CRACK COCAINE RESURGENCE GNAWS AT CITY

Crack cocaine may have dropped from mainstream awareness after
dominating headlines in the early 1990s, but it never left the
Brackenridge Hospital emergency room.

"I have a guy sitting here right now who did a bunch of crack last
night. He's like a caged animal," Dr. Alan Hopkins said Friday
morning. Police had found the man wandering in a drug-induced stupor.

"We have him handcuffed to the bed," Hopkins said, pausing as a nurse
briefed him on another hospital arrival. "I just had a patient come
back with kidney damage from doing crack cocaine."

Hopkins was not surprised.

"I started here at 6 a.m. It's now 10:25 a.m. and I've seen about four
patients that admit to doing cocaine, and two of those admit to doing
crack cocaine," he said. "It's a typical day."

The rest of Central Texas was reminded of the powerful drug's staying
power last week when Austin police announced the largest crack seizure
in the city's history.

Inside an upscale North Austin apartment complex, detectives say they
found suspected drug ringleader Rudolph Nikeia Hunter III using three
microwave ovens to cook powdered cocaine into crack. The February raid
netted six arrests and more than 5 pounds of crack and 9 pounds of
powder cocaine.

Hunter, who police say committed suicide in his jail cell, is believed
to have been the leader of a drug operation that law officers estimate
sold from $1.5 million to $3.5 million in crack each week to thousands
of drug users from Round Rock to South Austin.

With that kind of customer base, it is only a matter of time before
Hunter is replaced -- if it hasn't happened already, said Detective
Richard Burns, an Austin undercover narcotics officer. "Crack addicts
are everywhere. You'll see them on Sixth Street; you'll see them on
Guadalupe; you'll see them in East Austin; you'll see them in North
Austin," said Burns, a 10-year narcotics veteran.

Heroin challenged crack's status as the illegal drug most likely to
drive addicts into treatment in the late 1990s. But in the past few
years, crack resumed its status as the most destructive narcotic in
Travis County, said Jane Maxwell, chief researcher for the Texas
Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

And unlike alcohol or other drugs that slowly destroy lives, crack has
a cruel flair for quickly bringing addicts to their knees.

"I was married. I had a home and had a decent job," said Sheila, a
recovering crack addict who asked that only her first name be used.
"Then I used that drug for about three years -- lost everything I had.
I've got a daughter, lost her. Lost all my possessions, wound up on
the street prostituting, stealing, just about anything I could do to
get money to get the drugs."

Crack sells for $10 to $20 a rock and produces an intense but
short-lived high when smoked. Addiction sets in quickly and is
exceptionally powerful, said Reid Minot, a nurse psychotherapist at
Seton Shoal Creek Hospital. He estimates that the center treated 250
crack addicts last year.

"Crack . . . produces a rather intense depression as it wears off. So
people have an immense need for more. The binges are much more intense
than any other drug," Minot said.

Getting more crack becomes a life-consuming task for the addicted,
Burns said.

"They smoke up everything they get. If I just got paid Thursday or
Friday, I go out and buy a rock, and I binge. I burn up my whole
paycheck that night or the next day, and then I'll start taking stuff
to the pawn shop and pawning them for a $20 rock, taking my roommate's
stuff or my relatives' property or anything I can get my hands on,"
Burns said. "All you can think about is getting that next rock."

A decade ago, crack was the scourge of low-income African American
communities and rarely found its way to the suburbs. Not anymore, Burns said.

Dealers have turned to new communities attracted by the drug's cheap
price and accessibility, he said.

"It doesn't matter what background you come from. Once you start on
it, it takes you down," Burns said. "It doesn't matter if you're an
affluent lawyer from West Lake or if you're an unemployed person on
the east side."

Each year, Anglos make up a larger portion of the crack-addicted
population, said Maxwell.

"Perhaps a lot of African American kids saw what was going on with
crack in their neighborhoods and wouldn't use it," Maxwell said. "Now
we have drug dealers marketing to Anglo and Hispanic kids who haven't
really seen the deleterious effects of crack."

In 1998, white Travis County residents accounted for 32 percent of the
685 crack users who sought treatment in publicly financed centers. In
one year, that number rose to 37 percent, while black residents fell
from 56 percent to 52 percent of patients, Maxwell said.

The proportion of Hispanics in treatment centers dropped slightly to
11 percent in 1999.

Still, African Americans make up a disproportionate number of crack
users, and Maxwell fears for the future.

"I'm concerned that perhaps we'll start seeing younger African
Americans who didn't really see the full extent of the first epidemic
in the mid-'90s try using crack," she said.

Charles Thibodeaux, a drug counselor for eight years, sees crack
infiltrating the city's Hispanic community and crack houses sprouting
in South Austin's Hispanic neighborhoods.

"When it first came about, crack was like a real disgrace in the
Hispanic community. It was almost unheard of that an Hispanic would
use crack," he said. "With the new generation of folks, the gang
bangers, coming up, they want to step out of the cultural parameters
of what is and isn't OK."

Thibodeaux is a supervisor for Community AIDS Resources and Education.
Just last week, the group opened a free counseling center for crack
addicts at 1209 Chicon St.

For Thibodeaux, a typical day consists of meeting crack users to show
them how to avoid contracting AIDS and discuss other pitfalls
associated with the sex-for-drugs culture.

While Thibodeaux toils to keep crack addicts from further harming
themselves, Burns and other police officers struggle to keep the drug
in check.

Crack houses are regularly raided, and shutting down large drug
networks can disrupt distribution, but neither offers a long-term solution.

"The problem is the city's too large and our narcotics unit is too
small to maintain that type of enforcement throughout the entire city.
They just start back up in another neighborhood," Burns said.

"You put out one fire, and another one starts someplace else. We're
losing the war."