Cocaine: Hidden in Plain Sight

The New York Times ^ | 10 June 2007 | MELENA RYZIK

[ByDesign]

“I use to jump the tubes, go into NYC and did the nightlife in my pizza triangle.

I never saw cocaine in real life.”

You just were’nt looking in the right clubs, in the right places. It’s been there as long as I’ve been going out to clubs, and never went away since - and since I work in the music biz, I see it constantly.

Coke and meth (speed) users congregate in the bathroom, or in an office, or somewhere out of sight. The ONLY change I’ve seen since the early 80’s is that it’s not done as openly. I’ve been to many a party with a “rising star”, ie. someone who just came into some money, and was offered some like you would be offered a beer - now you have to ask. (And no, i turned it down, I’ve done speed once when 17, and hated it, and never did coke. I rarely drink, and don’t smoke pot or do any other drugs. My choice, and I don’t preach. What you choose to put in your body is your problem, and don’t make it mine).

It’s still THE fuel that drives the music industry. You name the act, I don’t care if it’s a top country act, pop act, oldy moldies, new rising rawk star, the crew is most definitely doing it, to maintain the tour schedule, they’re doing it in the recording studios, and most of the acts are doing it. I see it. It never went away. Young bands and crew dabble with meth, coke appears with success and fame, it’s expected and a status symbol. Older guys making a comeback rely on it to force their 40+ year old bodies keep up with hectic touring that wears out 20-somethings. Bands that have been around forever that everyone knows are held together by speed or coke. You can judge a band’s success by what’s being used backstage - just starting out/barely making it beer and pot, some money coming in speed and shrooms and catering, success better grades of speed and meth and an open bar, big hit the coke dealers come knocking and the champagne is served by the case.

It’s still all over modeling, as skinny waifs with no hips are in, and how do you think those actresses who appear on the cover of tabloids in the supermarket go to 0% body fat after having a baby? Lo carb comes and goes as a fad, many of them are snorting their way to bikinis.

As long as there’s entertainment industries, there will be drugs, booze, cheap women, and stories of excess you will only hear about years after the fact. I’ve seen people who claim in the press to never touch drugs, drink to excess, smoke, or chase women while married - and go right out and do all of that. If they’re actors, they are trained liars and their PR agents insist. Rawk stars are expected to party. Models do whatever they want, and usually do it to excess, but behind closed doors or at VIP clubs where the press arent allowed, no cameras, and everyone knows to keep their mouths shut or they won’t get in again. I can tell you two clubs in Hollywood right now where the current generation of movie/tv actors in their 20’s and just getting big party, and it looks the same as it always has, it could be the 80’s or 90’s.

Like fat people who hide their binges, drug users hide and lie about how much they do, even when it’s acceptable. We’re still feeling the tail end of the ‘Just Say No” pretending, so celebrities and club goers and such hide it in public, and lie about it when asked, but mountains of cocaine come over the border, and it’s not all crack heads doing it. Many of them preach rehab and teh wonders it did for them, all the while still using nightly.

Oh, add politicians to that mix, several drug dealers were overheard braging about how local pols and some national reps were their best customers. Surprised? Don’t be. Bill Clinton I fully beleive was our first “party generation” presidents, his generation used in college, and never stopped, and blown dry hair and suits don’t change their party going roots - and if you find politicians partying, you can never fail to find ceo’s and lawyers and industry types right alongside them doing teh same damned things.

Surprised at drug use? I’m surrounded by it. Please.

[Calpernia]

>>>>Surprised at drug use? I’m surrounded by it. Please.

Pardon?

[krb]

What ruined the lives? Getting busted, or the drug itself?

[Ken H]

Alarming article on cocaine. Don't be fooled -- the vices that show up in large cities, and the problems they cause, very quickly turn up everywhere in America.

For crying out loud, that makes it sound like cocaine is some new urban phenomenon that must be stopped before it spreads to the rest of society.

Cocaine has had several waves of popularity over the last few decades - it was supposedly quite fashionable among Wall Street traders in the 80's, for example.

Even drug warriors concede that cocaine is readily available at an affordable price to anyone in the US who wants it. It's been that way for decades.

[Osage Orange]

Ok, if someone comes in with an alcohol or cocaine overdose and can't pay, treat them and let them do community service to make up the money.

And if they die....?

And if they linger and wax and wane for month$...and then die?

[Ken H]

And if they linger and wax and wane for month$...and then die?

Then blame the nanny state for taking things from you on behalf of the common good - in this case, for taxpayer funded health care.

[vpintheak]

Don’t know of anyone who died from their first beer. Illegal drugs on the other hand....

[AnnaZ]

NICKELBACK
"Rockstar"

I'm through with standing in line
to clubs we'll never get in
It's like the bottom of the ninth
and I'm never gonna win
This life hasn't turned out
quite the way I want it to be

I want a brand new house
on an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in
And a king size tub big enough
for ten plus me

I'll need a credit card that's got no limit
And a big black jet with a bedroom in it
Gonna join the mile high club
At thirty-seven thousand feet

I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and
James Dean is fine for me

I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name

[CHORUS]
'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blond hair

Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar
Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar

I wanna be great like Elvis without the tassels
Hire eight body guards that love to beat up assholes
Sign a couple autographs
So I can eat my meals for free

I think I'm gonna dress my ass
with the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the Playboy mansion
Gonna date a centerfold that loves to
blow my money for me

I'm gonna trade this life
For fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair
And change my name

'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blond hair
And we'll hide out in the private rooms
With the latest dictionary and
today's who's who
They'll get you anything
with that evil smile
Everybody's got a
drug dealer on speed dial
Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar
Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar

I'm gonna sing those songs
that offend the censors
Gonna pop my pills
from a pez dispenser
When they ask why I drink all day
I'll say because I can

I'll get washed-up singers writing all my songs
Lip sync em every night so I don't get 'em wrong
Then listen to the fans tell me how damn good I am

I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name


[CHORUS]

[steve86]

What ruined the lives? Getting busted, or the drug itself?

The work performance of the one with the clearance suffered before the arrest. He was being monitored. So you could say, both.

[Erasmus]

“Six lines; no waiting.”

[GOP_Raider]

So can alcohol.

Or posting at DU. :)

[Erasmus]

“[...] said Roxy Summers, a party promoter and D.J. who goes by the name Oxy Cottontail."

Or, Oxycontin Tail.

[Clemenza]

Ah, what is old is new again. My dad has told me stories of going to business dinners at Luger's and the old Lutece, and seeing guys doing lines at lunchtime.

Nosecandy was everywhere during the '80s, despite the pretensions of "The War on Drugs." Interesting to see it making a comeback.

[GOP_Raider]

Don't be fooled -- the vices that show up in large cities, and the problems they cause, very quickly turn up everywhere in America.

To say nothing of a drug like ecstasy.

[little jeremiah]

In the early 80’s I lived near Santa Cruz, saw young teenagers doing lines in a public bathroom at a park.

That’s my one and only personal experience with it.

I haven’t heard of it for a while. I guess people are still so miserable and empty they have to attempt to fill up the emptiness with poisons.

[LadyDoc]

ah, but they aren’t “adults” they are immature. And by taking drugs they will stay immature. Look at the hippies who became Democrats and never grew up...
;-)

[nathanbedford]

Should we decriminalize?

It seems to me the question is not whether you or I should care about what a third party puts into his body, that is afterall a moral judgment, rather, the question is whether the government should care about what someone puts into his body?

Clearly the government has a constitutional right to regulate and criminalized drugs just as it has the right to regulate food and ethical drugs. The question is not whether it's constitutional but whether it is good public policy.

Seems to me that if a government prohibition on the use of drugs actually eliminated drug use, few except perhaps some aging hippies and top models would argue vehemently against such laws which would redeem so many wretched lives. But experience has shown that government fiat does not eliminate drug use. So the real question is, does government prohibition reduce drug use? And if it does, is the price worth paying? It is not entirely clear that the laws against drug use actually reduce their use because the prohibition itself creates a financial incentive which works to subsidize its use. The government has never found a way to eliminate or reduce drug usage without inserting a profit factor. Worse, the more the government is effective in reducing the inflow of illegal drugs, the more it creates a counter incentive of increased profitability by the law of supply and demand. Perversely, since the drugs tend to be addictive there is a physical compulsion to seek more of the drug and, since government efforts to eliminate it inevitably raise its price, users in withdrawal are tempted to finance their habits by becoming dealers. So it is not clear whether the government's efforts to reduce drugs by prohibiting their use actually does more harm than good.

One of the prices we pay for our government's campaign against drugs is certainly a loss of liberty. I tend towards the Libertarian's view that it is none of the government's damn business what I put in my body. However, I recognize that such usage inevitably presents a risk to society. I do not want inebriated drivers plowing into my automobile whether they are drunk on alcohol or drugs. But society has learned a hard lesson, that is better to make the drunk driving the crime but not the consumption of alcohol itself.

Another price we pay is a loss of privacy. Mandatory testing of both government and private employees is to some degree intrusive. Queries about drug use and application forms are equally intrusive. Undercover agents operating in public bathrooms is an affront to our dignity. Eavesdropping of telephone conversations is unquestionably an invasion of privacy. Is the reduction, or rather the presumed reduction, if any, in the amount of drug usage obtained by these intrusions worth the price?

We pay a great financial price as well. The war on drugs costs us billions of dollars annually in enforcement and incarceration costs. Is this money well spent?

There is an insidious price as well: corruption and its handmaiden, cynicism. Our police, our border agents, our judges, one might say the entire criminal justice apparatus has been infected with a corruption generated by the huge profits to be made-profits which are there only because the government by its policies has created them. Inevitably cynicism results in the whole of the people beginning to despise rather than revere the rule of law.

Because drugs are illegal, the price is high and profits are enormous. Yet we send our boys to fight in Afghanistan to deprive Taliban chieftains of their poppy fields which finance at least indirectly the very terrorism we fight against. Would it not be better simply to eliminate the profits in poppies by legalizing the drug? can we ever hope to bring sanity to Columbia while we in effect subsidize narco's by billions of dollars a year? Is the damage to our foreign policy, like the damage to our precious rule of law, worth what benefit we get from criminalizing drugs use?

On balance, I have to throw my lot in with William F. Buckley and say that the war against drugs is lost and we ought to try a new tact.

[BipolarBob]

I too have libertarian leanings in this area. But I can testify that a drug clouded mind has lost its reasoning. They care not for the safety of society, not for those around them and inevitably lose status of a productive citizen. Their one and all consuming thought is for their next fix. The consequences of crime are not a deterrent for those truly in the madness of drug use. At what point can we say this person has control and may be allowed to have recreational use and this other person presents a danger to themselves and all around them? To drive machinery in such an impaired state puts innocent lives at risk. How much risk for how much liberty?