Drug Vortex

The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in the heart of downtown San Francisco. It's bounded by Geary, Powell, Taylor and Market Streets. For many young people it's the ultimate refuge from a disapproving society. Here youth with unacceptable behavior problems congregate in protective obscurity. From time to time their obscurity is shattered by newspaper publicity which alerts the rest of the

to some of the more lurid tenderloin problems. 124 prostitutes arrested. 119 heroin addicts uncovered. 18 teenagers arrested in an orgy. 366 male prostitutes discussed in a report. But the tenderloin is after all more than lurid headlines.

It is people, young people seeking an identity in a complex and massively changing society. Somehow these people are trying to cope with the challenges all America increasingly faces. There are people down there that abuse methadry, they abuse crystal, which is a slang term for meth.

They let the drug use them. They get psychologically hung up on it, and they feel that they just can't live without it. They've got to have it every single day, and that's what their, you know, waking hours are devoted to, is to be getting more crystal.

If they're really, really badly hung up, they'll start getting anything they can, they won't even bother to clean their outfits, which is a good way to come down with hepatitis. I like to come down.

So you really? I mean, I see people with them who ain't got no way to go and nothing to do, you know, and they're on the same old cake all the time, every time. And I was down there and I got on that cake.

And it was a group for a while, you jumped up in the bag and stayed there for a while. And it was a groupie. But then after a while, you know, like me, he just looked up and said, you know, when he says, you know, I'm going to be real, real old man.