DRIVING UNDER PCP INFLUENCE
Houston tops metro areas in impaired motorists
If his hospital statement is to be believed, triple intoxication manslaughter suspect Gregory Allen Smith was part of a growing statistic that more PCP-impaired drivers are getting behind the wheel on Houston roads.
Amid a city dealing with troubled traffic, Houston is the nation’s largest metro area to have a significant problem with the drug, researchers on Wednesday said. Their study found traces of PCP — also known as Phencyclidine and under the street name angel dust — in about 1 in 6 blood samples taken during DWI arrests between 2013 and 2018, with the typical user being black men in their 30s.
The synthetic drug ranked third behind alcohol and then marijuana, data from the study shows. The findings were published on the Journal of Analytical Toxicology website.
Smith, 31, was overheard
telling Ben Taub Hospital officials that he smoked PCP prior to a fiery Feb. 5 crash that killed three generations of a family, authorities said. He tested positive for the same drug in April 2019 after a crash that landed him with a DWI charge, court records show.
His ex-girlfriend reported to police that Smith had been binging on PCP the same week as the 2019 crash, according to court papers.
Dayong Lee, who co-led the Houston Forensic Science Center research, said she noticed the trend in PCP cases when she came to Texas in 2015 from her postgraduate studies in Maryland and Florida.
“I’ve worked in other laboratories in other regions of the U.S., and we never saw PCP positive cases,” Lee said. “It was mind-boggling for me that high prevalence of PCP users in Houston.”
While New York City and Washington, D.C., are also PCP hot spots, positive tests among those arrested on DWI charges show PCP is on the rise. The number of those found to have used PCP prior to an arrest were listed at 49 in 2013. That number increased to 271 in 2018, data shows.
Researchers have also spotted a recent shift in demographics, with more PCP use among women and younger people.
Statewide, the Department of Public Safety in 2017 identified Houston as having the highest number of DWI cases in which drivers tested positive for PCP from 2014 to 2016. Its data was comparable to what the city researchers found: The majority of users are in their 30s.
Peter Stout, another Houston Forensic Science Center researcher, which based the study on Houston Police Department arrests, warned that their results are likely an under count. Some samples went untested, he said. The city’s report is based on 3,738 blood samples taken. About 16 percent , or 615 drivers, showed traces of the drug.
“I’m certain there is more PCP that is being used, more PCP that’s in DWIs than we’re reporting here,” Stout said.
Stout was unable to explain why PCP is so prevalent in Houston, other than to point to a Drug Enforcement Administration study from 1994 about a pattern of PCP trafficking from California to Texas.
When taken, the drug — typically a cigarette or joint laced with the illicit solution — “separates people from reality,” Stout said. The drug has hallucinogenic properties, and its users sometime exhibit psychotic breaks or violent behavior, he continued.
How people react to the drug is a concern to law enforcement because its users can be unpredictable.
“It is probably the most dangerous street drug that we deal with, especially when it comes to somebody who is driving,” Houston police Sgt. Donald Egdorf said. “One moment they might be very cooperative and the next moment they want to fight everybody and try to kill whoever is in front of them.”
In the case of Smith, after the crash, he had to be sedated because he was being combative at the hospital, authorities said. Smith is slated to appear in court Friday. By then, investigators hope to have pieced together what he was doing in the 24 hours before the wreck. How he procured the vehicle he was driving during the crash was being scrutinized and may result in more charges.
Egdorf declined to speak on how the results of the study related to Smith’s arrest, which happened in northeast Harris County and was investigated by Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct 4. In 2019, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences found 72 cases of PCP impairment out of 5,504 samples, officials said. Results for prior years were not available.