County’s Affluence Attracts Growing Cocaine Trade

By nearly any measure, the sale and use of cocaine has reached record levels in Orange County, where the drug’s image fits comfortably with affluence, youth and life in the fast lane.

“The bucks are here (in Orange County) . . . the market is here and the life style the (drug) dealers aspire to is here--the fast cars, the high living and money-spending kind of life style, the beach cities,” said Mike Barnes, special agent supervisor of the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

As a result, Irvine Police Sgt. Leo Jones said, “there’s an increase in arrests. There’s an increase in abuse. There’s an increase in addiction.”

The drug’s power is enough to make a son sell his parents’ house by forging their names to a grant deed. It is socially acceptable enough for a young mother to rely on it to lose weight. And the money to be made from selling it is enough to lure a carpenter and family man into drug dealing in the hope of striking it rich.

Experts including Linda Paire, drug prevention coordinator of the Orange County Health Care Agency, said Orange County’s fast-paced life style helps to explain cocaine’s rising popularity.

“Cocaine just falls right in with that kind of a life style, making them feel they can accomplish a lot, making them feel very powerful,” she said.

In Orange County in the last year and a half alone:

- Authorities acting on a 9-year-old arrest warrant apprehended a Colombian woman believed to be one of four ringleaders responsible for smuggling hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the country.

- Undercover officers seized an estimated $30 million worth of cocaine from a man believed to have been making a delivery.

- Investigators confiscated $4 million in cash in an Anaheim hotel, where suspected cocaine dealers had met to consummate a deal.

The Dec. 6, 1985, confiscation of 100 kilos, or about 220 pounds, of 94% pure cocaine by Anaheim police in El Toro is believed to be the largest seizure in county history. The wholesale value was estimated at $3.5 million, but authorities calculated the street-sale worth at $30 million.

“When you can take somebody down with a hundred kilos, you know there’s a lot of stuff out there on the street,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Vince Howard said. “These people move 300 to 400 kilos a month in a single organization, and they are all over.

“It’s common and you’re going to see a lot more of it.”

Due mainly to stepped up enforcement on the East Coast and an increase in drug smuggling across the Mexican border, authorities are seeing an increase in cocaine supplies throughout the Southwest. Orange County, because of its relative affluence, has attracted a healthy share of the new action, police say.

During fiscal year 1984-85, cocaine seizures by state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement undercover agents in Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial and San Diego counties “probably total more than the history of the bureau . . . or at least the 10 years before,” said Barnes.

In 1983, investigators from the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Santa Ana office arrested only five suspects characterized as the heads of drug rings distributing at least two kilos of cocaine per month, a spokesman said. Four kilos of cocaine were seized.

But in 1985, those investigators arrested 30 people suspected of dealing at least two kilos a month. Eighty-nine kilos were seized.

With a burgeoning supply of cocaine smuggled here from South America via the East Coast and across the Mexican border, authorities say cocaine is being bought by people who until recently could not afford it. Though street prices have remained about the same--about $100 a gram--juveniles and the less affluent are now able to afford cocaine because increased supply has made it available in smaller quantities, authorities say.

“It has found its way down to the poorest groups,” said Bill Evans, head of the Orange County district attorney’s narcotic enforcement unit. “And where maybe three years ago we would have been concerned about one-gram cases as significant cases, we now are concerned with one-kilo cases.”

Law-enforcement officials also say an increasing number of drug dealers have moved into Orange County.

“More and more of the Colombians (drug dealers) chased out of Los Angeles County are setting up here,” Evans said.

And despite growing medical evidence that cocaine is as addictive and potentially as deadly as heroin, authorities say the narcotic remains widely perceived as a “harmless” recreational drug.

Wholesale prices have substantially dropped with increased supply, spurring competition among large-scale dealers, authorities said. The price of a kilogram of cocaine is as low as $37,000, contrasted with $72,000 only a few years ago, narcotics investigators said.

But retail or street prices for the drug have remained fairly constant, police agree. Traditionally, police said, the smallest quantity of cocaine purchased at the street level has been a gram.

“Now we find that there are people in possession of quarter-grams, half-grams that are appropriate in the economic cycle . . . reachable by a blue-collar worker or a juvenile,” Irvine Police Sgt. Jones said.

$9 Million of Cocaine

Though local, state and federal investigators often work together, federal authorities generally become involved only in larger cases. Still, in 1984, the latest year for which figures are available, state and Orange County police agencies seized more than $9 million worth of cocaine and $2.5 million in cash, exclusive of seizures involving federal authorities, according to the Western States Information Network, an intelligence system run by the state attorney general.

One of the effects, Evans said, is that “we find people being hooked . . . on cocaine and committing crimes to support their habit as they did with heroin.”

Also, increasing numbers of people without criminal backgrounds have been lured into cocaine dealing, he said. Only “about half of our cases have someone with some general drug background,” Evans said.

“We see more and more (people) who decide to get rich quick (by selling) an ounce or kilo quantities,” he said. For an investment of “$28,000 to buy a kilo (a dealer) can turn around and sell it quickly for $40,000.”

‘Making Big Money’

Bob W., a carpenter who asked that his full name not be used, began using cocaine when he and a friend “made an attempt at dealing it on the prospect of making big money.”

Instead, Bob W. said, “we got dipping into it, and I developed a dependency. I was probably using about half a gram a day.”

The “last year I was doing coke,” he said, “I probably spent $5,000 or $6,000, which is relatively low. With my income it was pretty expensive. If I had more money, I’d probably have spent more.

“I made a lot of bad decisions under the influence of coke,” he said. “It’s like making love to a gorilla. It’s exciting and it’s fun, but you can’t always stop when you want to.”

Divorce and Bankruptcy

Bob W. has since stopped using cocaine with the help of Cocaine Anonymous, a self-help organization patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous. But before he got help, he went through a divorce and filed for personal bankruptcy after missing work and spending money that should have gone for living expenses.

“But the worst thing it did to me was just a loss of self-respect. I just didn’t fit into society. I wasn’t a good worker. I wasn’t a good husband. I wasn’t a good father.”

The scope of cocaine use in Orange County can be measured, in part, by admissions at county rehabilitation clinics, where since 1983 cocaine users have accounted for a larger percentage of an ever-larger number of admissions.

Cocaine users made up only about 5% of admissions at four county clinics in 1982, but they accounted for about 30% in 1985, according to Jim Terez, supervisor of the drug-free clinics for the Orange County Heath Care Agency. In 1985, 3,540 cocaine users were admitted to county clinics, contrasted with 2,698 in 1983, about a 31% increase.

Many Never Treated

Those cases--new users to hard-core addicts--represent only people who have had “some external pressure,” such as referral from probation officials, school or friends and loved ones, Terez said.

Many cocaine users never enter treatment programs, jails or hospitals.

“Many, many people overdose on cocaine and never go to the emergency room,” said Jeff Fortuna, director of Drug Education Consultants, an Orange firm that advises school districts. “They will have tremors or they will convulse and ride it out. They are playing chemical roulette, in a sense.”

The county’s Terez said cocaine users “are doing the same things the heroin addicts were doing. They are writing (bad) checks, they are stealing. They are taking money from their folks, or they are . . . losing jobs.”

Superior Court Judge Phillip E. Cox recalled the case of a cocaine user in his early 20s who forged his parents’ names “on a grant deed and sold their house from under them and (took) the money for his drug habit.”

The parents incurred substantial costs in reversing the illegal sale, he said.

Arrival in Schools

Perhaps most disturbing in recent years is cocaine’s arrival in the schools.

“You didn’t use to see it on the very low street level,” Huntington Beach Police Lt. Barry Price said. “It wasn’t a drug that was on campuses at all.”

But in the last three years, Price said, “cocaine has changed from the so-called rich man’s drug to one we find among low-income groups, and students would be among (those) groups.”

Paire, the Orange County Health Care Agency drug prevention coordinator, agreed.

“We see a lot more sale (among juveniles) in the coastal cities,” she said. “To be able to live there you usually have some money to burn.”

A random survey of about 7,000 Orange County schoolchildren in grades 7, 9 and 11 in 1983 found that 19.1% of 11th-graders admitted using cocaine within the prior six months, Paire said.

‘Affluence Contributes’

That contrasts with only 11.4% of high school seniors sampled nationally who said they had used cocaine within six months, according to an annual survey conducted by the University of Michigan under contract with the National Institute of Drug Abuse, Paire said.

“It didn’t surprise me,” she said. “It’s an indication of a large amount of use in Orange County. The affluence definitely contributes.”

In Huntington Beach, police used an undercover 20-year-old woman officer to break up on-campus narcotic sales last month, arresting nine juveniles and four adults on suspicion of selling cocaine and other drugs.

“Social pressure for the use of the drug is so high it almost seems attractive to the kids,” Huntington Beach Police Sgt. Chuck Poe said. “It’s just been glamorized so much. Very few people tend to show the bad effects.

“It’s just as addicting, if not more so, than heroin.”

No Longer Elitist Drug

Ruth Stafford, an Orange County clinical psychologist specializing in treating cocaine addiction and chemical dependency, said cocaine “is in all the high schools.”

“Cocaine is no longer an elitist drug,” she said. “The image that it’s only associated with the high rollers is no longer true. A great many of the clients I’ve had were truck drivers and roofers.

“It also seems to be a non-sexist drug. Women love the weight loss with it. I’ve heard a lot of women talk about being on a coke diet. If you’re using coke, you don’t feel like eating.”

Kathy Y., 31, a former user and now a member of Cocaine Anonymous, recalls “dieting” with cocaine after giving birth to her son two years ago.

“I’d get up and do a line and . . . skip breakfast and manage to skip lunch,” she said.

$300 Weekly Habit

Even the death of a friend from a cocaine overdose was not enough to dissuade her from using the drug in combination with alcohol, marijuana and pills--a habit that cost from $300 to $400 a week, she said.

“I think I was just in a crowd that it was done. It wasn’t really questioned. Everybody was using it (for) same reason people drink alcohol--to be part of the party.”

Orange County also offers a social milieu attractive to high-rolling cocaine dealers.

“I really think they (cocaine dealers) come here because it’s very easy for a guy buying Rolls-Royces with his drug profits to blend in with the Newport crowd or the Anaheim Hills crowd,” said Evans of the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Federal Laws Tougher

The best tools for combatting the influx of drug dealers, authorities say, are federal laws that provide stiffer penalties and fewer obstacles than state laws.

State law was toughened on Jan. 1, providing mandatory jail sentences for conviction of sales of a pound or more of cocaine, regardless of whether the drug is diluted or 100% pure, according to Katina Kypridakes, criminal intelligence analyst for the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

But federal law still provides far greater sentences--up to 20 years and a $250,000 fine for conviction on cocaine and other drug offenses--contrasted with three to 10 years under state law, authorities said.

Under federal law, drug suspects also can be held without bail--a tactic investigators say is vital when dealing with foreigners who have access to large amounts of cash.

“When you’ve got $30 million of dope, what kind of bail are you going to set on something like that?” an undercover investigator said. “These guys can come up with a $1-million bail.”

COCAINE BUSTS Arrests by Drug Enforcement Administration office in Santa Ana

1983 1984 1985 Class I: 2 3 21 Class II: 3 2 9 Class III: 26 73 40

DEFINITIONS: Class I: the head of drug distribution ring handling in excess of four kilos a month in at least two major metropolitan areas. Class II: the head of an organization distributing at least two kilos a month in one metropolitan area. Class III: a person who works in concert with others and distributes less than two kilos a month. Seizures of cocaine by Santa Ana DEA office:

1983 1984 1985 KILOS 4 36 89

Information may not include arrests or seizures in Orange County that were initiated by other DEA divisions. Neither do the figures include cases worked by other law enforcement agencies in which the DEA did not participate. Source: Drug Enforcement Administration