Word: houstons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Those referred to only by first names have been given pseudonyms at their request. * The task forces are based in Boston, New York, * The task forces are based in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego...
...around $3.5 billion retail, was larger than the amounts seized during 1980 and 1981 combined. It included the largest single seizure (3,236 lbs. in Miami) in history. New federal antidrug task forces, forming in a dozen cities, will all be in place by late summer. Last week the Houston-based task force made the $127.5 million program's first bust: most of a 30-member ring, operating mainly out of New Orleans, were rounded up and charged with smuggling 550 lbs. of cocaine...
Such virgin territory may not exist. At a pair of Houston carpet stores, the former manager says that the owners, "two family men in three-piece suits," gave cocaine to employees who would work 18-hour shifts. Cocaine, in fact, is dangerously well suited to 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...
...street prices that range from $ 100 to $ 150 a gram, which is about a teaspoonful, enough to keep two people well stoked for a few hours, cocaine is as pricey as it is evanescent. And for many people, conspicuous consumption is the point. Says a drug counselor in Houston: "The very expense makes people think they're special." Even the cocaine high seems unattractively linked to cash. "It's the drug for the all-American middle class," says Chuck, the insurance executive, who for 18 months spent nearly a third of his $35,000 salary on coke. "It makes...
...cocked it and placed the barrel against Jay Tarver's temple. "If you don't do this," the dealer said, nodding toward four neat rows of cocaine gleaming on a round mirror, "I'll kill you." So Tarver, an undercover narcotics officer on the Houston police force, leaned over the old oak desk and snorted his first "rail" of coke. The high was a revelation, one Tarver still remembers with vivid longing...