ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 11, 1997 TAG: 9701130001
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: crime and punishment
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
Normally, a crack addict like Kaye wouldn't wind up in federal court. But she had the misfortune to work briefly as a low-level drug runner for a group of dealers who had been targeted by a federal informant.
Because she got swept into federal court as part of a conspiracy case with dealers who were moving thousands of dollars' worth of crack a week, she got a two-year prison sentence - and that was after the judge gave her a break for cooperating with prosecutors.
If she had been delivering powder cocaine for a dealer, instead of the boiled-down cocaine base known as crack, her sentence would have been measured in months instead of years.
"The sentencing guidelines for crack are unreal," she says bitterly. "It's the same damn drug."
It may be the same drug chemically, but because crack is smoked it reaches the brain much faster than powder cocaine, which is snorted. Kaye admits the powder cocaine she tried never hooked her the way crack did. She spoke about her addiction on the condition her real name not be used.
Smoking crack became more important to her than friends and family. She lost 40 pounds in a matter of weeks because eating lost all its appeal. "Everything I would eat in two weeks you could put in a little cereal bowl."
Addicts spend the rest of their crack-smoking days trying to recapture the amazing rush they got the first time they smoked. And it never happens.
"I was one of the people who became instantly addicted," Kaye says. "It was probably three months before I did it again, but I thought about it all the time."
Like most crack users, Kaye is white. She is an articulate, 37-year-old blue-collar worker who chain smokes - the one vice she still maintains - and cries frequently when she talks about her descent into crack addiction.
She had begun spending her time with other addicts and dealers at a Southeast Roanoke bar where dealers recruited "runners" to deliver their product. Her new friends were fellow addicts, among them women who resorted to prostitution to feed their habit.
She says she never did that, but for a short time she worked as a delivery driver for a crack dealer. When customers called in, she'd dispatch Kaye. "Everybody wanted to drive for her. It was a job we fought over."
Kaye's profit? A $20 rock at the end of the night and any extra she could score through the generosity of customers.
"That's how you get crack if you smoke, because you can't afford it," she says. Her habit would have cost her $1,000 a day if she'd had to pay for it. "There were a whole lot worse things I could have done to support my habit."
Her near-fatal attraction to crack was beyond reason, beyond willpower.
"Nobody likes the way they feel on crack," she says. "It's never made me feel good. I hate how I feel on it. You just want it, want it all the time.
"Every day you promise yourself you're not going to smoke it. And every day you do."
Kaye is in federal prison now. As much as she dreaded going to prison, it's preferable to being an addict. "That's a nightmare that has no end. There's an end to" prison.
She hopes when she gets out that she will be able to maintain the recovery she started in treatment classes. She says she wants it more than anything she has ever wanted in her life. But she knows she faces long odds.
"Crack has a lot of victims and has very few survivors. I have to firmly believe there are success stories - and I'm going to be one of them."
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB