American Notes DRUGS

Bryant Park, behind the New York City Public Library, is meant to be an oasis in a concrete desert, but it often seems more like a drug bazaar. Four Soviet health officials, in the U.S. to study treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction, discovered just how brazen the local merchants could be when their American guide took them to visit the park.

Dealers offered them marijuana, heroin and crack; one peddler, mistaking a Soviet cigarette for something more potent, offered to buy up all the visitor could deliver. Astonished that much of the illegal enterprise was conducted while policemen stood nearby, Dr. Andrei Vrublevsky said selling drugs on the street "would be impossible in our country. If a dealer did do that, he would be taken in to the police, with the help of citizens."