Pubdate: Sun, 10 Feb 2002
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Kristen Mack

'QUIET EPIDEMIC' OF CODEINE USE TIED TO CITY'S UNDERGROUND RAP FORM

Donnell DeJean's drug of choice wasn't heroin or cocaine. Instead, his 
daily habit consisted of 4 ounces of prescription-strength cough syrup 
mixed with a 1-liter bottle of Big Red.

The codeine high, he recalls, was a mellow one, well-suited to his 
laid-back personality. He often enhanced the sensation by listening to a CD 
of hypnotic, slowed-down rap indigenous to his Houston hometown.

"You just be wanting to chill and relax when you're on syrup," DeJean, now 
18, said recently while completing a second stint in rehabilitation at 
Riverside Hospital. "Your body starts nodding off. You feel tired, but also 
good.

"I don't have to be on it; I just prefer to be on it. I can't relate to 
other drugs."

Last year, area police confiscated 125 gallons of illegal codeine. Each 
year, they say, they encounter more abuse and more people coming to Houston 
looking for "syrup." A substance abuse specialist at the hospital estimated 
that four out of five of his patients have at least tried it. Authorities 
as far east as Tennessee also reported an increase in this peculiar form of 
drug abuse.

But everyone agrees that Houston is ground zero for this "quiet epidemic."

"It's a unique problem that started in this area," said agent Jerry Neil 
Ellis of the Houston office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. " ... No 
matter where it was coming from, all across the country, it was headed for 
Houston. This is the hot spot."

"We did notice that Houston was a big syrup city," added Cynthia Glass of 
the Memphis, Tenn., Alcohol and Drug Council, who noted a blitz of 
experimentation that crossed all economic and ethnic lines in Memphis."Any 
time rap stars are pushing their drug of choice, it's going to pique 
curiosity, and youth are more apt to step into the unknown."

The connection to music is not insignificant. Over the past decade or so, 
Houston has attained a national reputation in certain circles as home to an 
underground form of rap known as "screw music" that features familiar songs 
distorted into indiscernible tunes and lyrics that glorify the use of cough 
syrup as an intoxicant.

In October, Houston's Dope House Records released the local-music anthology 
Screwston Vol. II: Pink Soda. The cover art depicts a soda vending machine 
that offers "Pink Sprite" and "Sippin Molases." Another CD cover features 
an imposing rap singer pouring syrup from a Styrofoam cup over the Houston 
skyline.

"We've been sipping syrup since at least '92 or '93," said Carlos Coy, a 
local rap star known as South Park Mexican. "That's when screw (music) 
started getting popular. The two kinda go together."

The Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse first noted the substance 
abuse trend in 1996. A TCADA study three years later reported an increasing 
prevalence and stated there was a lively street market for abusable cough 
syrup in Houston.

"Codeine does not get the attention that ecstasy or heroin gets; it's just 
not that sexy," said Dr. William Elwood, who headed the study. "It's much 
more of a quiet epidemic."

Codeine, like heroin, acts as a sedative. In most people, it turns into 
morphine when passed through the liver, according to epidemiologists. 
Common side effects include drowsiness and confusion.

On the street, codeine syrup is called "down," "drank," "nod" or "lean." 
But it's most commonly known as "syrup."

Syrup is funneled to illegal users primarily through bogus prescriptions, 
unscrupulous pharmacists and physicians, and "doctor shopping," the 
practice of making similar health complaints to different doctors in hopes 
of receiving multiple prescriptions.

DeJean, who passed out when he first tried syrup on his 13th birthday, had 
a daily habit by the time he was 16. He said the drug was never far away -- 
at most a 10-minute car ride in his Third Ward neighborhood.

He spent his most recent birthday sober, but only after the second round of 
rehab.

"Codeine has sucked everybody in. It's got all of them," said Troy 
Jefferson, program manager for child and adolescent services at Riverside.

"It's the in thing to do," added Sam Searcy of the Houston Police 
Department's narcotics division. "People are coming from Louisiana to 
Houston looking for it."

Large quantities have been confiscated from buses and trains. People have 
tried to smuggle it across the border from Mexico, where up to 50 doses can 
be bought without a prescription. On the illegal market, that would be 
about 8 ounces.

Syrup is perceived as safer than other illegal drugs because it is a 
manufactured product and, in Texas, possession of small quantities is only 
a Class B misdemeanor, just above a traffic ticket. Users also know it is 
relatively safe to have small amounts of syrup without fearing arrest.

"These dopers are aware of the fact that enforcement authorities are more 
interested in finding dealers, whether a doctor or pharmacies," said DEA 
agent Ellis.

He said two things have to be proved to make a criminal case against a 
doctor: that a prescription was written for a nonlegitimate purpose and 
that the doctor was acting outside the usual course of practice.

There are about a dozen active cases in the Houston area involving large 
quantities of syrup.

Yet the underground market flourishes. A 2-ounce dose, or "deuce," can go 
for $30.

Searcy, who has been working for more than 20 years as a Houston narcotics 
officer, said syrup abuse has grown exponentially.

"The abuse is huge; it's almost like an epidemic," he said. "There's no end 
to it."

In November 2000, Robert Earl Davis Jr., known as DJ Screw, who pioneered 
screw music in the early 1990s, was found dead in the restroom of his 
Commerce Park recording studio. He had died from a codeine overdose with 
mixed drug intoxication, according to the Harris County Medical Examiner's 
Office, which ruled the death accidental. There were toxic levels of 
codeine in Davis' blood, along with the powerful psychedelic drug PCP.

"People aren't letting the fact that he died scare them at all," said 
rapper Coy. "It didn't bother them enough to quit."

(Coy, however, said he is cutting back his usage to about twice a month. 
"Every time I do it, I promise myself that I'm not going to do it anymore," 
he said.)

Davis' legacy is the slowed-down and distorted music he created that put 
Houston on the rap map with a style of music to call its own. He would work 
with just about any song, from the latest Ice Cube release to an old Phil 
Collins tune.

Screw music sounds like a tape that's been played too many times, making 
any artist sound like Barry White -- turning the highest falsetto into a 
deep bass. It's also "chopped," which is like backing up parts of a song 
and repeating them, making it sound like a scratched record that skips.

"Screw heads," as fans of the music are called, say the music sounds more 
melodic and hypnotizing, enhancing every intonation and expression in the 
lyrics.

Those who listen while high on codeine say the syrup amplifies the music.

"When you're on lean and you listen to screwed music, you get a different 
feel," said Erik "Einstein" Tealer of Dope House Records. "When you're high 
and listening to it, it sounds bugged out. It sounds better."

In many ways, the drug and the music have become synonymous.

Houston rapper Big Moe, one of the musicians to adopt DJ Screw's style, 
titled his latest album City of Syrup. Its cover features purple liquid 
oozing over the city's skyline.

Some of the lyrics of Big Moe's song Po' It Up, are "Smoking and leanin'. 
Hatas plotting and schemin'. ... Who knows the feelin', how it feels to 
lean, it's cough syrup or barre promenthazine, sticky green, and po' up an 
8, an orange Sunkist, or a Welch's grape, sip the sweet taste."

"(Syrup use) has a major role in the music scene," Tealer said. "Any album 
with the word syrup or any relation to codeine or pink cola is going to 
sell major units.

"People are intrigued by that, and it's been popularized by artists in this 
area."

Law enforcement authorities say syrup has migrated to other cities in Texas 
and across the South. In fact, the most widely known song about syrup comes 
from Memphis, where the rap group Three 6 Mafia had a hit single titled 
Sippin On Syrup.

As evidence of this eastward expansion, DEA agent Michael Arpaio noted that 
the street cost of prescription-strength cough syrup in Memphis has risen 
from $25 an ounce a year ago to as much as $75 today.

"Obviously," he said, "that increase in price must mean a large increase in 
demand."
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