It is lunchtime in New York City’s Chelsea district, and Barry, a young drug dealer, is out on the streets hawking his wares. Business is good. “You want a splash?” he asks a customer, referring to a slim fold of waxed paper containing $20 worth of cocaine. Although he was arrested twice last winter, Barry was sprung both times within 24 hours. The first bust cost him a $400 fine, the second was dismissed on a technicality. “When the crack thing was in all the papers, the heat was pretty bad,” Barry recalls. “The cops were coming around, sealing the street, searching people up against walls. But that didn’t last. They only do it for so long, and then they leave you alone. Maybe they’ve given up.” Remember the drug crisis? Only a year ago everyone was obsessed with crack, the extremely addictive, smokable cocaine. A scant 18 months have passed since the shocking coke-related deaths of Athletes Len Bias and Don Rogers. In the wake of the stock-market crash and tensions in the Persian Gulf, it is hard to believe that in September 1986 some opinion polls showed drug abuse topping economic woes and the threat of war as America’s No. 1 national concern. Politicians were quick to respond to the electorate’s anxiety. Ronald and Nancy Reagan gave a national television address supporting the antidrug crusade. Congress hastily drafted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, appropriating $1.7 billion for law enforcement, drug treatment and education. In a critical election season, both houses of Congress eagerly passed the legislation, with only 18 lawmakers opposing it. A year later, the drug war is being lost in the trenches. While arrests have surged, more cocaine is being smuggled into the U.S. than ever before, and the demand for coke has never been higher. Drug-abuse treatment centers around the nation remain overcrowded and underfinanced. Prospects are dim for renewed funding at last year’s high level for enforcement, education and treatment. Americans consumed 72 metric tons of coke in 1985, more than double the 1982 estimate. Moreover, because of depressed prices, competing dealers are selling cocaine in increasingly stronger doses. While street coke in 1983 was about 35% pure, today it has a purity of almost 65%. Tying to stanch the flow of narcotics into the U.S. has become a Sisyphean task. U.S. agencies seized a record 33.4 metric tons of coke and made an unprecedented 20,000 arrests in fiscal year 1987. With money from the 1986 drug bill, federal agencies have hired thousands of new investigators and contracted for improved interdiction hardware. The first of as many as seven radar balloons along the U.S.-Mexico border went into service this month over Fort Huachuca, Ariz. Yet the more authorities interdict cocaine, the more it seems to get smuggled into the country. “If we want to talk about slowing down the flow of cocaine into the U.S., we should think more in terms of demand reduction,” says DEA Chief John Lawn. “If the cartel in Colombia is shut down, other cartels in other source countries will merely pick up the customers.”
