A DRUG FEARED IN THE '70'S IS TIED TO SUSPECT IN KILLINGS

Even in the experimental days of the 1970's, PCP was a drug that quickly
became known for its extremely poor ratio of potential fun to potential
risk. Reports of people who leapt from windows, drowned themselves in
swimming pools, and committed random murders while under its influence
deterred even hard-core drug users, and PCP, known as angel dust, became
something to avoid.

But it never disappeared entirely, and last weekend when Larme Price, 30,
was arrested on charges of fatally shooting four men in bodegas and other
small businesses in Brooklyn and Queens in February and March, the police
said he told them he had been using PCP, or phencyline, which, according to
the National Institute on Drug Abuse, was developed as an anesthetic in the
1950's.

Some drug experts said that Mr. Price was probably one of a small but
ever-present number of PCP users in the city. But others said there is a
growing population of people taking PCP, particularly among those too young
to know the horror stories.

Police investigators said they were mildly surprised to learn that PCP may
have been involved in the killings, but Dr. Julie Holland, an attending
psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital and the author of a book about Ecstasy,
the nightclub drug, was not. When she started working weekend shifts in the
psychiatric emergency room at Bellevue seven years ago, Dr. Holland said,
she never saw people who had overdosed on PCP. Now, they arrive at least
once a week, sometimes wrapped in body-length strait jackets. known in the
hospital as "body bags."

"It is completely on the rise," Dr. Holland said. "There is no question
about it."

In the metropolitan region, the resurgence began in Hartford, she said, and
is still more pervasive there and in New Haven, than in New York. But
cigarettes -- whether filled with tobacco, herb or marijuana --and dipped
in or sprayed with PCP have become increasingly common in New York's
nightclub culture, she said, with its constant search for a new high.
People who use it refer to it as "smoking wet" or "wetting it up."

What is more, the drug is being marketed under different names. "Wet,
bobbies dippies, dank, amp, hydro, purple haze and haze, illie, water,
sherm, love boat," Dr. Holland said. "Here's another thing I've heard
recently, kapow. There are so many different names for it that people don't
know they're getting PCP." And if they do, she said, "they don't have any
sense that PCP can be much more dangerous than the average drug."

Often people do not know they have taken anything at all. One man who wound
up dancing naked on top of cars in Times Square, Dr. Holland said, had
shared what he thought was a normal cigarette with a woman he met in a bar.

PCP, which in large quantities smells like strong ammonia, is a
dissociative anesthetic that can make people paranoid, violent, delusional
and, on top of that, insensitive to pain. It can make people psychotic or
catatonic. It is given to lab animals to replicate the effects of
schizophrenia. Heavy users often take on the appearance of being mentally
retarded, say workers at drug rehab centers.

PCP can also severely exacerbate pre-existing mental disorders, doctors
say. Members of Mr. Price's family have said that they unsuccessfully
sought psychiatric care for him. Several experts said that PCP could not
necessarily be wholly blamed for the crimes with which Mr. Price is
charged. Whether Mr. Price actually used PCP is not a matter of public
record, but at his lawyer's request, he was given detox treatment in jail.

According to Jose Rios, a 27-year-old from the Lower East Side who pays
close attention to Manhattan nightlife, a tiny bag of PCP-laced mint leaves
- -- enough to get four people high -- costs $10. "I'd say about a year ago
it started coming in," he said, adding that he did not use the drug because
he did not like the feeling it produced of being "stuck," unable to move,
or "lost in the sauce."

Why would anyone seek out such a noxious drug? In small doses, Dr. Holland
said, the effect can be a pleasant, floating feeling.

And in larger doses, the high it offers appeals to a small percentage of
people. "It makes a David feel like a Goliath," said Bridget Brennan, the
Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the city. "It makes people who otherwise
feel weak feel very strong."

In New York, experts say PCP is most reliably available in parts of East
Harlem. Other markets crop up sporadically. "What I wondered is, where did
he hear about that?" Richard Curtis, a criminologist at the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice who specializes in drug research, said of Mr.
Price. "It wasn't available in his neighborhood unless it was a very small
cell."

Stephen Sifaneck, an ethnographer who does field research for the nonprofit
National Development and Research Institutes, said that he has not seen
evidence of a surge in PCP use. But, he remembered, after PCP got a bad
name in the 70's, it quickly resurfaced in powder form falsely labeled as
"THC," the active ingredient in marijuana.

The federal Drug Enforcement Agency has noted that PCP abuse, once
displaced by crack, is "increasing slightly" nationwide. But New York
researchers said that there is as yet little statistical proof of a
comeback, in part because PCP makes up a tiny fraction of illegal drugs
used. The number of arrests has hovered at about 300 a year for the past
five years, and the rate of arrests this is about the same, said Detective
Walter Burnes, a police spokesman. The number of hospital admissions
increased slightly, to 336 from 348, in the same period, according to
federal statistics. According to the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring
program, run by the National Institute of Justice, the number of PCP users
in a random sampling of those arrested in New York City has hovered around
1 percent since 1987.

Dr. Holland, though, said that most record-keepers are not looking for PCP,
and that the test is notoriously unreliable and does not register PCA or
PCH, drugs closely related to PCP.

Andrew Golub, a principal investigator at the National Development and
Research Institutes, said that most of the tiny number of arrestees who
test positive for PCP test also positive for other drugs. He also said that
separate studies showed that the vast majority of people who test positive
for PCP do not acknowledge its use when asked, compared to most people who
test positive for marijuana, who do. "One reason," Mr. Golub said, "could
be that individuals that use PCP don't know it."