SOBERING REPORT ON STREET DRUGS

Fewer Financiers Failed Screenings Last Year; Cocaine, Down; Pot, Up

The credit crisis has sobered up Wall Street in more ways than
one.

Only 2% of the financial industry failed drug tests last year,
compared with 3.6% of the working world, according to drug-testing
concern Sterling Infosystems. Retail workers, in comparison, were
red-flagged 4.1% of the time.

A review of drug-test data compiled by Sterling, a New York business
that screens about 5,900 employees a year for some 270 finance shops,
also shows that cocaine is losing its favor among investment
professionals, showing up in 7% of the positive tests at Wall Street
firms, down from 16% in 2007. But the prevalence of marijuana in
positive tests jumped to 80% from 64% between 2007 to 2009.

"I think the incidence of hard drug use is lower today than it was 10
or 15 years ago," says Adam Zoia, head of executive-recruiting firm
Glocap Search LLC. "The banks, in particular, are pretty persnickety
on background checks."

In all, finance seems to be a relatively clean profession. The highest
levels of abuse are at real-estate-investment-trust companies, a
sector that, incidentally, does more random testing than others.

Test results generally capture drug use among new hires, candidates
who knew that they would likely be tested. Random drug testing is
rare, according to a spokesman for a bulge-bracket bank.

Abuse hasn't slackened among existing employees, psychologists and
counselors say. It may even be peaking, exacerbated by the credit
crisis and the volatile and tenuous recovery that has ensued. Seabrook
House, a 24-bed luxury rehab facility in Pennsylvania, has been
crammed with Wall Street refugees in recent months, according to
Clinical Director William Heran. They are paying $24,000 for a
three-month program to get clean.

Mr. Heran has been around long enough to discern a foreign-exchange
trader from an M&A banker. He says the rage these days is a Pez
dispenser with the head of a red devil. Inside? Pills of Oxycodone or
Percocet.

"We're in crisis mode," he says. "Many of these drugs are so
accessible to the average person, let alone the person who is
well-spoken and professional."

Indeed, amphetamines seem to be gaining cachet, showing up in 10% of
Sterling's positive tests this year, compared with 3% in 2007.

Across the U.S., cocaine and marijuana use has been static since 2002
at least, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
data. But use may be heavier in New York. In a 2001 survey, 9.6% of
Manhattan residents said they had used marijuana in the previous year,
compared with 6% of people across the country; 5% of the island's
residents had done cocaine in the previous month, compared with 2.3%
countrywide.

Turning Point For Leaders, a Connecticut-based intervention and rehab
company, is seeing a steady stream of clients from Wall Street.
"Investment bankers-gunslingers, as we call them-are highly prone to
addiction," founder Robert Curry says. "And there's a lot of denial
among employers. The attitude is: 'If they can't fix themselves, then
they're going to have to live with it. We're not going to put any time
and effort into it.'" Heavy users, however, are seldom fooling their
employers, says Brad Lamm, president of New York's Intervention
Specialists. Mr. Lamm has seen a surge in substance abuse on Wall Street.

"The titans of Wall Street normalize crazy behavior all the time," he
says. "If somebody's delivering and showing up and doing the work,
they almost have to catch on fire for someone to sound the alarm."