Cocaine and Crack: Supply and Use

185 Pages·1993·17.644 MB·English

by  Philip Bean (eds.)

COCAINE AND CRACK
Also by Philip Bean
BARBARA WOOTTON: Selected Writings
(editor with Vera G. Seal)
Volume 1: CRIME AND THE PENAL SYSTEM I
Volume 2: CRIME AND THE PENAL SYSTEM II
Volume 3: SOCIAL AND POLmCAL THOUGHT
Volume 4: ECONOMIC AND METHODOLOGICAL THOUGHT
POLICING AND PRESCRIBING (editor with D. K. Whynes)
Cocaine and Crack
Supply and Use
Edited by
Philip Bean
Reader in Criminology and
Director, the Midlands Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice,
University of Loughborough
150th YEAR
M
St. Martin's Press
© Philip Bean 1993
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
First published in Great Britain 1993 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Ba8ingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-58681-5 ISBN 978-1-349-22773-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22773-0
First published in the United States of America 1993 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth A venue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-08939-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cocaine and crack: supply and use I edited by Philip Bean.
p. em.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-08939-9
I. Cocaine habit-Great Britain. 2. Crack (Drug)-Great Britain.
3. Drug abuse-Great Britain. I. Bean, Philip.
HV5840.G7C6 1993
362.29'8'0941--dc20 92-25573
CIP
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vi
Cocaine and Crack: An Introduction
Philip Bean 1
1 Where Does All the Snow Go? The Prevalence and
Pattern of Cocaine and Crack Use in Britain
Harry Shapiro 11
2 Cocaine and Crack within the 'British System':
A History of Control
H. B. Spear and Joy Mott 29
3 Cocaine and Crack: The Promotion of an Epidemic
Philip Bean 59
4 'A Very Greedy Sort of Drug': Portraits of Scottish
Cocaine and Crack Users
Jason Ditton 76
5 Cocaine in Context: Findings from a South London
Inner-City Drug Survey
Geoffrey Pearson, Heidi Safia Mirza and
Stewart Phillips 99
6 Civil Rights and Civil Liberties surrounding the
Use of Cocaine and Crack
Jane Goodsir 130
7 Treatment of Cocaine Abuse: Exploring the
Condition and Selecting the Response
John Strang, Michael Farrell and
Sujata Unnithan 146
Index 173
v
Notes on the Contributors
Philip Bean is Reader in Criminology and Director of the Midlands
Centre of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of
Loughborough. Prior to that he was Senior Lecturer in the Depart
ment of Social Policy, University of Nottingham. He has published
widely in the field of drug abuse, recently conducting research in
crack/cocaine, and ecstasy. His publications go back to 1974 and
extend from The Social Context of Drugs (1974) to Policing and
Prescribing (1992).
Jason Ditton is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Criminology
Research Unit at the University of Glasgow. His previous publica
tions include Part-time Crime; Controlology and The View from
Goffman. He is currently completing a book on cocaine use in
Scotland, and is beginning to research patterns of ecstasy use.
Michael Farrell is a research psychiatrist at the National Addiction
Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry. His interests include research in
training in the prevention and treatment of substance problems. He
has a particular interest in problems in young people and HIV and
drug problems; and in the social policy aspects of substance misuse
prevention.
Jane Goodsir has worked on legal issues concerning drug users since
the late 1970s. She became interested in drugs cases because of the
civil liberties issues they raised. She was Director of Release, the
national drugs charity for six years until 1991. At Release, she
campaigned against injustice affecting individual drug users, as well
as running a more conventional legal and drugs advice service.
Educated at University College London, and the University of Bris
tol, she has written on a range of drug-related legal and management
issues. She is currently conducting research on the management and
professional issues affecting organisations helping drug users.
Heidi Safia Mirza is Senior Lecturer in Social Science, South Bank
University. She has taught Afro-American Studies at Brown Univer
sity, USA, and Sociology at the University of London. She has
worked as a researcher on the Day-Care Project at the Thomas
vi
Notes on the Contributors vii
Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, and The Drug Infor
mation Project, Goldsmiths' College, University of London. She is
the author of Young, Female and Black (1992).
Joy Mott is a Principal Research Officer at the Home Office Research
and Planning Unit. She is responsible for planning and managing
research on drug misuse with a particular interest in drugs misuse and
crime.
Geoffrey Pearson is Wates Professor of Social Work in the University
of London, Goldsmiths' College. He is Associate Editor of the
British Journal of Criminology and a member of the British Society of
Criminology's national council. His published work includes The
Deviant Imagination (1975); Hooligan: A History of Respectable
Fears (1983); Young People and Heroin (1985); and The New Heroin
Users (1987).
Stewart Phillips worked as a researcher on the Drug Information
Project, Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He has worked
for the Inner London Probation Service, and is currently a postgradu
ate at the London School of Economics.
Harry Shapiro has been employed at the Institute for the Study of
Drug Dependence in London since 1979 both as an Information
Officer and currently as Head of Publications. He is also the author of
several ISDD publications and deputy editor of the ISDD journal
Drug/ink.
H. B. Spear joined the Home Office Drugs Inspectorate in 1952, after
completing National Service in the RAF, and retired as Chief Inspec
tor in 1986. In that time he witnessed most of the important changes
in the British drug misuse problem, which he is now attempting to
write up, while also pursuing his ancestors through the parish records
of Devon and Cornwall.
John Strang is Consultant Psychiatrist in Drug Dependence, Drug
Unit, National Addiction Centre, Maudsley Hospital, London and
was previously involved in the development of drug services in the
North West of England during the early/mid 1980s. He is now
actively involved in the development of clinical services for drug
misusers which also constitute a base for clinical research studies,
viii Notes on the Contributors
while also involved in the provision of training through a new Drug
Training Unit at the Maudsley. He is a member of the Advisory
Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and also a member of the Expert
Advisory Group on AIDS at the Department of Health. He is the
Consultant Adviser on Drug Services to the Department of Health.
He has written extensively in the scientific and popular press about
drug misuse and co-edited a book on AIDS and drug misuse.
Sujata Unnithan qualified from Liverpool University Medical School
in 1985 and is currently Senior Registrar at the Drug Dependency
Unit, Maudsley Hospital, London. She has conducted research into
the psychiatric phenomena associated with cocaine use and other
papers relating to relapse and emergency presentation of drug mis
users. Her current interests include research into pain and opiate
dependency and the behavioural pharmacological aspects of drug
misuse.
Cocaine and Crack: An
Introduction
Philip Bean
In the late 1980s dire predictions were made of a new drug crisis in
Britain. The drug was cocaine, with 'crack' its potent derivative. The
Sunday Times (7 January 1990) warned that Britain faced a cocaine
epidemic, as Columbian drug barons found it increasingly difficult to
smuggle drugs into the saturated United States market, and pointed
out that Britain had become the final destination for huge consign
ments of Columbian cocaine which were shipped direct from South
America into Europe or through the United States. The Sunday
Times added somewhat pointedly that customs seizures for cocaine
reached 420 kg or 935 lb in 1989, up 50 per cent on 1988. And, for
good measure, it added that crack was ten times more addictive than
cocaine.
This report rather typifies the media response to the modern
cocaine crisis of the late 1980s. The listed amount of cocaine seized
was, of course, correct, and easily verified from the figures taken
from HM Customs and Excise returns. Yet what it did not say was
that most of the 420 kg seized in 1989 were of one consignment in
transit to Amsterdam. Moreover, statements such as 'crack is 10 times
more addictive than cocaine' or 'Britain has become the final destination
for huge consignments of Columbian cocaine' were either simply wrong,
or based on assumptions which were highly questionable.
The Sunday Times was not the only newspaper to predict an
epidemic or threaten the cocaine Armageddon. Others fell into the
same trap (see Chapter 3). Yet eight months later, on 10 August
1990, The Times noted in an editorial that 'no evidence of the
threatened crack explosion has yet been found'. The Times also
traced some of the assumptions behind the earlier fears and found
them questionable. The main one was the belief that the trend in the
American black city ghettoes would sooner or later produce itself in
Britain, especially in cities with a significant Afro-Caribbean popula
tion. Yet The Times noted that West Indians in Britain had little in
common with blacks in the USA except their skin colour. Their
history and culture are different, so is their pattern of concentration
1