'SHERM' INFUSES MANY USERS WITH RAGING PARANOIA

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're 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.
Seattle police say 20-year-old Devon Jackson was on a Sherm binge before he
killed a man and a toddler in South Seattle on Monday and beat a 6-year-old
girl with his pistol. Jackson was shot and mortally wounded by police.

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, this week's deadly rampage by an
armed, Sherm-smoking man 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."

Both the Seattle police chief and friends of Jackson agreed he had been
smoking Sherms nonstop for days before he fatally shot his friend,
20-year-old Dante Coleman, then pistol-whipped 2-year-old Tre Vaugn Ford
Spruel and 6-year-old Samunique Wilson at a Rainier Beach triplex. Tre
Vaugn died. Samunique was still in serious condition at Harborview Medical
Center yesterday.

Police said they had no choice but to shoot Jackson after he fled the
apartment with his pistol in his hand and refused to surrender.

Although no toxicology tests have yet been returned on Jackson's blood,
police and doctors say his behavior is consistent with typical Sherm reactions.

"The worst-case scenario is you go bonkers and you kill people, and then
the cops get you," Halpern said.

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.

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

In 1994 in Tacoma, 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, Albert
Spears, shot and killed an elderly man on a bus, then later testified that
he'd been smoking Sherms and thought rap-music lyrics ordered him to kill
people.

Seattle police say they haven't seen an increase in Sherm use lately,
though they know the drug is out on the street and that popular rap
recordings sometimes mention Sherms in the lyrics.

"We run into it very infrequently," said Capt. Jim Pryor, who heads the
Police Department's narcotics squad. "Our common understanding is that
`Sherms' and `embalming fluid' are just slang terms for PCP, and it carries
all the side effects of PCP."

But Dr. Michael Copass, director of emergency services at Harborview
Medical Center, said the hospital treats someone for Sherm-related problems
every three days or so. And often, he said, users aren't getting high from
PCP but simply from the mix of chemicals in embalming fluid. And
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.

So the debate over whether Sherms have to contain PCP to be dangerous isn't
so much the issue, Copass said.

"It's a lethal drug,' he said. "It's a drug that shortens your life and
makes you do things you'd be horribly ashamed of if you were cognizant of it."