Pubdate: Sun, 06 Apr 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Shaila K. Dewan

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."
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