Word: habitant
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...cocaine simply a public health concern. Coke users increasingly indulge their habit in casual defiance of the law. The very possession of cocaine is illegal in every state and a felony in 33. Possible sentences range widely, from a $3,000 fine in Delaware or 90 days in jail in West Virginia to life in prison in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Texas; federal law provides for up to a year in prison. The penalties for dealers are, of course, stiffer; they can get a life sentence in twelve states and up to 15 years if convicted on federal...
...laws against this latest drug of choice are regarded as little more than a nuisance, Prohibition redux. "I wasn't running out and killing or robbing people," says Margaret,* 30, a saleswoman for a clothing manufacturer who for two years sold small amounts of coke to support her habit. "I assumed the law-enforcement people had something better to do with their time than to come into my house and arrest me." Margaret, never caught, was right about police priorities: overburdened big-city forces (and prosecutors and courts) are more concerned...
...sales jobs. "You can do a lot of selling, a lot of talking when you're on cocaine," says Dana, 28, a South Florida man who would snort as much as seven grams (about a quarter of an ounce) a day while selling ? and to finance his habit, stealing ? building materials. "I didn't really like the job," he says. "Coke accounted for a lot of my motivation." Margaret guesses that at least a third of her fellow fashion-industry salespeople are regular users...
...Indeed, heroin's withdrawal pangs are physically terrible. Cocaine's are not. But according to people who have been dependent on both drugs, kicking cocaine can be tougher. "When they say it's not addictive, that's crap," insists Investment Banker Donald, who is struggling to beat his cocaine habit. "Just talking about it makes my sinuses clog up and my nose twitch." At Dr. Siegel's Los Angeles therapy sessions, deprived cocaine users, he says, sometimes "start crying for it, and get doubled over on the floor. It looks like a physical thing...
...quintessentially suburban San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, David, 21, was not reduced to stealing from his family to support his five-gram, $750-a-week habit. Instead, during six months last year, he embezzled $20,000 from the camera store where he worked. His thefts were discovered just before Thanksgiving, but the police were not called, and David's father repaid the $20,000. David cannot figure it. "I was the all-American kid who had never been in trouble," he says. "I was popular. I taught religion classes at the synagogue. How could a well-brought...