At closing time last Thursday night, Vic Taylor, a 34-year-old businessman, left his local in the quiet, respectable, middle-class area of Sale in Manchester. With four good friends, he went back to a comfortable, semi-detached house to smoke some crack.
For the first hour, they smoked intensely, quickly building up the levels of the drug in their bloodstream. Then they relaxed into a cycle of drink, cannabis and the small, off-white 'rocks' that give one of the most powerful and psychologically addictive highs of any drug known to man. 'We pile it on to start with for the first few, and then ease off as it takes effect,' says Vic. 'We pass round the same pipe. But it always seems longer and longer between each of your turns.'
By tonight, Vic will have spent £1,000 and not slept for three nights. Twice a month, he goes on a binge. His wife looks after his four children and, on the Friday, his staff take care of his business.
'Every so often I have a think how serious it's getting,' he said. 'Then I try to drink myself into a stupor to stop. I've never considered myself a drug person - I don't fit into that scene. I've never done heroin, Ecstasy's not for me, and neither's speed. Crack's becoming a designer drug. It's not the low-life drug it used to be.'
An Observer investigation has revealed that crack is becoming the drug of choice for a growing legion of middle-class users. The days when its use was limited to the worst of the inner-city ghettoes are over. At one London drug treatment centre, more than 60 per cent of crack addicts are in employment.
Last week drug workers spoke of civil servants, solicitors, film and video workers, small businessmen and local authority managers who had all sought help from public drugs centres in the past few months. And, they said, these were 'the tip of the iceberg'.
Adam Frankland, a worker with Turning Point, the largest drink and drugs mental health charity in the UK, said his unit in west London had dealt with six chefs and four estate agents in recent months. Chefs are said to like the drug because it allows them to keep going late into the night after an evening's work. The new brand of users is helping to boost crack figures in Britain to record levels. Police figures show that more arrested drug offenders report using crack than heroin - a historic first.
Drug workers confirm that in some areas they are treating more cocaine and crack users than opiate addicts. Figures from the Home Office's British Crime Survey reveal that one in 30 British men aged between 19 and 24 has used crack - twice as many as in 1996 and four times as many as in 1993.
When crack cocaine - which is made by heating powdered cocaine to make concentrated 'rocks' - first appeared in Britain nearly a decade ago, there were apocalyptic prophecies of mass addiction and social devastation. Many dismissed such forecasts as alarmist. Now such optimism is looking misplaced
Dr Michael Donmall, of Manchester University's Drug Misuse Research Centre, said: 'Many said that what happened in the USA could not happen here. But we have not avoided significant elements of their problems.'
The majority of crack users are still living in deprived and disenfranchised urban areas. The paranoia, violence and crime associated with the drug - crack users can easily get through £500-worth of 'rocks' in a day - causes huge, and well-documented, damage.
But the 'white-collar crackheads' are a new and different phenomenon. Many can finance their habit without recourse to theft, fraud or prostitution and are often unapologetic about their habits. Paul, an Oxbridge arts graduate, is a 37-year-old corporate communications manager with a major company in London. He has held down a successful career, married and become a father, all the while maintaining what he calls 'a recreational class-A drug habit'.
'I started smoking heroin about nine or 10 years ago with two friends, because I liked the feeling it gave me. Other people were dabbling with Ecstasy and cocaine, but I preferred something which eased my mind, not sent it racing. I didn't want to be a babbling idiot,' he said.
'I switched to crack because my regular dealer did last year. People think you have to be an addict, but that is nonsense. I have a pipe, but it comes out once every few weeks. This is something I enjoy and I have the money to indulge myself, so why the hell not?'
Such use is increasingly common. Smoked in cigarettes or with cannabis, crack is difficult to detect in a crowded nightclub.
Aidan Gray, national co-ordinator of Focus, a specialist crack research and support agency, said crack is now the drug of choice for many clubbers. In central London, smaller 'clubbing rocks', half the price and half the size of normal, are sold for around £10 each. 'Crack is more and more popular on the dance scene,' Gray said. 'There are clubs in London - and elsewhere in Britain - which are known for crack use.'
Gray said that the vast bulk of recreational crack use is undetected. 'The statistics don't reflect the scale of it at all. If wealthy people are in trouble, they will usually go to private clinics or doctors. Or they just keep using and no one ever knows.'
Nor is the problem restricted to London, Manchester and Merseyside. In the North-West, there has been a tenfold increase in cocaine use - mainly crack - in the past 10 years. In Scotland, according to some reports, the number of new crack addicts has risen twelvefold in the past four years. The police say they have detected people travelling into London from throughout the Home Counties to buy crack.
Many fear that, with the numbers of affluent crack users growing every day, the drug may lose its stigma and its dangers will be forgotten.
'You can go into work on a Monday and say you took a lot of Ecstasy last night, and these days your colleagues may not give you any grief,' said Tim Bottomley, manager of a drugs project in Manchester. 'Currently you can't do the same with crack. If crack becomes acceptable, that's when it will be most dangerous.'
Some names have been changed in this article.
