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ANOTHER BAO TRIP
by
D. Paul Graunke
boy in Detroit. Michigan, is picked up by
police,screaming that oneofthe pólicemen has turned into a giant bat. Aman in Washington, D.C. , is
arrested while singing naked in a supermarket. A San Francisco Bay Area man kills his mother. father
and grandfather.
The common denominator in these bizarre behaviors is that each person was
under the inftuence of angel dust or PCP- the la test fad drug to capture the fancy and consciousness
of young people. Called by various names on the street-hog, superweed, lovely, goon, and
superkools-the technical name for angel dust is phencyclidine hydroch loride. (PCP for short.)
It
was
first developed as a tranquilizer in the 1950s, but the drug was abandoned because it led to
unpredictable and violent side effects. During the youth revolution of the '60s it made a brief
appearance on the drug scene.
It
is believed to have fust been used for fun and freaking out at the 1967
Monterey Pop Festival. But its undesirable side effects were too frightening;
it
quickly faded from
popular use within ayear.
More Prevalent Than Pot.
About three years ago it started to make a
comeback, leading toa gradual rise in the number of PCP-induced "bad trips" treated in emergency
wards ofhospitals. By the beginning of 1977 its use was widespread enough to constitute a major drug
problem. During January and February ofthat year, an average of80 PCP-rel ated emergencies were
reported each month in Los Angeles County. That compares with 51 monthly in 1976 and
JO
a month
in 1975. In New York City, reported incidents of emergency treatment for PCP usage rose from 13
percent of aUdrug emergencies in 1973 to 32
in
July-August of 1975, and to nearly 43 percent in the
last three months of 1976. Similar sharp rises in its use were soon being reported elsewhere.
Today, drug officials say that PCP is becoming in white neighborhoods what heroin has been in the
black ghettos. " It's clear1y the drug of choice among white suburban teenagers," says Theodore
Vernier, director of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency in Detroit. "Our undercover information
is that PCP is more prevalent than marijuana in sorne high schools," reports Los Angeles drug officer
Michael Guy. In the San Francisco Bay Area, authorities attribute over a dozen deaths last year to
overdoses ofPCP. Nearly a third ofSan Diego's 126 overdose dea ths in the past year arelinked to the
drug. In Montgomery County. Maryland. police connect severa! killings and suicides to PCP use.
16
The PLAIN TRUTH March 1978
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