported."

Brecher and his colleagues concluded that "PCP does not live up to its
reputation as a violence-inducing drug." That does not mean PCP users
are never violent. But when they are, their behavior cannot be
understood as a straightforward effect of the drug.

"Research on the nexus between substance use and aggression," notes
the criminologist Jeffrey Fagan, "consistently has found a complex
relation, mediated by the type of substance and its psychoactive
effects, personality factors and the expected effects of substances,
situational factors in the immediate settings where substances are
used, and sociocultural factors that channel the arousal effects of
substances into behaviors that may include aggression." The
pharmacologist John P. Morgan and the sociologist Lynn Zimmer put it
this way: "No drug directly causes violence simply through its
pharmacological action."

This point is obvious when we consider alcohol, the drug that is most
strongly associated with violence. The fact that some people get into
fights after drinking does not mean alcohol makes them behave that
way. Variations in responses to alcohol across individuals, cultures,
and situations show that drinking does not necessarily lead to bloodshed.

Another complication is that drug prohibition creates a black market
in which disputes are resolved through violence. An analysis of New
York City homicides committed in 1988 and identified as
"crack-related" found that 85 percent grew out of black-market
disputes. Only one homicide out of 118 involved a perpetrator who was
high on crack.

Such findings put crime statistics in a different light. "In cases
where we know or suspect a motive," reports a D.C. police spokesman,
"over one-third of the killings are drug-related." If so, that is an
indictment of the drug laws, not PCP. The Saint Valentine's Day
Massacre could be called "alcohol-related," but not because Al
Capone's thugs were drunk.