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A deep look into Columbia’s crack problem as the drug goes from sketchy to chic.

By Corey Hutchins

Columbia’s crack problem

By Corey Hutchins

Columbia’s crack cocaine help line answered on the second ring— but they didn’t want to talk to me.

When I told the lady who answered that I was a reporter— unfortunately not an addict, sorry— she said, “I’m a crisis line, I have to keep this line open.” And then she hung up.

So far I haven’t had the impulse to scramble to the nearest park, score a $20 rock and light it up behind the ice machine at the El Cheapo. But that’s just me.

And while it’s good to know that the crack cocaine help line in this city has the resolve to keep an open communication line I’m afraid the public dialogue about the drug and its users here stays entirely under the radar. A large crack bust will make the front page metro section of the dailies, but like a fleeting low-definition mug shot flashed across the evening news its out of the public conscience by the time Paris Hilton makes her next jailhouse sex tape.

But Columbia does have a serious crack problem and is certainly not a city starved of the highly addictive and dangerous drug known on the street here as “the hard” or “the work.” A look at this publication’s own crime section will show that very clearly.

The Columbia police narcotics division’s supervisor, Melron Kelly, says “crack doesn’t discriminate” and while it was originally thought of as a drug used by poor African Americans, he says now the police are finding it in every walk of life “from the poor neighborhoods to the rich neighborhoods.

When Kelly was a rookie cop he remembers the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park area outside Five Points being monopolized by the drug trade.

It’s gotten better now, he says, and where once you’d see swarms of dealers in the streets you may now see kids riding bicycles.

But that area is still a known drug zone.

City Paper participated in a crack deal there this week.

Not 30 seconds after entering Five Points at 3:30 a.m. June 18 we were able to secure the promise of a “ten to fifteen dollar rock” from a man riding a bike on Harden Street. He said he would lead us to a house “up the block” to get it. Simply acting as a runner, the man led us through the heart of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park neighborhood towards Millwood Ave. After making contact with a woman who dissapeared into a house and returned with several crack rocks wrapped in cellophane from a cigarette pack, the man took his cut of it and lit up. It was— alarmingly— all too easy.

But crack is not a glamorous drug by any means and if cocaine is the frat boy then crack is the pledge. It costs less to produce and consume than coke does and the high doesn’t last as long, which insures a crackhead will always come back for more.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), over six million people nationwide use crack cocaine (enough to fill the Palmetto State’s population once over and a half), and a 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that approximately 7.9 million Americans 12 or older reported trying it at least once in their lives.

In South Carolina, a 2001 Drug Threat Assessment from the NDIC listed abuse of crack as the primary drug threat as well as being the one most often associated with violent crime in the state. In 1998 crack accounted for the highest number of publicly funded treatment center admissions here surpassed only by marijuana, but officials said that number has been dropping.

Columbia was also one of the cities listed with crack cocaine “widely available” and “contributing to the most serious consequences,” in a November 2002 report called “Pulse Check: Trends in drug abuse” that was conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The report also stated that in Columbia it was adolescents who were the primary sellers of crack, which put our city in such company as Baltimore, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis and Seattle. But at least the crack dealers here aren’t getting high on their own supply, because “In Columbia,” the report reads, “sellers commonly smoke marijuana blunts.”

Sergeant Kelly agrees. “Crack and marijuana are neck and neck,” he says.

(One methadone treatment source in Columbia reported that positive piss tests for crack have increased there. Drug users in Columbia, the source said, often stay up all night using crack and then visit methadone clinics in the morning for a “methadone crash.”)

City Paper spoke to a number of current and former crackheads as well as those familiar with the territory to get a street-level barometric reading on the problem. Those who responded did so with the confidence that we wouldn’t publish their real names for this story. Like Jarvis, who said he would sweep the entire roof of his neighbor’s house for $3 just so he could score his next crack hit. He’ll also mow both a front and back lawn, he said, for only $5 on certain days, making him what another source called a “maintaining crackhead”— meaning he’s able to maintain his habit by working odd jobs to pay for it—even if it’s just a $4 hit that took him an hour to earn.

So why do people smoke crack?

Bottom line: it feels good.

That and it’s inexpensive. Smoking crack delivers a massive quantity of the drug to the lungs similar to a shot injection and the effect is felt immediately. A crack high is extremely intense but doesn’t last as long as snorting cocaine.

It’s also simple to make.

Users and sellers create the class-A substance by dissolving two parts powdered cocaine and one part baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) into hot water. You can ad B-12 for consistency if you want to get cute. Boil the mixture to separate the solid and then let it cool. The result is a yellowish or off-white piece that can be sold as a finger-long “slab” or broken up into rocks. Typically one rock is enough for one or two people to get high.

Adding the baking soda— and that the rocks can be smoked— is what inflates the crack dealer’s profit margin earning them some pretty decent loot if they’re careful. Of course selling crack can also earn some pretty serious jail time, too. That, of course, is your call.

Most users are scoring crack here from street dealers or from “crack houses,” the dilapidated single-units or apartments where the drug is generally made and sold. Often times it is not clear who owns the crack house and it acts as a kind of de facto flop house for users who use it like a revolving door of addiction and depravity.

But rule number one at the crack house is the crack house never closes.

“That’s why I stopped selling it,” says one City Paper source.

That, and that crackheads can’t follow directions.

People banging on the doors at all hours of the day and night; folks young and old dropping by for no other reason than to score; the telltale smell of burning baking soda and cocaine that’s not unlike the smell of burning fruit or plastic.

But the crack house is not a place where “young white people” should to go just to “check it out,” apparently, either.

Because when the police show up, “little white baggies get thrown around like flags at a football game;” and when a possession charge hits it’s going to be more than just a few-yard penalty.

Most crackheads smoke rock out of what they call a “stem,” a crack pipe made from the snapped-off section of a broken car antenna. (There’s another way, too, that is perhaps one of the best-kept secrets between the drug community and local storeowners: more on that later.)

“Mind if I stem up right quick?” might be what you’d hear while hanging around the backyard of a known dope house. While stemming up, the smoker stuffs a chunk of crack rock into the wider end of the antenna and, careful not to burn the lips, lights the end of it to take a hit.

Since the stem is metal and will get hot, a trick some crackheads use is to turn a regular Cricket lighter into a crack lighter.

Users do this by popping the metal sheath off the top of the clear plastic lighter and turning the black lever all the way to the “+” side. Lift the lever up over the white plastic gear, bring it back to the “-” side and then drop it back on the gear and crank it back toward the “+.” Doing this three or four times should be sufficient enough to produce a two to three inch flame: an instant “crack lighter.”

For folks with an aversion to lip-burning metal there is another— and similarly disturbing— way to score a cheap an easy glass crack pipe.

The next time you’re at a gas station or convenience store scope around the counter near the register for a box of “Love Roses.” They are 4-inch glass tubes with a tacky paper rose inside and corks closing off both ends. Buy a rose tube, take out the corks and ditch the rose. Voila: an instant glass crack pipe. For the filter users simply stuff a chunk of a Chore Boy or Brillo pad into one end.

In Columbia Love Roses generally go for $.99 at any gas station willing to sell them and are usually kept at the front counter next to the lighters and other items typically bought by smokers. And while most store clerks and storeowners might tell you they have no idea that the glass tubes with the paper rose inside are used as crack pipes they are entirely full of shit.

Walid Hakim, manager of the College Mart in Five Points, says he refuses to sell Love Roses because he knows exactly what they’re used for. Hakim says he also only sells scouring pads with built-in soap to discourage crackheads from using them as filters.

In some cities it is a crime to sell Love Roses and in others it’s only criminal if a patron specifically asks for a “stem” or a “pipe” and is given a Love Rose. The city of Chicago officially considers them drug paraphernalia.

Columbia police spokeswoman Sgt. Florence McCants said the police here are aware that Love Roses are bought from Columbia bodegas and used as crack pipes, and the officers have “done their homework” about it. She said that because the Love Roses are not sold explicitly for smoking crack— it just happens to be what they’re used for— there’s really not much they can do about it.

While the South Carolina Association of Convenient Stores’ executive director, Leigh Faircloth, was on vacation and not available for comment about the sale of Love Roses during the writing of this story someone at the associating did tell City Paper they hoped none of their members were knowingly selling them as drug-related products.

In the underground homeless documentary Skid Row Journey, by local filmmaker Eric “Protein” Moseley, a man is shown selling a box of rose tubes on the street along with a wad of steel wool. Moseley told City Paper that the Love Rose/crack pipe tradition is a long-known and well-kept secret between most storeowners and crackheads and likened it to when drug dealers used to use the stirrers at McDonalds to measure their dope. McDonalds has since switched to flat stirrers because of it.

Jerry, 46, lives in Columbia and was addicted to crack for over 20 years after a friend offered him a hit and he couldn’t stop using. He used to buy Love Roses to smoke it all the time. He’d be out on the streets all night long looking for a score. He’s since been off the rock for about five years now.

“If I were to buy [a Love Rose] now I’d give it to a young lady to show her how much I love her,” he says. “Crack had my life so messed up.”

Crack, which was made popular in the 1980s and is generally considered a drug consumed by street freaks and weirdos, has indeed achieved some toxic overspill into the university-crowd sphere of influence.

One source says that here in Columbia some college students are using the homeless as drug runners. Jonathon, a man who lost his job and spent a few months homeless until he found a new one, said during the time he spent on the streets of Five Points he saw a sinister pattern begin to emerge involving young people and the homeless.

“I would probably get a lot of backlash, you know? And I don’t need that in my life but I’m going to tell you: a lot of these guys, you’ll see them because they have a pattern,” he said. That pattern, he believes, is part of a secret network between nightlife workers, the college-age bar crowd, and the homeless.

Jonathon poses this scenario: A college sophomore has been doing cocaine with his buddies and they run out of blow. They ask a service industry worker if they know where they can score any, handing over a $20 bill. The $20 is passed on to a homeless man who is offered a few dollars himself to secure some coke and disappears into Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. He can’t find any skeet but he comes back with a crack rock. The kids say ‘fuck it,’ and why not? A new crack smoker may be born.

Michael, a white 27-year-old former college student who now works at a Columbia bar, says the first time he smoked crack was in kind of a similar situation. He was snorting coke at a party with friends and they ran out. Someone pulled out a crack rock. He’d blown so much coke so many times in the past so… why not? It was the worst feeling in the world, he said. And he certainly wasn’t proud.

Rachel, a 23-year-old waitress, says she started smoking crack when she found out her boyfriend was doing it. After a neck injury she suffered she says she found that smoking crack helped the pain. In no time she was addicted and had gone as far as to enlist friends and co-workers into helping her score, driving her to the gas station to buy crack pipes and taking her to dealers’ houses.

Henry, a middle-aged white Vietnam veteran who has been homeless in Columbia for 12 years says he can spot a crack dealer on the street here no problem.

“You see a [certain looking] dude riding a bicycle…he’s selling crack most likely.”

Henry says he’s not addicted to crack but will smoke it if someone has a pipe and offers it to him.

Sixty-two-year-old Willie says he smokes crack and is trying to get high tonight. Walking in the direction of Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, he says he doesn’t have a crack pipe on him so if he has to he’ll use an empty beer can. Pressing on the can, creating a depression in it and then poking a hole with a pin, he says he’ll knock some ash off a cigarette onto the hole and then put the crack rock in the ash to light it. Poking another hole in the side of the can he’ll use it as a carburetor and, as he puts it, “Oooooh Lord!”

In October 2005 an investigation was conducted in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park area that involved the FBI, Columbia police, the Richland County Sheriffs Office and other law enforcement. Undercover agents scored crack on video and when the case was prosecuted by an assistant U.S. attorney 23 people pled guilty to selling crack on Greene Street. During the fallout a 30-year-old man who called himself a “soldier” in the drug trade told a judge that he was personally responsible for selling up to a kilo of crack there every week.

Unfortunately, removing street dealers is like trying to weed a kudzu patch.

After another investigation that lasted six years in the McDuffie Ave. and Gonzales Gardens area of downtown Columbia, the city police’s Violent Gang Task Force determined that the drug dealing there was controlled by the Gangsta Killer Bloods or “GKB,” a set of the United Blood Nation originating from New York.

While I-95 from Miami to New York is commonly called the “cociane highway,” sources say Columbia has turned into a decent drop-off point for traffickers. And anyone who says it never snows in the “city where friendliness flows” obviously has never been out past 11 p.m. More cocaine means more crack and if there’s one thing the government hates about drug dealers it’s that they don’t get any money from the sales.

That all changed in 1994 when South Carolina wanted to raise revenue for the state by making it a law that illegal drug dealers must purchase tax stamps from the state department of revenue. Stamps for cocaine, heroin and marijuana (among others) where created and can still be purchased at the office on Gervais Street in the lobby of the State Museum.

When I rolled into there mid-day June 13 and asked the lady at the front desk for a “marijuana tax stamp” she was happy to oblige. She asked if I would like to purchase a stamp for 1 gram or for something more (the friend I was with likened this to being Supersized at the drive thru). For $3.50 anyone can purchase the official stamp that proves you have paid your taxes on at least 1 gram of marijuana bought or sold in the state.

The price for a cocaine stamp is much higher and since I wasn’t willing to pay the $200 for one— even though expensing it out to City Paper through the bookkeeper might have been interesting— I asked for a copy of the application form. The form shows that cocaine stickers (pictured on the stamp is a bleached skull with red eyes) cost $200 per gram and for a “50 dosage unit” stamp (pictured: a palmetto tree, moon, and grim reaper wielding a sickle) of larger controlled substances (drugs not sold by weight like LSD) the cost is $2,000 per.

Legislators created the stamps to bring money to the department of revenue from the illegal sale of narcotics but no drug dealers have lined up to buy the stamps (even though because of constitutional concerns over self-incrimination they don’t ask your name) and the department told City Paper that they haven’t sold a single cocaine tax stamp to date. In other words— surprise— no crack dealers are paying taxes on their sales.

Where they are lining up though, it seems, are the lines for financial assistance from the state. Some crackheads in Columbia who receive that assistance say one way they earn their drug money is by selling their EBT cards (the state’s method for issuing food stamps).

They do it by selling the card for a lower price than the value it carries.

One City Paper source said he paid a crackhead $125 for an EBT card that was worth $250 in groceries.

“You need a personal pin number though,” he said. “So I made [the crackhead] come with me to make sure it worked.”

And what does he think the man did with the $125?

“I don’t know…bought crack?”

Sergeant Kelly says that during his time working narcotics in Columbia he’s tried to make a dent in what he doesn’t want to call an “epidemic.” Crack is a dangerous drug, he says, and the scope of its reach is sometimes surprising.

Back in Five Points the dealer hands over a bag and says, “It’s your lucky day.” It appears he’s going to give half off to a first-time buyer. So I guess we can bust at least one myth about crack dealing— the first one’s not always free.