SMOKING 'SHERMS' TO GET HIGH OFTEN LEADS TO PARANOIA, VIOLENCE

SEATTLE -- They come disguised as ordinary brown cigarettes, or as sloppy
marijuana joints stained brown from their plunge into noxious liquid meant
for preserving human bodies for burial.

Doctors and cops say users smoke "Sherms" because they are a cheap trip, an
accessible method of feeling omniscient, omnipowerful or just plain removed
from reality.

They also say smoking Sherms can turn a person violent and paranoid.

Doctors disagree on whether Sherms are a unique form of formaldehyde-
soaked smokes, or simply a newer name for a decades-old way to take PCP
(phencyclidine hydrochloride). Either way, a Sherm-smoking man's deadly
rampage in Seattle this week is far from the first, and highlights an
ongoing problem with the drug.

"Why anyone would want to take that drug, I don't know, because it doesn't
really make you high, it gives you a really bum trip," said Lawrence
Halpern, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of
Washington.

"A lot of people say they think it's fun. It's not fun. It makes people do
things they regret later, when they're being put to death or locked up in
jail for life."

The term "Sherm" comes from a brand of cigarettes, Nat Sherman, which have
brown paper that can disguise the fact that cigarettes have been dipped. In
other parts of the country, names for the laced cigarettes vary. They are
also called "wetstick" or "smoking wet," though users have to allow the
cigarettes to dry before lighting up.

Users have been dipping cigarettes and marijuana into PCP solutions for
decades, Halpern said.

Within the past 10 years or so, he said, users discovered that
formaldehyde, commonly found in embalming fluid, was good for dissolving
PCP for dipping.

Cops soon started learning the term "Sherm" in connection with violence.

In 1994 in Tacoma, Wash., police tied a string of slayings to Sherm
smoking, including an execution-style triple murder by a man who police
said was paranoid from days of smoking Sherms. Then in 1997, a Tacoma man
shot and killed an elderly man on a bus, then later testified that he had
been smoking Sherms and thought rap-music lyrics ordered him to kill people.

Seattle police say the drug is out on the street and that popular rap
recordings sometimes mention Sherms in the lyrics.

"Our common understanding is that 'Sherms' and 'embalming fluid' are just
slang terms for PCP, and it carries all the side effects of PCP," said
Capt. Jim Pryor, who heads Seattle's narcotics squad.

Michael Copass, director of emergency services at Harborview Medical
Center, said users aren't getting high from PCP but simply from the mix of
chemicals in embalming fluid. Regardless, the effects are relatively the
same. People take the drug for a "Superman" effect, he said, but often end
up having extreme trouble breathing or launch into incapacitating paranoia.