A dramatic drop in cocaine-related hospital emergency room cases, ballyhooed by the Bush Administration this week as evidence that Americans are being persuaded to eschew the narcotic, actually may indicate only that drug dealers are diluting their wares, according to police and medical experts in Los Angeles and elsewhere around the nation.
In interviews, the investigators and emergency room workers who serve as foot soldiers in the nation's battle against drug abuse were skeptical of the Bush Administration's interpretation of a 22% drop nationally in cocaine-related emergency room cases in the last quarter of 1989.
On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, in announcing the decline, had said it was evidence that anti-drug education campaigns were paying off and "we are making significant headway in our efforts to establish a drug-free America."
While not disputing that a drop in emergency room traffic has occurred and continues, numerous law enforcement officials and hospital workers said in interviews that they believe any decrease in emergency room activity may have more to do with shifting economics in the commerce of street drugs and more careful use by wary consumers rather than any reduction in the number of addicts.
Specifically, they said, a campaign of drug seizures appears to have cut into supplies, forcing profit-minded dealers to stretch their wares by cutting them with flour, sugar, baby laxatives and the like--making doses much less potent and dangerous to users.
For a time, so much cocaine was flooding the country that street dealers felt no need to maintain their practice of diluting the drug with other powdery substances.
Federal drug agents said a current supply shortage, created by their interdiction efforts, has driven up wholesale prices for kilograms of cocaine by about 33% in California cities from San Diego to San Francisco. But the price of small "bindles" of cocaine remains a steady $75 to $100, indicating that dealers are cutting the drug to stretch their supplies and maintain profit levels.
"Bindles are definitely being cut," said an official with the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, which analyzes the purity of drugs seized throughout the state. "This has increased in recent months."
Phil Jordan, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Dallas, said there was "a slight decrease in the number of cocaine-related deaths and injuries in Dallas in 1988 and '89."
