Benny is My Co-Pilot

When six Food and Drug Administration inspectors were assigned to root out dangerous and illegal sales of amphetamine stay-awake drugs--better known as "bennies." "pep pills" or "co-pilots"--to over-the-road truck drivers, they had to work as truckers themselves. The FDA men usually operate without disguise, but the FBI taught them tricks of undercover work, and trucking-company representatives gave them tips on trucking. Willing companies hired them after first putting them through school. Then the FDA men went on the road, taking day or night jobs in the East, Midwest and South, bunking in truck stops and rooming houses with unsuspecting buddies.

A Dollar a Dozen. Main topics of conversation at these stops, the inspectors found, were sex and drugs. There was so much loose talk about the drugs that they soon knew dozens of places to buy them, though many truck drivers emphatically refused to touch the stuff. Drivers were not the only customers: at a gas station in Charlotte, N.C. an inspector saw a teen-age boy plunk down a dollar bill for a bag of a dozen bennies (Benzedrine tablets), which wholesale in large quantities for about $2 a thousand.

Concentrating in the Charleston (S.C.)-Charlotte-Atlanta triangle, where the amphetamine traffic seemed heaviest, two inspectors driving a borrowed, repainted Army trailer-truck spent six weeks making buys at the spots turned up in the preliminary survey. At one drugstore they had no trouble buying 2,000 pep pills, saying they wanted to peddle them to other drivers. But a second druggist was smarter: he took $55 from the inspectors for a thousand pills that turned out to be aspirin.

17 Hits, No Errors. The Department of Justice filed 22 criminal actions against 42 individuals in six states as a result of the drive. Last week the FDA scored six hits, winning pleas of guilty from defendants who drew fines or jail terms. These ran its string to 17 victories without a single defeat, left only five cases to go. One who drew a $500 fine and a year's jail sentence (suspended) was the Charlotte gas-station operator who sold to the teenager.

The pep-pill circuit in the Southeast has cooled considerably as a result of the drive, but the FDA is not kidding itself: the dangerous racket persists elsewhere, may be spreading. Even if a half-emptied bottle of co-pilots is found in the pocket of a driver who has been killed by driving his truck off the road, it is usually impossible to prove cause and effect. But traffic authorities and truck companies agree that this is a likely result when drivers dose themselves with bennies to stay awake while they burn up the roads, day and night, without rest. Many truck companies are posting signs for their drivers: "Get your rest--bennies can kill."

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