'QUIET EPIDEMIC' OF CODEINE USE TIED TO CITY'S UNDERGROUND RAP FORM

Donnell DeJean's drug of choice wasn't heroin or cocaine. Instead, his
daily habit consisted of 4 ounces of prescription-strength cough syrup
mixed with a 1-liter bottle of Big Red.

The codeine high, he recalls, was a mellow one, well-suited to his
laid-back personality. He often enhanced the sensation by listening to a CD
of hypnotic, slowed-down rap indigenous to his Houston hometown.

"You just be wanting to chill and relax when you're on syrup," DeJean, now
18, said recently while completing a second stint in rehabilitation at
Riverside Hospital. "Your body starts nodding off. You feel tired, but also
good.

"I don't have to be on it; I just prefer to be on it. I can't relate to
other drugs."

Last year, area police confiscated 125 gallons of illegal codeine. Each
year, they say, they encounter more abuse and more people coming to Houston
looking for "syrup." A substance abuse specialist at the hospital estimated
that four out of five of his patients have at least tried it. Authorities
as far east as Tennessee also reported an increase in this peculiar form of
drug abuse.

But everyone agrees that Houston is ground zero for this "quiet epidemic."

"It's a unique problem that started in this area," said agent Jerry Neil
Ellis of the Houston office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. " ... No
matter where it was coming from, all across the country, it was headed for
Houston. This is the hot spot."

"We did notice that Houston was a big syrup city," added Cynthia Glass of
the Memphis, Tenn., Alcohol and Drug Council, who noted a blitz of
experimentation that crossed all economic and ethnic lines in Memphis."Any
time rap stars are pushing their drug of choice, it's going to pique
curiosity, and youth are more apt to step into the unknown."

The connection to music is not insignificant. Over the past decade or so,
Houston has attained a national reputation in certain circles as home to an
underground form of rap known as "screw music" that features familiar songs
distorted into indiscernible tunes and lyrics that glorify the use of cough
syrup as an intoxicant.

In October, Houston's Dope House Records released the local-music anthology
Screwston Vol. II: Pink Soda. The cover art depicts a soda vending machine
that offers "Pink Sprite" and "Sippin Molases." Another CD cover features
an imposing rap singer pouring syrup from a Styrofoam cup over the Houston
skyline.

"We've been sipping syrup since at least '92 or '93," said Carlos Coy, a
local rap star known as South Park Mexican. "That's when screw (music)
started getting popular. The two kinda go together."

The Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse first noted the substance
abuse trend in 1996. A TCADA study three years later reported an increasing
prevalence and stated there was a lively street market for abusable cough
syrup in Houston.

"Codeine does not get the attention that ecstasy or heroin gets; it's just
not that sexy," said Dr. William Elwood, who headed the study. "It's much
more of a quiet epidemic."

Codeine, like heroin, acts as a sedative. In most people, it turns into
morphine when passed through the liver, according to epidemiologists.
Common side effects include drowsiness and confusion.

On the street, codeine syrup is called "down," "drank," "nod" or "lean."
But it's most commonly known as "syrup."

Syrup is funneled to illegal users primarily through bogus prescriptions,
unscrupulous pharmacists and physicians, and "doctor shopping," the
practice of making similar health complaints to different doctors in hopes
of receiving multiple prescriptions.

DeJean, who passed out when he first tried syrup on his 13th birthday, had
a daily habit by the time he was 16. He said the drug was never far away --
at most a 10-minute car ride in his Third Ward neighborhood.

He spent his most recent birthday sober, but only after the second round of
rehab.

"Codeine has sucked everybody in. It's got all of them," said Troy
Jefferson, program manager for child and adolescent services at Riverside.

"It's the in thing to do," added Sam Searcy of the Houston Police
Department's narcotics division. "People are coming from Louisiana to
Houston looking for it."

Large quantities have been confiscated from buses and trains. People have
tried to smuggle it across the border from Mexico, where up to 50 doses can
be bought without a prescription. On the illegal market, that would be
about 8 ounces.

Syrup is perceived as safer than other illegal drugs because it is a
manufactured product and, in Texas, possession of small quantities is only
a Class B misdemeanor, just above a traffic ticket. Users also know it is
relatively safe to have small amounts of syrup without fearing arrest.

"These dopers are aware of the fact that enforcement authorities are more
interested in finding dealers, whether a doctor or pharmacies," said DEA
agent Ellis.

He said two things have to be proved to make a criminal case against a
doctor: that a prescription was written for a nonlegitimate purpose and
that the doctor was acting outside the usual course of practice.

There are about a dozen active cases in the Houston area involving large
quantities of syrup.

Yet the underground market flourishes. A 2-ounce dose, or "deuce," can go
for $30.

Searcy, who has been working for more than 20 years as a Houston narcotics
officer, said syrup abuse has grown exponentially.

"The abuse is huge; it's almost like an epidemic," he said. "There's no end
to it."

In November 2000, Robert Earl Davis Jr., known as DJ Screw, who pioneered
screw music in the early 1990s, was found dead in the restroom of his
Commerce Park recording studio. He had died from a codeine overdose with
mixed drug intoxication, according to the Harris County Medical Examiner's
Office, which ruled the death accidental. There were toxic levels of
codeine in Davis' blood, along with the powerful psychedelic drug PCP.

"People aren't letting the fact that he died scare them at all," said
rapper Coy. "It didn't bother them enough to quit."

(Coy, however, said he is cutting back his usage to about twice a month.
"Every time I do it, I promise myself that I'm not going to do it anymore,"
he said.)

Davis' legacy is the slowed-down and distorted music he created that put
Houston on the rap map with a style of music to call its own. He would work
with just about any song, from the latest Ice Cube release to an old Phil
Collins tune.

Screw music sounds like a tape that's been played too many times, making
any artist sound like Barry White -- turning the highest falsetto into a
deep bass. It's also "chopped," which is like backing up parts of a song
and repeating them, making it sound like a scratched record that skips.

"Screw heads," as fans of the music are called, say the music sounds more
melodic and hypnotizing, enhancing every intonation and expression in the
lyrics.

Those who listen while high on codeine say the syrup amplifies the music.

"When you're on lean and you listen to screwed music, you get a different
feel," said Erik "Einstein" Tealer of Dope House Records. "When you're high
and listening to it, it sounds bugged out. It sounds better."

In many ways, the drug and the music have become synonymous.

Houston rapper Big Moe, one of the musicians to adopt DJ Screw's style,
titled his latest album City of Syrup. Its cover features purple liquid
oozing over the city's skyline.

Some of the lyrics of Big Moe's song Po' It Up, are "Smoking and leanin'.
Hatas plotting and schemin'. ... Who knows the feelin', how it feels to
lean, it's cough syrup or barre promenthazine, sticky green, and po' up an
8, an orange Sunkist, or a Welch's grape, sip the sweet taste."

"(Syrup use) has a major role in the music scene," Tealer said. "Any album
with the word syrup or any relation to codeine or pink cola is going to
sell major units.

"People are intrigued by that, and it's been popularized by artists in this
area."

Law enforcement authorities say syrup has migrated to other cities in Texas
and across the South. In fact, the most widely known song about syrup comes
from Memphis, where the rap group Three 6 Mafia had a hit single titled
Sippin On Syrup.

As evidence of this eastward expansion, DEA agent Michael Arpaio noted that
the street cost of prescription-strength cough syrup in Memphis has risen
from $25 an ounce a year ago to as much as $75 today.

"Obviously," he said, "that increase in price must mean a large increase in
demand."