Crashing on Cocaine

(13 of 13)

cocaine will amount in the end to a token fight. "All we can hope to do," says Sergeant Rene LaPrevotte of San Francisco's drug squad, "is prevent someone from setting up a cocaine stand in Union Square." One federal official, who has been with the DEA since it began in 1973, has no heroic notions of putting an end to cocaine runs. "We feel like we're part of a spectator sport," he says. "We're not the answer. The answers are going to be found in your wallets and your conscience."

The point is well taken: criminal sanctions are a difficult, awkward way to do battle against people's vices. As long as millions of Americans want to pay fortunes for diluted cocaine, cocaine will get to them, the law be damned. Another DEA veteran poses the problem this way: "The only way to stop the trade is to stop the production or stop the demand. And we can't stop the source."

Maybe not. But curiously, there is a new, burgeoning demand at the source of cocaine: Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian youths are rushing to become cokeheads. South American governments have been generally unsympathetic to U.S. jeremiads about the northward flow of South American drugs. But now they are seeing stylish cocaine abuse firsthand. And because the drug is so cheap in the Andes ($14 a street gram), it is more often smoked liberally in cigarettes than snorted.

"It's the fashion, like jeans," says Juan Carlos, a young Bogotá professional. "At our parties now, everyone just sucks smoke and gets selfabsorbed. The parties are spooky: no laughing, just puffing." Alberto Laverde, 27, is a smooth, smiling Bogotá hustler who dispenses cocaine at the local Wimpy hamburger bar. "Get into it," he encourages in accented English, sniffing up a bit of his pure product. "It's the flow of the apocalypse, man. You're king for a moment or even two. And you can be that again and again." Cocaine, sent off to the States to make money, has acquired American glamour, and come back home.

—By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Los Angeles, David S. Jackson/Washington, WilliamMcWhirter/Miami and Janice C. Simpson/New York

Those referred to only by first names have been given pseudonyms at their request. * The task forces are based in Boston, New York, * The task forces are based in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.