Source: The Dallas Morning News Contact: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 http://www.dallasnews.com Heroin Drug's damage makes case against decriminalization By Richard Estrada / The Dallas Morning News If it was heroin alone that ended the life of Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, it must have taken a lot of "smack" to kill him. The 6foot6inch, 290pound defensive allpro tackle was physically imposing by any standard, and the news that anything short of bullets had killed him came as a surprise to me. Because the exBaltimore Colt was a veteran of the great National Football League championship teams of 1958 and 1959, reports that he had died of a drug overdose devastated this 13yearold Colts fan and former "Balamer" resident. I always admired Big Daddy for his toughness and his play. But I also admired him because, unlike many of his teammates, he had become a pro football star despite not having played college ball. High school in Detroit was the last stop on his road to a formal education. If he was a big dog, he also was an underdog. Only now, 34 years after his untimely death, have I come to contemplate trends relating to the drug that killed Big Daddy as much as I ponder the tragedy of his death. The passing of a childhood idol who was either 31 or 34, depending on the source, was painful. But I am sure it was no more dispiriting than the death of Billie Holiday was to blues aficionados in 1959. Nor less so than the sudden demise of a parade of entertainers years later that included Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison all of whom joined Big Daddy and Billie in dying of heroin overdoses. When Big Daddy was found slumped over in a chair at a friend's house in Baltimore six months before the assassination of JFK, the Maryland state medical examiner didn't consider the cause of death a great mystery. He found at least three telltale needle marks on the big man's arm. And the next day, on May 11, the Baltimore Sun reported that "a homemade syringe" was found near his body. If there were subsequent rumors that someone else had injected a needle into his arm, no one ever questioned that it was heroin that did him in. The latest news is that smack is back. A survey just released by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that the use of heroin and cocaine among people age 18 to 25 is exploding. What gives? No issue is more important in the resurgence of heroin than the dramatic rise in the purity levels of the drug. Where heroin purity in Big Daddy Lipscomb's day varied from about 7 to 10 percent, purity levels in the United States these days are 30 percent or more. Philadelphia heroin routinely registers at an incredible 70 percent. The inner cities of Baltimore, Boston and New York City always have seen elevated levels of heroin abuse. But as Colombian, Mexican, Dominican, Chinese, Russian and Nigerian gangs ply their trade, the phenomenon also has expanded to Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and smaller cities in the Southwest and Southeast. As a new generation of heroin users evolves, the danger of sudden death from the drug is greater than ever before. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the purity of the new product is so elevated that users now can get high by snorting or smoking it. That obviates the stigma associated with "mainlining" the drug with a hypodermic syringe, a plus in the eyes of new users who aren't poor and don't live in the inner city. The reemergence of heroin as a popular drug is revealing important insights into the national debate over the war on drugs. No facet of the drug trade more readily contradicts the argument that the natural demand for drugs is ultimately the only major reason there is a drug trade. Heroin purveyors have made a conscious effort to increase the purity of the drug in order to make it more attractive to users and less costly to smuggle and transport. As the heroin epidemic grows, experts in the field have come to learn, or relearn, that the marketing of heroin in order to artificially create and expand demand is an extremely important issue. Drug consultant Wayne Roques of Florida says that is exactly why the Colombians developed crack cocaine in order to market it to a new customer base, innercity blacks in this case. More than three decades after Big Daddy Lipscomb's death, Americans are beginning to pay more attention to heroin than before. Unlike back then, the voices calling for legalizing drugs, while still in the minority, are growing louder. But as heroin begins to leave the inner city and wreak havoc on affluent suburbs, the majority who oppose legalization may be forgiven if they dig in their heels as never before. If demand is important to the drug trade, let's not forget that in the real world, the pusher man bends over backward to create demand.