Deaths from cocaine frighten U.S. addicts

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 25

Deaths from cocaine frighten U.S. addicts

“We had no idea coke could kill” was a ’ ■ statement echoed in thousands of worried inquiries to cocaine “hot-lines” throughout the United States after the drug-induced deaths off two young super-ffit athletes. WILLIAM SCOBIE reports from Los « Angeles. ■

The multi-billion dollar cocaine habit in the United States has claimed two more lives — and for once the country’s 22 million or so coke users are giving the tragedy serious attention.

The victims this time were not the usual ghetto junkies, but two of the nation’s finest and most promising young athletes, both in superb physical condition and both, friends say, not regular users.

Len Bias, aged 22, called by sports writers “the nation’s best college basketball player,” had been celebrating his selection that day for the top United States team, the Boston Celtics. Around 3 a.m. he suffered a massive coke-induced heart attack. Friends swore Bias was not a “coke-head.” “I’m convinced it was his first use of the stuff,” said his coach.

Don Rogers, aged 23, described as one of United States football’s finest defensive backs, had also been at a party all night with bachelor friends in Sacramento, California. He was to be married next day. Around 6 a.m., after ingesting more than a gram of cocaine, he collapsed in a coma. Efforts to revive him in hospital failed. By. 10.30 a.m. he was dead.

‘Certain to

get worse’

There is no evidence that either man fell victim to the latest United States cocaine craze — the use of “crack” or "rock”, coke, a smokeable, cheaper, more addictive, and more lethal distillate of the drug that experts consider more deadly than heroin. Police searching Bias’ car after his death found 12 grams of powdered coke, the snortable, traditional, all-American variety. The Los Angeles police chief, Darryl Gates, says the coke problem is certain to get worse before it gets better. Efforts to stem the flow have failed for purely economic reasons. Cocaine has become a $6O billion industry in the United States, according to the * “Wall Street Journal.” Efforts to stem the tide, of ever-cheaper cocaine from South America have proved futile. It is, as the President of Peru, Alan Garcia, has put it, “Latin America’s only successful multinational.” Amid renewed calls for mandatory drug testing in the United States workplace and sports locker-room, black leaders from the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Willie Brown, speaker of the California state Assembly, joined some 25,000 mourners at funeral services for the two black athletes. “The nooses of the Ku Klux Klan never killed as many of our young people as the pushers of drugs,” Jackson told the crowd at Bias’ funeral. "On the day we mourn, I hope young people learn.”

Coroners ruled that both men were in perfect shape, with no trace of. heart disease. Thein deaths were the direct result of cocaine poisoning. No alcohol and no other drugs were found in either body. “We just had no idea coke could kill,” said one of Bias’s room-mates at the University of Maryland. That statement was echoed in thousands of worried calls to cocaine “hot-lines” and hospitals across, the United States. ■' . How could two world-class athletes — one a 6ft Bin (230 cm basketball giant, the other a 2201 b (100 kg over-muscled football star — die from a few snorts of coke when millions use -it daily, often for years? How could the favourite “recreational drug” in the United States prove lethal on first use?

“One answer is that it happens every-day,” says Dr David Smith, founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco. “Many cardiologists are still surprised to learn that a cocaine overdose can cause cardiac arrest. In fact, coke-related deaths have increased. 300 per cent since 1980.”

In Los Angeles, now vying with Miami for the title of “coke capital of the United States,” 56 cocaine deaths were reported last year, compared with five in 1980. Researchers suspect the real figure may be far higher, because doctors rarely inquire into a heart patient’s drug habits,

Copyright — London Observer Service.

and inadequate knowledge of cocaine’s lethal qualities causes coroners to miss many victims.: Medical experts are divided over the fatal reactions of Bias and Rogers. Some believe the two men may have been exceptionally sensitive to the drug, as many are to penicillin. Others point to evidence that both young men — students, out on sprees with money to .bum — ingested large quantities of costly, unadulterated, top-quality coke. The average middle-class user sniffs street coke that has been “cut” (diluted) with anything, from quinine to talcum powder. Roger’s heart failed when blood flooded his lungs and chest cavity, said the coroner at his inquest, Charles Simmons, interfering with the heart’s action as a pump. His liver and kidneys were also damaged by the congestion of blood.