Analysis: Crack cocaine - the danger Britain chose to ignore that is now reaching an epidemic

Thirteen years ago, the warning of an American DEA officer was dismissed as outlandish. Now his fears have been vindicated

Thirteen years ago, Robert Stutman, an officer of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, arrived in Britain as a prophet of doom. The subject of his prophecy was a substance many in his audience of senior British police officers had not heard of, a highly addictive cocaine derivative called "crack".

Mr Stutman warned that these small, off-white crystals would soon be wreaking havoc in British cities, tearing the hearts out of neighbourhoods and fuelling often-fatal violent turf wars for the illegal profits they generate.

The British media promptly turned their attention to America, from where horrific stories emerged of crack-addicted babies born to mothers unable to stop "piping" the drug during their pregnancies.

To some drug experts, the warnings seemed outlandish and sensational. Britain's drug-taking culture was different, they said, and there was little likelihood that our more moderate society would succumb to a product that was clearly so destructive.

In one sense, the voices of caution were right. Mr Stutman's gloomy prediction in 1989 was that Britain would be gripped by crack within two years. It took a bit longer.

This month, senior police officers, health officials, addiction treatment specialists and community leaders will gather in Birmingham for the British Government's first crack summit. The two days of talks will try to address a deepening problem involving a drug that the Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth says is doing "massive damage ... to certain communities and inner-city areas". Crack is seen as the principal reason for a wave of black-on-black gun crime across London, with 171 shootings last year, including 18 murders and 81 attempted murders.

Among those addressing the Birmingham meeting will be Lee Jasper, adviser to Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, on police and race issues. Mr Jasper last week spoke out against the rising number of shootings and appealed to the community to call police "and tell them who is carrying guns".

Specialist police operations to fight crack-related crime have been set up in many other British cities including Bristol, Leeds and Leicester. But crack is no longer just a problem for the big urban areas. Recent police operations have seen notable seizures in the apparently genteel Bath and in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

For a drug that was initially depicted in tabloid reports as being "instantly addictive", the spread of crack through Britain has been gradual and insidious. Perhaps the early scare stories of the drug's "deadly" nature acted as a deterrent.

The warnings coincided with the explosion in dance music culture, and many younger drug users were too busy chasing the happy, beat-enhancing highs associated with ecstasy to show interest in the new "danger drug" from America.

Yet crack already had a small foothold in Britain, among a few members of African-Caribbean communities and others with transatlantic connections who had experienced the drug while living in America or visiting friends or relatives.

Drug users began to learn the recipe for "washing" regular cocaine powder (the salt form, cocaine hydrochloride) into "rocks" of purified base cocaine (crack), by using baking powder and common kitchen utensils, a frying pan or a microwave.

Smoking, or "freebasing", cocaine had traditionally been a complicated and potentially dangerous business requiring knowledge of chemistry. But awareness quickly spread that the crystals of crack could be easily made and smoked through a hole in a tin can or plastic drinks bottle.

But what really aided the growth of crack was the increasing availability of its raw product, cocaine powder. In the five years to 1992, seizures of cocaine at British ports and airports increased five-fold to 2,250 kilograms a year, as South American cartels switched their efforts from the increasingly saturated North American market to Europe.

Through the Nineties, the demand for cocaine in Britain grew and grew. And the supply has increased to more than meet it. Most cocaine reaches Britain through Spain, with whom the Government has signed a joint initiative to try to curb it.

Smaller but substantial amounts are brought in on flights from Jamaica by couriers. Britain has supplied the Caribbean island with detection equipment to identify the drug "mules" and is receiving help from the Jamaican authorities in penetrating the Yardie gangs that control much of the street-level crack trade in Britain.

The drug is increasingly prevalent. The Government announced last month that seizures of crack increased in 2000 by 8 per cent. Figures from the National Criminal Intelligence Service show that in the past 12 years, in spite of inflation, the price of cocaine has tumbled from £87 a gram to £60. Crack has fallen from £20 for 0.2 of a gram, to double the amount for the same price. Anecdotal evidence suggests some dealers are offering crack for the equivalent of £30 a gram, a new low.

As greater numbers of cocaine users have become comfortable with "snorting" powder into the membranes of their nostrils, a growing minority have been tempted to seek out the more immediate and intense rush of smoking the crystal, taking the drug into the bloodstream via the lungs.

Heroin addicts, who had showed little interest in the "champagne drug" cocaine, have become increasingly attracted to its powerful crystalline derivative, sometimes using the stimulant and the opiate in quick succession.

Scotland, gripped by a heroin epidemic in the Eighties and with a tradition of injecting- drug use but little history of cocaine, is now reporting an increased prevalence of crack.

In clubs and fashionable bars in some cities, young people find it more convenient to smoke crack – often disguised as a cannabis spliff – than to sniff cocaine, particularly in toilets where flat surfaces have been purposefully removed by the management to discourage drug use.

Adam Frankland, a drugs worker based in west London for the charity Turning Point, said crack was becoming more attractive to a younger and more affluent crowd. "We are seeing crack infiltrate the normal cocaine users. They are mostly white males aged 16 to 25, who are not socially excluded and are in employment. It is getting close to the epidemic stages that guy [Mr Stutman] was warning us about. It has just been a more gradual evolution."

In 1993, after the first signs of crack turf battles in Bristol, Nottingham and south and east London, Mr Stutman said he had expected the scepticism with which his words had been initially received. "I was accused of being an over-zealous reactionary," he said.

"They said, 'We are different, we are not prone to that kind of violence and our slums are not as bad'. I had heard that same argument in 1987 from Americans who said they could not suffer the same problems as New Yorkers had."

In America, there are signs that the crack epidemic is waning. A younger generation is turning away from a drug that caused so much damage to so many parents and elder siblings. In Britain, the problem is growing. Roger Howard, chief executive of the drug treatment charity DrugScope, said successive governments were culpable for failing to head off a problem that has been foreseeable for a long time.

Instead of spending sufficient money on educating and treating those who would come into contact with crack, ministers acted only after users began appearing in large numbers before the courts, he said.

He said: "The legacy of years of under-investment and lack of forward thinking has led to the criminal justice system being called upon to find solutions to the problem."