ROCK'S NOT DEAD: MEET THE CRACK YUPPIES

During a recent party at an exclusive Toronto country club, the
conversation drifted to cocaine, the hard drug of choice among Canada's
young jet set. The discussion among this group of privileged professionals
in their 20s and early 30s had a tone of ennui. They all seemed
well-acquainted, even a little bored, with the endless chain of little
white lines.

"Well, you know what's really interesting," one Prada-swathed princess
remarked with a secretive smile. The group leaned in. "Rock. I have friends
who carry it around in their handbags. I mean, personally, I'd be ashamed,
you know, to buy it. But it is amazing."

"Rock" -- crack cocaine -- has grown up. The drug that was associated with
urban flophouses and prostitution just a few years ago is attracting a more
upscale following. A recent report from Toronto outreach organization, The
Works, cited crack as the most popular street drug. The same study revealed
that crack cocaine has surpassed heroin as the substance of choice among
intravenous drug users. Seizures of cocaine were up tenfold in 1998 over
the previous year. And as powder cocaine becomes ever more socially
acceptable within Canada's high-end party scenes, experiments with blow's
more potent younger sister has become an inevitability for many
recreational users.

"It's not really a big deal," said one Toronto film-location scout and
occasional crack user. Holding a graduate degree in English from the
University of Toronto, this 33-year-old hardly fits the stereotype of the
strung-out basehead. He smoked his first bowl about a year ago when he and
some friends found themselves at an after-hours club looking for powder
cocaine. There wasn't any, so they bought rocks instead.

Since then, he said, he's indulged in a pipe a few times and would happily
do it again, although he "doesn't go out looking for it." Unlike powder
cocaine, he said, crack is portable and easier to consume, and the high it
delivers is much more immediate and intense.

"The big thing about crack is the ridiculous stereotype that goes along
with its users. You know, the crackhead, the crack whore," he laughed. "But
the truth is, I've been approached on the street in Toronto twice to buy
crack, and both times I was wearing a suit and tie."

Those who assume that crack use is restricted to urban centres should think
again. According to one fine dining restauranteur based in the posh theatre
centre of Stratford, Ont., the little white rocks are popular among many of
the town's otherwise upstanding citizens.

"A lot of people around here are into [crack]. It's much more widespread
than people want to believe, almost a casual kind of thing at this point,"
he said.

Hazel Drescher, an addiction counsellor at Bellwood Heath Services in
downtown Toronto, reported that in her experience, there are no class
distinctions to be made when it comes to crack cocaine addiction.

"Very often you think of a crack user as someone who has lost everything --
they are dirty, they have no job, they steal, live in a crack house, but
that's not reality. It's just the end of the line."

At her clinic, Drescher reported that she treats many upwardly mobile crack
addicts. "We have many lawyers, doctors and bankers in our program. When it
comes to who's going to use what, addiction knows no boundaries."

Chemically, crack cocaine is the base form of the cocaine hydrochloride. It
is made by "freebasing" -- regular powder cocaine is heated in a solution
of baking soda until the water evaporates. The base cocaine makes a
crackling sound when heated, thus the street name "crack". Once cooked,
freebase cocaine vaporizes at a very low temperature and can be easily
inhaled from a heated pipe.

According to users, crack cocaine delivers a lift completely outside the
natural realm of human experience. With the first hit, the user is said to
experience a euphoria so intense, it is often compared to a whole-body
orgasm. The drug triggers a powerful craving to recapture the initial
feeling even within minutes of the first high, though the intensity of
subsequent hits is inevitably diminished.

It's a familiar story to Ken Valliquette. At 48, the Newmarket-based
real-estate agent is an ex-crack addict who has been clean for nine years.
For Valliquette, what started off as recreational coke use in the 1970s
turned into a $3,500-a-week crack habit in the late eighties.

A restaurant owner and entrepreneur who winters in Barbados, Valliquette
was an upscale crackhead. He said he often went on three- or four-day
binges with doctors, lawyers and professional athletes. "People think that
only poor people or crazy people have problems with crack, and that's
complete b.s.," he said.

Valliquette explained that, for the regular powder-cocaine user, the leap
to crack is an easy one. While a gram of crack costs about the same as a
gram of cocaine (around $100 street value), base rocks generally go further
and give a much better high.

"Cocaine is crack, there is no difference," he pointed out. "And you're
much better off to smoke a joint of crack than to snort 10 lines of powder."

Still, the taboo surrounding crack persists, and for good reason. According
to Detective Rick Chase of Toronto's Downtown Drug Squad, committed crack
users run the risk of ending up on the streets, no matter how privileged
they start off.

"With serious crack addicts it's always, 'I useta.' As in, 'I usesta have a
job, I useta have a family, I useta have a house,' " he said. "If you're a
Bay Street junior executive using [crack] on the weekends, all I can say
is, we'll see you on the downtown streets looking like the rest of them in
a short period of time."