PCP on Rise, but This Time Mixed With Other Drugs

Despite two decades of warnings about the dangers of the outlawed animal anesthetic PCP, the mind-twisting “angel dust” remains popular among a new generation of drug abusers.

While the public spotlight has been turned on cocaine in its various forms in recent months, police believe that the use of PCP is again on the increase, according to Lt. Dan Cooke, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman.

For one thing, drug users increasingly are combining PCP with cocaine and other drugs, authorities say.

“We thought the use of PCP was going down because the word got out over the years that it’s a real killer,” Cooke said. “But now, apparently, we have a younger generation that has to find out for themselves.”

For years, stories circulated about PCP users plunging to their deaths while trying to fly, or flaying wildly at police officers, snapping handcuffs, gnawing into bulletproof vests, breaking teeth and bones without flinching.

Effects on chronic users can include recurrence of a psychotic state closely resembling schizophrenia long after they quit taking PCP.

Police Sgt. Dick Studdard, who trains officers to recognize intoxicated drivers, said about 15% of people stopped for drunk driving have been using drugs or drugs and alcohol in combination. Of those, about half typically have been using PCP, he said.

The erratic and frequently violent behavior of PCP users makes the drug a major problem for every officer on the street, narcotics Detective Milt Dodge said. The drug was originally developed as an anesthetic, and people under its influence often appear impervious to pain.

“They have been known to break handcuffs without even noticing they’ve broken their wrists in the process,” Dodge said, adding that it takes about 500 pounds of pressure to break a pair of handcuffs.

Statistics support his fears: In San Jose, for example, police reported that 62% of the officers who became disabled in 1984 were injured in scuffles with PCP users.

PCP is easy to make and cheap, which makes it popular among teen-agers. Contrary to a popular belief, Dodge said, its abuse is common not only in low-income areas, but in middle-class suburbs.

Dodge says the public may underestimate the PCP problem because media attention has shifted to cocaine. Raids on PCP labs in the cities have declined.

Since one gallon of PCP can sell for $12,000, there is no shortage of underground chemists. PCP labs give off odors which some describe as similar to those of dirty socks or the ether smell of a biology lab. The chemical ingredients are extremely volatile, and explosions at the labs are not uncommon.

When explosions, fires and big-city busts earned headlines across the nation, PCP producers shifted their strategy, Dodge said.

“We now find the labs in rural desert and mountain areas because city residents smell odors coming from the plants in their neighborhoods and call police,” he said.

But if there are fewer labs in the cities, there are still plenty of PCP users, in whom large doses can produce effects ranging from agitation to convulsive seizures to madness.

Increasingly, those problems are compounded by use of other drugs.

“What we’re seeing increasingly are polydrug users,” said Julia Hillsman, director of the Hillsman Drug and Alcohol Center, a major Los Angeles County drug rehabilitation facility.

Hillsman said that in late 1984, cocaine dependency surpassed PCP as the most common problem at her center. Nevertheless, PCP use remains a problem. Some heroin addicts believe it eases the sickness of withdrawal. Other drug users might prefer cocaine but cannot find it.

John H. Griffith, program director of clinical services at Los Angeles’ Kedren Community Mental Health Center, agreed that users are more inclined these days to mix their drugs.

“We are not seeing as much solely PCP-induced psychosis because users are increasingly combining it with cocaine,” he said.

Griffith said that only about 10 cases of PCP as a single-abuse substance have been treated at Kedren during the last year. But, he added, “we’ve had about 25 to 30 cases of PCP-cocaine combination users during that time.”