Bingeing multiplies risks of lung damage, cardiac difficulties, strokes and seizures.
The main health problems for crack users, argue the squad, relate to the widespread practice of smoking large quantities of rock in long sessions. Therefore, against popular wisdom, the squad believes that a moderate crack habit, whereby the risk of harm is greatly reduced, is an achievable alternative to, what it believes, is the often futile attempts to break completely free from the drug. It has been our experience that complete and continuous abstinence provides the best foundation for recovery and personal growth." NA encour ages its members to observe complete abstinence from all mood-altering drugs, including alcohol, although the only requirement for membership is 'a desire to stop using' drugs. NA does not qualify its use of the term 'disease' in any medical or specialised therapeutic sense, nor does NA make any attempt to persuade others of the correctness of its view. This contradicts Narcotics Anonymous's (NA) official view: "NA describes addiction as a disease.
Most importantly, it does not preach abstinence: the goal, instead, is harm reduction. Many of the squad's tenets smack of heresy - at first sight, at least - for the drugs advisory world. The group has named itself the Crack Squad, in irreverent homage to the Metropolitan police department set up to tackle the anticipated 1990s boom in crack use which never got underway. But now a group of crack users in London's East End are attempting to further widen this gap. The fact that the UK crack epidemic widely predicted for the mid-1990s arguably never materialised, produced a hairline fissure or two in the image of the demon "rock" - it became the unstoppable drug that never got started. Stereotypes are hard to reverse, but the prejudices surrounding crack are particularly enduring, with the deeply engrained canard that its use always leads to insatiable addiction and self-destruction.
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