STUDY CASTS A NEW LIGHT ON DRUG TRAFFIC

When it comes to getting busted by the police, crack cocaine is the riskiest
drug, because crack smokers tend to buy it outdoors, in their own
neighborhoods and from a variety of dealers, making them more conspicuous.
But powder cocaine can be bought more discreetly, often indoors from a
single dealer who caters to his regular customers.

Such insights into the drug trade highlight the federal government's first
study to compare illicit heroin and cocaine markets in six U.S. cities from
the consumer's perspective. The study, based on interviews with 2,056
arrested adults who tested positive for drugs, was released Friday by the
National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the Department of Justice.

The interviews, in Chicago, Portland, Ore., San Antonio, San Diego,
Washington and New York City's Manhattan, also underscore regional
differences in patterns of drug use.

In Manhattan, where the Police Department has cracked down on
quality-of-life misdemeanors as well as drug peddling, nearly two-thirds of
crack cocaine users and more than half of heroin users reported that police
activity stopped them from buying drugs at least once in the year before
their arrest.

But in Chicago, 16.7 percent of crack users and 18.8 percent of heroin users
said the police had frustrated such a transaction. Only 2.9 percent of crack
users and 16.7 percent of heroin users in Washington reported the same
failure.

Jeremy Travis, director of the Institute of Justice, described the latest
study as very important because, he said, ``it helps us understand
empirically rather than anecdotally the drug markets in our cities.''

In the United States, Travis said, ``There is no single drug problem; there
are many local drug problems.'' He observed, for example, that San Diego had
been hit hard by methamphetamine, a stimulant that hardly exists in New York
or Washington, where heroin and crack remain most popular.

Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House's Office of National Drug
Control Policy, which financed the study, said, ``This report hands a new
tool to drug treatment providers and police officers, two of the professions
which have to deal with drug abuse on a daily front-line basis.''

The six metropolitan areas were selected to study local drug markets because
they show the highest rate of heroin use, and substantial levels of cocaine
use, among 27 metropolitan areas in the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring
program run by the Institute of Justice. The program tracks drug use trends
by testing arrested criminal offenders. Travis said the program would be
expanded in the next few years to include 75 urban areas and some suburbs
and rural areas.

K. Jack Riley, the director of the monitoring program and the author of the
new study, said, ``One of the most interesting findings is that the arrested
drug population will sit down and talk to you about these things.'' He was
surprised, he said, that few respondents were worried about being tested for
drugs.

The arrested offenders answered questions about their drug-buying habits
after being promised confidentiality and assured that their admissions would
not be used against them. During the 45-minute interview, Riley said, they
were rewarded with soft drinks or candy.

In Manhattan, 22.5 percent of crack users interviewed said they lived in
public housing before their arrests, as against 7.4 percent in Washington
and 5.6 percent in Chicago. Only 8.5 percent of Manhattan crack users
reported living in a shelter, compared with 11.5 percent in Washington.

In balmier San Diego, 16 percent of crack users said they lived on the
street, as against 13 percent in Manhattan and 6.7 percent in Chicago.

And 35.5 percent of crack users interviewed in Manhattan identified their
main source of income as welfare and Social Security checks, as against 17.1
percent in Chicago and 18 percent in Washington.

More than half of the crack users arrested in Chicago and Washington said
they had full-or part-time jobs, compared with 26.7 percent in Manhattan.

Twenty percent of the women who consumed both heroin and powder cocaine said
they earned the bulk of their income from prostitution, twice the proportion
of all the other female drug users.

The survey suggested that one reason that more blacks than whites get
arrested for drugs is because they buy it outdoors in their own
neighborhoods. ``Whites and Hispanics, on the other hand, are more likely to
travel away from their neighborhoods to make their purchases and are more
likely to make them indoors,'' it said. ``As a result, drug transactions
conducted by blacks may be more visible to law enforcement.''