Powder Burns

Florida Trend, May 2008 by Keller, Amy

The trend began to reveal itself about five years ago - in centrifuges and under microscopes - at the University of Florida's Forensic Toxicology Laboratory. Each year, the lab assists seven Florida medical examiners' offices with about 3,000 cases, helping to identify toxic substances in bodies as medical examiners perform autopsies.

Dr. Bruce Goldberger, the UF toxicologist who runs the lab, says he began to notice a "significant increase" in the number of cases in which cocaine either caused the death or was present in the blood stream. When he and his colleagues looked at data collected by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement from all 24 of the state's medical examiners, they found that cocaine-related deaths had been rising all over Florida - from 1,034 in 2000 to 2,052 in 2006. The raw numbers also translated into a statistical spike in the cocaine-related death rate, from 6.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2001 to 11.2 in 2005.

Law enforcement officials, other medical researchers and substance abuse specialists agree: More than 20 years after cocaine's heyday in the early 1980s, a new generation has discovered the drug.

The new users, it seems, prefer to snort it rather than smoke it. "Crack users probably are in the minority of what we're seeing. We are seeing a lot of patients with powdered cocaine use," says Jerry Rudd, business development and community relations director for the Advanced Recovery Center in Delray Beach.

Consistent with a preference for powdered cocaine, the new users - and victims - tend to be college students and young, affluent professionals. Death certificates of cocaine users don't disclose income levels. But another UF researcher, Mark Gold, chief of the division of addiction medicine at UF's McKnight Brain Institute, found that the geographic regions marked by the biggest increases in cocaine-related death rates include college towns like Gainesville and Tallahassee and wealthy enclaves like Sarasota, Naples and Melbourne.

South Florida also remains a hotbed of cocaine use. These days, the "Casual Encounters" ads on the Craigslist website in Miami are full of solicitations like the one posted by a 30-year-old man from South Beach looking for a "sexy female to join me for some skiing." Elsewhere, a 33-year-old man says he's looking for "snow bunnies" to "help me finish this slope." Other postings make it more obvious that the writers, in addition to looking for sex, are seeking to share cocaine. "Anyone know a good, safe ski delivery?" asks a 27-year-old Boca Raton man.

What's attracting the new users? Low prices, for one. Between 2001 and 2006, the price of a gram of cocaine averaged about 30% less than it was in 2000. A late-2007 jump in the price to around $120 - attributed to a crack-down by Mexico on several cartels that disrupted supply - still left the price substantially less than its peak in the early 1980s, when a gram of pure cocaine cost as much as $600.

Experts also say the new users don't know what the previous generation learned about cocaine's dangers. In the minds of many, powder cocaine simply doesn't carry the same stigma as crack cocaine, and some mistakenly believe it is somehow safer. Some college-age women are turning to the drug for weight control, says Dr. Scott Teitelbaum, a University of Florida professor and medical director of the Florida Recovery Center. Meanwhile, cocaine-abusing celebrities like model Kate Moss and singer Amy Winehouse contribute to the drug's glamorous image. "Those are dangerous role models for our youth," says Bill Janes, Gov. Charlie Grist's drug adviser.

Richard W. Perry Jr. was a 19-year-old sophomore at Valencia Community College in Orlando when he returned home to Tequesta in North Palm Beach County in 2000 and admitted to his parents that he was a drug addict. "He told me he had a problem and he wanted to quit school because of it. He was fiending for cocaine. We were shocked. We were absolutely shocked," recalls Karen Perry, Richard's mother.

Richard Perry left school, and his parents got him into treatment. He spent some time working for his father's security company while going through out-patient therapy and returned to Valencia in May 2002. Somewhere along the line, his mother says, he relapsed. In June 2003, police officers showed up at Perry's home in Tequesta with the news that their 21-year-old son had been found dead in his apartment. An autopsy determined that Perry had consumed a lethal combination of cocaine, heroin, prescription drugs and alcohol.

The circumstances surrounding Perry's death are common, says Gary Martin, associate dean for student wellness at Lynn University in Boca Raton and a homicide detective who investigates drug-related deaths for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. And while cocaine is the second-leading substance discovered in drug-related deaths (methadone is first) in Palm Beach County, it's rarely the case that cocaine is the only drug found. Usually, it's a combination of chemicals. "Consuming cocaine is like stepping on the gas pedal and going 90 miles per hour, and when you're coming down off it, it's really uncomfortable. The way to come down slowly is with some of these other sedatives. It's called a parachute."