CRACK IS BACK: BAY STATE'S BIG CITIES SEE GROWTH IN ABUSE OF NOTORIOUS
KILLER DRUG

Crack, the tiny but potent "rock" form of cocaine that brought a reign of
violence to urban America two decades ago, is reclaiming its turf in a
number of cities across Massachusetts, according to a top drug enforcement
chief.

"We are seeing an increase in the amount of crack in the state's bigger
cities, like Boston and New Bedford," said Mark Trouville, special agent in
charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's New England Field
Division.

"Crack and violence," said Trouville, "go hand in hand."

Trouville said his agents have been tracking the upswing over the past six
months to a year and believe the increase may be linked to the DEA
squeezing Colombian cocaine rings and their shipments into New York - which
directly supplies New England.

With the squeeze on, dealers are "cutting" or mixing their cocaine with
other substances to stretch their supplies, producing less potent cocaine.

That, said Trouville, may be driving the run on crack, which dealers create
by boiling their powdered cocaine in a baking soda solution to form a
powerful "rock" that can be smoked.

Boston police say a pencil eraser-sized rock is going for about $7, with
the powerful high lasting just 10 minutes. It creates a driving urge among
users to keep feeding the monster.

By comparison, a gram of cocaine - about the amount in a sugar packet -
costs $60. The high lasts about an hour, but that high is not nearly as
intense as with crack.

"Think about it, if someone is down and out, it's easier to come up with
seven bucks than to come up with 60," said detective Lt. Frank Armstrong,
who heads Boston's Drug Control Division.

Boston's biggest problem with crack dealing is in the Theater District,
especially near the bustling intersection of Tremont and Stuart streets,
where out-of-towners can pull up, buy drugs, and drive two blocks to the
Mass Pike, Armstrong said.

"We just saturate the neighborhood (with officers) because it's the only
place we are seeing open-air stuff," Armstrong said.

Boston police have nearly doubled the number of drug arrests in the
downtown area, compared to last year, and nearly half of those busts
involve crack, Armstrong said.

Crack also has come on strong in Brockton.

"We are seeing more crack than we are (cocaine) powder," said detective Lt.
William Conlon.

Conlon said his department is seizing more crack and cocaine than any other
drug right now, with crack/cocaine hauls up 75 percent for the first half
of this year, compared to last.

Brockton just wrapped up a violent summer, with several shootings and nine
homicides. Conlon said some of the violence can be linked directly to turf
wars among crack dealers.

"The crack does bring more violence and part of that may be some of the
lower-level dealers are using it themselves, so they are not too stable,"
Conlon said. "They're the ones doing the shooting."

In late July, the DEA teamed with state and local police to smash a major
crack ring in Worcester that, the DEA said, was supplying much of Central
Massachusetts where crack has become a major problem.

"This was a very efficient crack organization with large tentacles," said
the DEA's Trouville. "This was a very violent organization."

Two of the five alleged ring leaders lived in the small town of
Southbridge. The town sits on the Connecticut border near the intersection
of the Mass Pike and Interstate 84, a major route into Connecticut. Several
Connecticut cities, including New Haven and Bridgeport, also are struggling
with crack, according to the DEA.

But even the small town of Southbridge has seen a crack "resurgence" said
Lt. Daniel Charette.

"I was surprised to see it becoming so prevalent in the smaller communities
again," Charette said. "I would say the heroin and crack are neck and neck
right now."

Along the Bay State's northern border, in Essex County, where Sheriff Frank
Cousins' department routinely tests the urine of about 800 people on parole
and probation for drug use, opiates such as heroin had been well ahead of
cocaine/crack until the gap started narrowing last winter. Now the two are
running about even, said lab director Patricia Foley.

The jump in crack being witnessed by law enforcement also is starting to
show up in the numbers of patients reporting that crack is one of their
drug problems. One treatment center that has noticed a sharp jump is the
Hello House, a long-term treatment facility for women on Boston's Long Island.

The percentage of women there reporting daily crack use jumped from 50
percent last summer to 64 percent this summer. Yet the percentage of women
reporting daily cocaine use held about steady.

"That suggests to me that we have many more people using crack more
regularly," said Matt Hoffman, director of substance abuse services for
Massachusetts Volunteers of America, which runs Hello House.

"Crack," Hoffman said, "is a highly dependent type thing."

Experts say that cocaine use - and especially crack cocaine - is much more
likely to produce violence among its users than does heroin, which works as
a nervous system depressant.

"Cocaine stimulates the release of adrenline and other brain chemicals and
can produce not only extreme physical arousal, which can produce strokes
and heart attacks, but extreme behavioral arousal, like manic type
emotions, rage, paranoia and jealousy," said David Gastfriend, director of
the addiction research program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Gastfriend said a major hurdle for crack addicts is that many health
insurance companies do not cover detox for patients addicted only to
cocaine or crack because they do not regard the addiction as a physical
disorder with dangerous withdrawal symptoms, such as those associated with
alcohol and heroin.

But Gastfriend said studies he has conducted show that the "psychological
dependence" crack and cocaine users struggle with in withdrawal can be
worse than the physical symptoms suffered by those coming off other drugs.

For crack and cocaine addicts, who also may be addicted to other drugs and
are dependent on publicly financed treatment, the outlook is especially grim.

Steep cuts in the state's budget have left a substance-abuse treatment
system that is "very fragile, very tenuous, and like a net, stretched
thin," said Deborah Klein Walker, associate commissioner for programs and
prevention at the state's Department of Public Health.

"We know that we are serving many fewer folks because of cuts throughout
the system," Walker said.

Add crack to that picture, Gastfriend said, and here's what happens: "If we
have a period of more aggressive marketing of cocaine and crack and a
period of economic recession, we had better come up with public health
campaigns, particularly to protect young people, or else we could once
again see a crime wave like we had in the late '80s as a result of crack."