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PCP may require an entirely different enforcement program. Officials who were trained to cope with limited imports of natural drugs are now facing an array of new synthetics that can be easily concocted at home. Some 20 variations of PCP are probably already on the streets, most of them perfectly legal because authorities have not got around to banning them. "We're heading into a new, dangerous era," says Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, head of Phoenix House, a drug-free program in New York City. "The natural substances—opiates and so forth—are not going to be the problem of the future."
Government planners are belatedly mapping a campaign to educate the public about the dangers of angel dust. But one official is frankly puzzled about how to approach PCP users. Says he: "It's hard to understand why people are taking PCP. They don't take it to get high. They don't take it to make sex better. They take it to zonk themselves out. In a way, it's a disguised death wish."