By Max Daly and Sam Iravani
America’s forgotten drug is woven into the day-to-day fabric of poor inner cities dotted across the country. But it’s never gone global like crack or LSD, while some U.S. cities have remained impervious.
Just a few miles from the White House, in Washington D.C.’s poorer neighbourhoods, the trade in PCP is alive and kicking.
The hallucinogenic anaesthetic drug – mainly smoked via $20 PCP-soaked cigarettes called “dippers” – is the most frequently mentioned illegal substance in criminal case hearings at the city’s Superior Court after cocaine.
Over a quarter of DUI tests in the city come up positive for the drug. More than a third of arrestees who test positive for any drug in D.C. have PCP in their system, thehighest rate in the U.S., and more than double the proportion of those testing positive for opioids.
It’s not just a drug closely linked to crime. Data from the Center for Substance Use Research (CESAR) shows that of those admitted suffering from a drug overdose into Prince George’s Hospital Center, a hospital in Maryland which serves DC, around one in four test positive for PCP. Of all drug deaths in 2018 in DC, 14 percent involved PCP.
Yet, bizarrely, just 40 miles down the road, in Baltimore, PCP is almost unheard of.
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