On Bourbon Street, the junkies are jumpy

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Heroin, cocaine and crack are no longer on the menu on Bourbon Street, and junkies strung out since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans are feeling the pinch.



On a sidewalk near Johnny White's bar on Bourbon Street, known for its raucous Mardi Gras party, an addict negotiates with a burly, black man dressed like a short-order chef with a stained apron and baseball cap.

Those in the know call him "The Man."

Looking shifty and nervous, the junkie pulls out a spanking

new pair of jeans, with the Levi's tags still on them.

"Ask him does he have a 34-inch waist," another dealer who wants in on the trade shouts at "The Man."

Two pairs of jeans, looted from a store after hurricane Katrina hit the city, are handed over and the junkie gets what he needs -- a couple of morphine pills to feed his habit.

A woman drinking whiskey and coke outside Johnny White's said of the drug dealer, "He's probably got $8,000 in his back pocket right now. Business has been brisk here."

Asked how business was going without a steady supply of heroin, crack and cocaine, "The Man" said with a smile, "We're surviving. The good thing is that all these places here were looted, so there is stuff all over the place."

On offer now are morphine tablets for $40, sleeping pills for a few dollars each to sleep off a bout of "fiending" and, for $20, Oxycontin -- the prescription painkiller known as "hillbilly heroin."

Heroin addict Anthony Goffredo is desperate to get out of New Orleans. Slumped outside Johnny White's, one of just three bars open since hundreds of thousands of people fled the city, he waits for a sleeping pill to take the edge off his withdrawal.

Twelve days ago, he was given four-day supply of Methadone. Since that ran out he has begged and borrowed to score anything to keep him going.

"I just want to get to Brooklyn," said Goffredo, who told a reporter he had friends who had offered money to pay for his passage to New York. There, he said, he could register with a Methadone clinic.

More than a week after the hurricane hit and floodwaters overwhelmed New Orleans, commerce is still closed. There is no water or power in most of the city and police estimate that only 10,000 residents remain.

"I bought some morphine pills a few days ago from a kid who had looted a pharmacy. But now I've got nothing and I really need some drugs to help get me out," said Goffredo, an out-of-work musician. "I can't make that journey with it."

Thousands of miles from New York, where he longs to be, Goffredo feels the sleeping pill he just took kick in and wonders if he should try to get out of midday sun and make it back to his house.

"My blood pressure feels so low, man. I think if I walk I'll just fall down. I live just seven blocks from here and it looks like a mile from where I'm sitting," he said.