Crime, and Blood, in the Streets

America once thought of drug-related crime in terms of heroin. Stable organized crime groups managed distribution. Junkies stole for the price of a fix, then nodded off. The crack high, by contrast, reinforces feelings of power and aggression rather than blissful lassitude. Crack is distributed by younger, wilder, more heavily armed gangs. They arrogantly intimidate whole communities and make war on each other to control the lucrative business. In community after community, crack violence has overwhelmed law enforcement.

A 1986 survey of state prisoners found that 1 in 10 was under the influence of cocaine at the time of the crime, more than twice the number in 1979. More than half the males arrested in nine major cities last year tested positive for cocaine In Washington, D.C., the figure was 59 percent up frorll 14 percent in 1984. In Manhattan, the figure was more than 80 percent. A 1987 survey found that police classified more than a third of murders and two-thirds of robberies and burglaries as drug-related.

Meanwhile, urban emergency rooms report a surge of injuries — crushed bones, blasted organs, floods of internal bleeding — once known only on the battlefield. They are the gory aftermath of shootouts among drug gangs armed for war.

Criminal Justice, Distorted

As an outraged public demands action, crack has forced criminal justice to spend furiously for police, prosecutors, courts and judges in a futile effort to keep up. The most horrendous cost comes at the end of the line. California now has 81,000 people locked up; since 1983, it has built 21,000 new prison beds and plans 16,000 more. Total cost: $3.2 billion. Since 1983, New York has spent about $900 million to build 17,780 cells. But state officials say they will need at least 9,000 more cells by March. President Bush recently pledged $1 billion to build 24,000 federal prison cells, largely for drug violators.

The billions aren't enough: federal penitentiaries would still be overcrowded by 25 percent. And at the state level, crack-caused crowding forces jurisdictions to release inmates in order to maintain minimal standards. That undermines all pretense of stern law enforcement.

Mothers Turned into Monsters

Unlike heroin, crack is popular with women. When they abuse it, they devastate their children as well as themselves. A recent study of 1,226 pregnant inner-city women in Boston found that 20 percent had used cocaine. Between 1986 and 1988, the number of newborn children in New York City testing positive for drugs — mostly cocaine — almost quadrupled, going from 1,325 to 5,088.

Babies born to crack addicts tend to suffer low birthweight, brain damage and malformation. A recent report in The Times described such a child: "a mere patch of flesh with a tangerine-sized head and limbs like splinters." Intensive hospital care for each crack baby costs about $90,000. That translates to $190 million a year in New York. For the nation, the figure is $2.5 billion.

Children of crack addicts are at extreme risk of neglect and abuse, and child welfare agencies are reeling from crack-related cases. In New York since 1987, reports of drug-related neglect and abuse have tripled. Meanwhile, urban child welfare workers estimate that 70 percent of children they see are raised by grandmothers or other relatives after parents abandon them for drugs.

Strain, and Fear, in Hospitals

Injuries, overdoses, or other health emergencies caused by smoking crack increased an astonishing 10 times between 1985 and 1987, according to a federal survey. The result is rising strain on urban health care systems already struggling with AIDS and a nursing shortage — with dire consequences for the quality of care given all patients.

Crack has even begun to destroy whatever civility was left to daily hospital life. One New York hospital reports that crack-addicted patients leave their beds to purchase the drug on the street, smoke it in their rooms, and routinely commit thefts and assaults. The routine of doctors and nurses, already harried and tense, now is filled with fear.

Health officials also blame crack for a new outbreak of syphilis in cities. The disease is spread by prostitution for drug money and casual sex with many partners in crack houses. Because syphilis also facilitates the spread of AIDS, crack has become an alarming new factor in the AIDS epidemic.

Ripping the Fabric of Society

The most profound damage of crack may be to social values. Crack dealing involves more adolescents than the heroin trade ever did, offering them money enough to realize the most alluring teenage fantasies — clothes, jewelry, cars, guns, power. Adults, who ought to be exerting authority, shrink in fear of such youngsters.

At the same time, vigilantism has begun to flare. After crack dealers took over an abandoned house on a working-class street in Detroit, the neighborhood "changed to a place where bands of teenagers shot at each other in daylight, sold 'drugs from the curb and sneered at people who threatened to call the police." Fed up, two residents burned the house down. At their trial, rather than deny involvement, they proudly admitted it. The jury quickly acquitted them. That was one of 100 similar fires in Detroit. In a two-week period in Miami last year, 35 suspected crack houses burned down.

Vigilantism, observes Gary Marx, a sociologist, "is a bargaining chip for the citizens, who are saying to the authorities, 'Unless you take action, we will.'" Crack forces upon America a question once limited to Third World societies beset by guerrilla terror: How can citizens respect a government that can't even provide basic security?

The crack-induced strains on American life are spreading. Residents of Seaford, Del., population 5,500, describe it as "a conservative, God-fearing community" and an "Ozzie and Harriet kind of place." But since crack dealers arrived in 1985, according to The Wall Street Journal, the rural town has seen brutal murders, robberies, burglaries, assaults, prostitution, syphilis and a cocaine-positive baby. There are other Seafords as drug dealers seek new markets in smaller cities and towns.

Even as the crack poison spreads to middle America, a federal government grown used to budget deficits and constricted social policies remains leery of any concerted response. Last year, Congress authorized a few billion in a drug bill that also created a drug "czar."

But those are diffident gestures against a murderous industry worth tens of billions a year. The administration acts as though the American people fear taxes and big government more than drug gangs that are seizing control of their communities.

A.M. Rosenthal, "Crack: A Disater of Historic Dimensions, Still Growing," The New York Times, May 28, 1989.