00:00:23.940 - 00:01:14.950

Oh, Mm. Mhm. Yeah. Oh, Mhm, Mhm. Mhm. You? Yeah, if you want to want to look at the real tragedy of cocaine rock, 23 year old housewife from Boca Raton, a 39 year old businesswoman from Miami, a 25 year old dental assistant from Hollywood, 45 year old municipal planning supervisor from Dade County.

00:01:15.540 - 00:01:36.460

The 23 year old year old newlywed from Val Harbor, a 25 year old cosmopolitans from Opa Locka, a 35 34 year old attorney from Carl Gable. They're all dead. And that's a small sample of 34 people in South Florida who were snuffed out by the killer cocaine since the first of this year.

00:01:37.540 - 00:01:58.950

Hello, I'm Senator Lawton, Child's of Florida. What you've just seen is an excerpt from a Senate hearing held on July 15th on Crack Cocaine, and what you just heard are seven compelling reasons to watch this program from start to finish. Seven Floridians dead, each of them killed by crack, the cheapest, most addictive, most widespread killer drug in the country.

00:01:59.340 - 00:02:16.860

And just months ago, only a few people even knew what it was, but it killed basketball star Lenny bias and it killed on Rogers of the Cleveland Browns. It can kill your own family. What is this stuff, anyway? It's cocaine that you can smoke. It'll make you higher faster than anything else there is.

00:02:16.910 - 00:02:32.850

You can smoke it from a soft drink can. Just like this one. You just heat it with a lighter and the rock turns to vapor. And then when you inhale it, it hits your brain in 10 seconds. It'll keep you high from five or 10 minutes, but it can make you a slave for the rest of your life.

00:02:33.440 - 00:02:59.560

With so many drugs around, maybe you think all this sounds like exaggeration. Well, I want you to just listen to what others have to say. The euphoric high I got from crack lasted only 2 to 5 minutes. While intoxicated. I was paranoid. I could hear the slightest sounds When the high war off, I went into deep depression and became desperate to get high again.

00:03:01.040 - 00:03:23.860

My finances were growing thin out of cash but willing to risk anything to get more crack. I robbed three drug dealers who gave street service. I felt cheated that the high was over. I had never done anything like that before. And then they said, When you go down, you go way down and then all you want to do is get high again.

00:03:24.640 - 00:03:43.540

And we talked to one kid that said, Three days after he started taking rocks, he was hooked on him. He couldn't get off of it. She had lost her job. She had lost her family. She lost her Children. She was addicted to cocaine, told me not to pay her in money for the information that you've given her, but to give the money to her mother because she told him she would go right out and buy cocaine with.

00:03:43.550 - 00:04:04.270

She threw everything away at college degree, a good paying professional job. And now she's a street whore in Fort Lauderdale. As to the human tragedy, who can measure the value of one human life, rock cocaine is touching hundreds of lives. In our county alone, I have seen young men who were a few years ago strong high school football stars.

00:04:04.280 - 00:04:36.160

Today they are emaciated. The victims of Rocco came. It's a bad habit, obviously, but it's one that can start very, very, very fast, and they've even had documentation and calling some of the rehab centers of people who became addicted as little as 2 to 3 doses, and it drove me to such steps of suppression depression that I tried suicide has already noticed I was arrested for drug drug trafficking in 1985 Cocoa Beach Crack cocaine constitutes the most dangerous illicit drug they've ever confronted.

00:04:36.740 - 00:04:58.600

Crack seems to be an egalitarian drug, attracting users of all races, colors and creeds, all walks of life and income in all degrees of dependence. It is also one of the most challenging of all drugs for law enforcement to control because it is relatively easy to produce, transport cell and ingest the speed of that material.

00:04:58.600 - 00:05:15.460

Going to the brain is very rapid, goes into the lungs and immediately goes through the heart and is pumped up to the brain. And then you get an intense change in the mood of the individual, which initially is extremely pleasant, and someone wants to repeat it.

00:05:15.840 - 00:05:35.750

But because it's gone in so fast, the level drops down quickly, and with the level dropping down, somebody feels terrible. Some of the people you just heard from were cracked victims some were elected officials. And you've heard from a professor of pharmacology, and you heard the views of several law enforcement officials from Florida.

00:05:36.340 - 00:05:55.260

What they're saying is exactly what I want to get across crack isn't just a cheap thrill. It could end up being a cheap kill. Eight months ago, we never even heard of crack. Since then, law enforcement officials from all over Florida have been telling me how the crack plague has grown and what it can do.

00:05:55.920 - 00:06:19.710

I've already held meetings in West Palm Beach in Sarasota, Tallahassee and ST Pete, Fort Myers and Fort Pierce in Pensacola, Bushnell, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. At our meeting in West Palm Beach, Mayor Mary Hinton of Jupiter made it clear how seductive and how dangerous crack really is supposedly the fastest addicted addicting drug that they know of today.

00:06:19.710 - 00:06:53.950

That's what what happens in cocaine use is that it also the person has an addictive personality, starts on cocaine. Even with a minimal amount of doses, we'll open up other addictive traits. For example, obsessive eaters, alcoholism and cocaine use go very closely together. From what I've understood, talking these psychologists addictive, absolutely crack is so addictive that people will break the law, any law that gets in their way just to get more money to satisfy that urge.

00:06:54.520 - 00:07:19.760

That's certainly true in Orange County, Sheriff Lawson Lamar reported on the situation in our media in Orlando, and we found that out of that 106 people, 35% were habitual cocaine users, 54% were habitual marijuana users and 44% were habitual alcohol users. Now we've got fully over a third of those people doing cocaine.

00:07:20.240 - 00:07:40.260

85% of the cocaine users are resorting to crime to buy it. So we look at our criminal population. We find over a third of them are on cocaine for those specific crimes, and 85% of those are having to resort to crime to buy the cocaine. The average habit right now that we have in this jail is about $445 a week.

00:07:40.840 - 00:08:03.030

That is enough money that you can't support it honestly in most cases, so that leaves only 15% of the people claiming no other crime to support that habit. The implications are are staggering. The ages of onset are very, very young we're finding frequently that robbers are using that cocaine within 15 minutes of conducting the robbery at which they get caught.

00:08:03.220 - 00:08:24.800

They'll often use their last dose of cocaine right before going out to commit the robbery. So what we have in Florida, after several years of good crime decreases as a crime increase last year. And we feel that probably the largest single driving factor in that increase is the criminality that surrounds the cocaine habits of a lot of these young people.

00:08:24.800 - 00:08:41.260

And we find the age of onset going down and down and down. Uh, I think that within a few years, the age of onset on cocaine, this is an estimate will probably be under 15 years of age. I asked Lieutenant Tom Stora of the Collier County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit about who the crack dealers are.

00:08:41.840 - 00:09:06.450

I'm robbery of heroin dealing, cocaine dealing, marijuana, dealing bad, just bad folks all around. And they found a new way to make money, and they're doing it. Selling it will sell to anybody are primarily problem has been with juveniles high school. Now we haven't with Sheriff Monjo that we haven't seen its surface on the actual campuses because everybody knows where to get it off campus.

00:09:07.140 - 00:09:23.350

And we've used our intelligence that we've used with our school resource officers to target those areas. The hot areas off campus we just can't keep up with. But it's not only the number of dealers that make crack hard to control. Part of its appeal is how easy it is to use.

00:09:23.840 - 00:09:38.930

You know, it's a consumer oriented drug. You can buy the drug on the street. You can get your coat bottle, which is all we're seeing down. There is Coke cans like the one gentleman here said that they dish out of coke, can put a slot in the back, drop a rock on it, take a butane lighter, light it up and take a hit off of it.

00:09:38.930 - 00:10:18.260

It's gone. It's consumed on the spot it's ready to use on the spot. And it's so easy to get the paraphernalia that you can sit in the back of a car, consumer rocket, cocaine and get out of the car and walk on the street. Another frustration are law enforcement officials have our outmoded laws, which emphasize the quantity, the amount but overlooked the purity I feel in our department fields that if there was some way that you could put the percentage of purity into a trafficking statute, that it would probably have a more effect on the dealer, then it would as far as the mount goes, because you know, four or five rocks is not going to come up to a grand.

00:10:19.540 - 00:10:33.250

These meetings really hit home. The people on the front lines convinced me that Crack was a super addictive killer and it was turning up everywhere. When I went back to Washington, I introduced three bills in the Senate to follow up on what I learned in Florida.

00:10:33.940 - 00:10:55.450

One of the bill's lowers the amount of the drug necessary to earn the stiffest penalty. Now it's 1000 g. My bill makes it 1 g. The second bill makes it a felony to employ a minor in a crack house or any other illegal drug business, and the third bill toughens greatly the penalties for making and selling crack within 1000 ft of a school.

00:10:56.140 - 00:11:16.160

These bills were the subject of a special sight hearing in mid July. At that same hearing, the committee also heard from two former crack users from Florida. I started smoking marijuana socially while at similar high school in Sanford. While in college, I continue to smoke marijuana.

00:11:17.440 - 00:11:49.860

I did not use cocaine because I was aware of its damaging effects. This was the time of the Richard Pryor accident. After college, I got a job as sports editor of The Melbourne Times, a genetic company weekly, and continue to smoke marijuana socially. In 1984 while sports editor or sports copy of that of the Tampa Tribune, I began sniffing cocaine with friends.

00:11:50.840 - 00:12:22.550

I didn't buy the drug, but used it when friends supplied it for me. In 1985 and height of my career, I began buying power cocaine, putting it in cigarettes and smoking it in the form of freebasing. The high was important enough for me. A friend whom I knew in high school introduced me to freebasing rock or crack cocaine.

00:12:23.540 - 00:12:47.310

I like the Russia gave me. I didn't think I would be addicted. That's the way it starts for so many crack addicts. It can't happen to me, but it does, and once it's got its teeth in you, it'll rip your life apart within two months. My craving for crack cocaine turn into a 150 to $200 a week habit.

00:12:48.340 - 00:13:08.320

I thought I could handle it. I got behind and paying but my bills and had to borrow money from members of my family, credit unions, our bank. Some of the money I borrowed went for drugs, and I was never able to balance my budget. He'd exhausted his finances.

00:13:08.320 - 00:13:30.660

He'd borrowed what he could, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough, and the desperation finally caught up with him. I was bolder than I've ever been in my life. At the same time, I became very depressed. I thought of suicide. I knew I wasn't attic and that I had lost control of my life.

00:13:33.440 - 00:13:54.260

I sought help from my pastor and the personnel department at the Orlando Sentinel, where I worked. No one could give me what I needed. During those moments of desperation, I felt very hopeless. I said to myself, No one wants to help me, so I want to help myself.

00:13:56.940 - 00:14:18.950

I robbed the bank in ST Petersburg, Florida, on February 7th, 1986 I handed the teller a note demanding cash. I got away with $700 on the same day. I was arrested about 30 minutes later, the arrest was a blessing in disguise. I was finally finally getting some help.

00:14:19.940 - 00:14:45.050

Charles Jackson, 26 years old, a young man starting over after a tragic encounter with crack cocaine. Unfortunately, his experience has been repeated countless times. Another victim of crack, Donald Hair of Cocoa Beach, had his own cruel story to tell. At the age of 23 I became so depressed because of my crack habit that I attempted suicide by trying to cut my risk.

00:14:46.040 - 00:15:13.360

In April 12th, 1985 I was arrested for trafficking cocaine and possessing the selling controlled substance. I'm a professional karate fighter instructor. I only managed Donny Hair karate in fitness studios in Cocoa Beach, Florida I was a peek, a Florida super welterweight, full contact karate champion in 1983 I'm a third degree black belt in karate and was instructor of physical education at the Florida Institute of Technology.

00:15:14.040 - 00:15:34.150

Donald told our committee about the allure of crack, and he told us just what the addiction can do. In its crack form, Cocaine induces a great high. I didn't ever want to stop smoking it. The first time I smoked crack out of a pipe, I spent three days in one room with four other crack users.

00:15:34.740 - 00:15:51.400

In that time, we used up about $3000 in cocaine, none of which I had to pay for because I was on guard duty. So they let me have it for nothing. Donald and Charles learned the hard way about crack cocaine, but the lessons they've learned are important to all of us.

00:15:52.240 - 00:16:04.950

I think what we need to do is change the image of cocaine. It seems to be the drug for the elite crowd that it's not addictive, and that's okay and most people do it. I think the most important thing is that image needs to be changed, that it is a killer.

00:16:05.840 - 00:16:29.860

Mr. Jackson, I think there is a great need for education in schools. I did not have any education about cocaine when I was in high school or in college, and there is a misconception that pallet form of cocaine is okay. I know several school teachers who who used it, and they criticized me for smoking it, but said, um, it's socially accepted for the power form, and they don't see any harm in that.

00:16:30.140 - 00:16:51.160

So there is a great need for education and school system. Well, these two young men who testified before the Senate committee represent a problem reaching well beyond their own stories. In fact, it's kind of hard to believe how big the problem really is. I guess the only way is you've got to hear it from law enforcement officials who fight it every day.

00:16:51.540 - 00:17:11.360

Sheriff Jamie Adams of Sumpter County, Florida, was the first one to bring it to my attention, and I invited him to testify in Washington. As our undercover operation continued, our officers continued making buys all in the general area of the city of Wildwood, with a population of 3322.

00:17:12.440 - 00:17:38.460

In June, 32 arrest warrants were issued for the buyers made by our undercover officer. With these arrest warrants, 30 persons were charged with the sale and delivery of cocaine mhm. In a period of just over 10 months, we had to produce sufficient cause to arrest and charge 34 people with sale and delivery of cocaine, and 33 of these were selling rock cocaine in a county of just over 27,000.

00:17:39.140 - 00:17:56.170

I find that a staggering number and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The Centre County problem came up suddenly and unexpectedly, but once the threat was discovered, the people in that county got together and got busy in Santa County. No, we have a serious problem.

00:17:56.940 - 00:18:14.670

We have faced our problem and we intend to fight our battle. Citizens have come forth offering to put on events to raise money for drugs abuse prevention. A citizens committee has been formed, and it will be exploring ideas of community involvement to aid in the battle.

00:18:15.240 - 00:18:36.760

The Wildwood Rotary Club has taken on the rock cocaine problem as a project and have pledged to take a leadership position in seeking statewide Rotary Club support for efforts to strengthen state and federal law enforcement ability to deal with the drug. Our school system has joined with my department in an effort to provide school resources officers in our schools.

00:18:37.540 - 00:18:53.640

Well, you can see crack cocaine is different, much different from just another fad. In the drug culture, crack is an addiction and death at vending machine rates and just about as easy to find crack cocaine gets its name from the sound that it makes when it burns.

00:18:54.040 - 00:19:11.870

And it's already burned thousands of our young people. We've got to hunt it down in a hurry before it destroys more lives. And we need to find out more about the drug and look for new ways to fight it. In July, we held meetings in Florida, in Washington, a Washington conference with Florida sheriffs and police chiefs.

00:19:12.340 - 00:19:26.210

I had a personal discussion with the attorney general of the United States, and in that same month the House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics went to New York and held a hearing on crack cocaine. It's been a problem for this country for a number of years.

00:19:26.220 - 00:19:41.820

Uh, in spite of that, I don't think we've ever seen the kind of problem that we're now facing and crack. I think it's entered a totally new dimension. Uh, it is a tidal wave that's striking our country. New York and Florida Very similar. I think we're both ports of entry.

00:19:41.830 - 00:20:02.860

We seem to be the place where these plagues sort of hit first. But we also know Governor we're dealing with a national problem. 25 states now have a crack problem, and if the others don't have it today, they just haven't discovered that haven't arrived. Anything that can be as cheap as this can be made in the kitchen anywhere else.

00:20:02.860 - 00:20:22.950

And again, we know the availability of cocaine price has dropped since the January 1st. This year, Uh, price of cocaine is one half of what it was. There's more available. The purity of the powder form is higher than it's ever been, and we know once it's free based, it becomes 98 to 100% pure.

00:20:23.440 - 00:20:40.350

We have never seen a problem strike us this way. Someone has said it might run its course in 10 years, but the carnage that will be out there, uh, in the number of addicts, the number of lost lives and broken lives and families, uh, is just incalculable.

00:20:41.240 - 00:21:05.930

The hearing resulted in the creation of a special bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives, which will report crime legislation to the full house within the next 60 days. After the hearing, I visited some of the neighborhoods in New York City where crack is sold. That's right, and you know, you I'm sure you know as well as I do that none of the cocaine that comes to that either your state or my state, has grown in America.

00:21:05.930 - 00:21:19.880

It all troops from South. That becomes a severe problem for us to do. But we also know in Florida I guess it's true up here. Cocaine is half the price of what it was in January this year. Well, I've been in an artist more of it than we've ever seen.

00:21:19.880 - 00:21:46.450

You're absolutely right center. I've been in the narcotics division for about six years, and the price of cocaine has continually gone down, and it's a supply and demand business, so that indicates to us that the supply is plentiful. That creates a problem for us as law enforcement officials, because when we arrest somebody in a drug operation, whether it's a low level dealer or a big trafficker, there are five people at least willing to step in and take their place because of the tremendous profits that are involved in this trafficking.

00:21:46.940 - 00:22:06.010

Yeah, they're just the cost of doing business. Expendable, expendable. They move them out and they get other people to step right in. We encounter situations here where we We have investigations where we have younger people driving around in these BMWs and other very expensive cars because of the tremendous profits that we had.

00:22:06.010 - 00:22:20.870

A guy testified a couple of days ago. He was a cook in a crack house in Washington. He was making over $100,000 a year, and he was just to cook. Cook the drugs, you know, $100,000. We have people that are called steers. What they do is they stand on the street and they whistle.

00:22:20.870 - 00:22:36.530

That's the only thing they do. If they see a police car or a uniformed officer, they whistle. And then the people on the inside will close down the operation. Those people have paid $800 a week. As we walked the streets, we passed a storefront that had once been used as a crack house.

00:22:37.140 - 00:22:58.360

The officer explained to me how the law in New York works to shut these places down. Well, Senator, this particular location was closed by the padlock lore padlock lore is when we can determine that there are narcotics violations or other public nuisance types of violations taking place in this situation, a location.

00:22:58.840 - 00:23:13.850

After we make a number of purchases, get a warrant, we can bring them to court and have the place closed. This prohibits the landlord for renting it for a year now. This particular block that we're on is a crack location is one of the on the Lower East Side.

00:23:13.850 - 00:23:29.630

It's one of the primary places where crack is available, and if you notice we're literally across the street from the school and up the block on the corner there, there are two more schools. So on these four corners, there are three schools now. The penalties were trying to make them more severe.

00:23:29.640 - 00:23:48.350

We have a special program that we go after. The people who sell within a two block radius is of schools, and we've been very successful. Well, I've introduced a federal law that says, If it's within 1000 ft of a school, you'll double the penalty. So you give 40 years on the first offense and life in prison on the second event, all of these would be within 1000 ft.

00:23:48.360 - 00:24:06.260

Absolutely. The police are working as hard in New York as they are in Florida and elsewhere around the country to stop crack, but police can't do it alone. I just heard that guy walked by and he said we won't crack stopped. Well, you know, most of the people that live in these neighborhoods are very, very decent people.

00:24:06.430 - 00:24:20.250

And this crack and drug abuse in general is a hazard to their safety. And we get a lot of support from the community. What? We're what we're finding in Florida and more and more. We're getting people in the community that say, you know, that used to say, What are you cops doing in here?

00:24:20.260 - 00:24:36.860

Get out of here. Now. The policeman tell me when they're coming in there. They're not saying pig pig anymore. They're saying that's the guy over there and put it in that waste can and get him getting that. Yes, Senator. As a matter of fact, yesterday we had a an operation where we were able to get 10 kg of cocaine.

00:24:36.870 - 00:24:53.700

But the interesting thing about it is our main subject escaped out of fire escape and ran away, and we wound up chasing him for three or four blocks and he went into a building. We lost sight of him for a moment, and when we got in front of the building, the people in the neighborhood told us, Go in there, He's in there.

00:24:53.700 - 00:25:06.640

He's wearing white. We saw him correct, and we were able to go in there and get him. And I think that if it wasn't for those civilian people that helped us, he might have gotten away. So we're getting a lot of support. Obviously, we've got to get more of that.

00:25:06.650 - 00:25:25.870

If we're really going to try to deal with it, well, you're right. And the and the problem can really only be uh, solved by the community there. What will happen is whatever they're willing to accept happening within their community. And this crack stuff is so devastating that the people know that it's it's deadly and they are giving us a lot of support, and we appreciate that.

00:25:25.880 - 00:25:40.350

That's great. Well, that's our story of crack cocaine, and I wish the story was over, but I know it's not. I think we're still just on the front end of this title way, and what I'm scared to death of is school is going to start in September.

00:25:40.840 - 00:25:58.950

The dealers are out there now and they've established their way of dealing and the kids are going to be out there, and that's going to make it so much more dangerous. You know, when I was growing up, alcohol was what was on the block, and that was something that any young person could try and I did.

00:25:59.640 - 00:26:21.560

When my kids were growing up, marijuana was there, and I'm sure they tried it. A lot of people think they can try crack. They can't cocaine Was glamour authorized for so long as the athletes drug or the society drug? Remember the story? The pictures of the movie stars with a little gold razor blades that they wore around their neck.

00:26:22.340 - 00:26:40.780

A lot of people have the idea that you could start a little Coke and not be addicted. I'm sure that was probably false, but I know with crack you can't try it if you use it 123 times you're an addict, so that's the most dangerous thing with our young people that they can't try.

00:26:40.790 - 00:27:02.760

Now how do we get that message across? You can't do it with all the laws in the world, and I started off saying that we're just going to pass a bunch of serious laws. We're gonna throw these people in jail as long as you've got a drug that is out there that can be bought for $10 that can be made so easily that you just pick up a soft drink can to have your pipe.

00:27:03.840 - 00:27:22.170

You're going to find people using it until we can convince them how deadly it is. That, I think, is the community involvement, the community education. I'm going to spend the month of August in our recess going around to the different communities and holding meetings trying to put together leadership.

00:27:22.180 - 00:27:36.730

And there are already some communities that are doing a great job on this, and we want to find out what they're doing best. I hope when you see and hear about our meetings, you'll come and join. This is something that we gotta have. Everybody participates in my hometown.

00:27:36.740 - 00:27:53.490

There's a place called the Bottom. It's a Crawford street, and it's where you can go and today, get drive in service for crack, and I'll venture to say this one in your hometown, two or several places that's going to continue until we just decide as a community.

00:27:53.500 - 00:28:06.650

We're not going to have it. We're gonna run them out of there. And if it takes Mama's with pots and pans beating on them, we're not going to allow these people to come in and poison and kill our young people. I think that's the only way we'll really get on top of it.

00:28:06.660 - 00:28:25.270

Yes, we need to work on interdiction of cocaine and eradication in the host country. We need to have tougher laws. We need to have a place for people when they're addicts to be able to get treatment. But the most important thing of all is that we've got to educate our young people that they can't fool with crack.

00:28:25.640 - 00:29:24.950

Then it'll kill him. Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. Mhm. What? Yeah. Mm hmm. Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you do? Mhm. Mm. Mhm two. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm.