The start of another "Fri-high-day" in the Bronx: With no questions asked and no proof of age demanded, a 19-year-old walks into a grocery store and buys a 40-ounce bottle of Olde English 800 malt liquor. Rejoining his friends on a stoop across the street, he lifts the fat bottle trumpet-like to his lips and gulps down the brew in loud, foamy swallows.
"It gets you nice," he says, passing the bottle to an eager friend.
"It gets you pumped up," adds the next boy. "I feel more comfortable when I'm drinking a 40."
Malt liquor -- essentially beer brewed with sugar for an extra alcoholic kick -- has long been popular with black and Hispanic drinkers. But in the outsize 40-ounce bottle, introduced in the late 1980's with aggressive marketing campaigns aimed at minority drinkers, it is fast becoming the intoxicant of choice for black and Hispanic youths in New York and other American cities.
Some teen-agers call malt liquor "liquid crack" in tribute to its potency. And to the dismay of drug counselors, social workers and ministers who see malt liquor as a dangerous drug in sheep's clothing, the 40-ounce bottles with brand names like King Cobra, Crazy Horse, Colt 45 and St. Ides have become an accessory to the youth-culture ensemble of baggy clothes, expensive work boots and street-hardened attitudes. "Tap the Bottle," a new song celebrating the consumption of 40-ounce malt liquor, has become a hit on the rap charts.
The essence of the 40 is its combination of size, power and price. At between $1.25 and $2.50, essentially the same as a quart bottle, and with an alcohol content of 5.6 to 8 percent, compared with 3.5 percent for regular beer, the 40-ounce malt liquor offers more punch for the money.
The brewing companies -- which have long been criticized for marketing campaigns that target minority communities -- argue that in selling and promoting the 40-ounce malt liquors, they are simply trying to maintain what has always been a crucial market. But to a chorus of critics, the creation and targeted marketing of the 40 is a cynical attempt to take advantage of poor youngsters in search of a cheap high. The results, they say, can be dangerous and occasionally disastrous, not least because of a misimpression that malt liquor is a relatively harmless pleasure.
"They are becoming alcoholics and don't even know it," said Eric Brent, a recovering cocaine addict who is the founder of Rescue, an anti-addiction program in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. "Denial is such a monster in their lives."
The precise dimensions of the phenomenon are unknowable. But industry analysts say that in the last few years, malt liquor has become the fastest-growing segment of the beer market. And drug counselors and health officials say that while they know of no studies of malt-liquor consumption by young people in the inner city, they see signs of increasing underage drinking linked to the availability of the large bottles. Seen as Alternative to Drugs
The popularity of the 40's comes as drug-treatment experts and the police are reporting modest drops in teen-age drug use. Some teen-agers in poor neighborhoods now see malt liquor as an alternative to drugs, according to Makani Thaemba, a public policy specialist for the Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems in San Rafael, Calif.
At the same time, some substance abuse authorities say they have been seeing growing numbers of young people seeking treatment for twin addictions. Increasingly, one of the substances is alcohol, many say, and often that alcohol came by way of malt liquor sold in a 40-ounce bottle.
Some say, too, that they have noticed a growing association between drinking 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor and smoking marijuana. The combination, one teen-ager said, goes together like "cookies and milk."
The Bronx teen-ager who bought the Olde English 800 returned to the grocery store minutes later to purchase a 35-cent Philly Blunt cigar and, as street fad dictates, he hollowed it out and packed it with marijuana to smoke with the malt liquor. Hoisting a 40 for Breakfast
Drinking a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor for breakfast en route to school is not unusual, said a Bronx teen-ager who said he used to do just that. Guzzling 40 ounces to intoxication, others added, is a major attraction at "hooky parties."
"It is just a thing we did," said Clifton W., a 16-year-old Bronx boy who is in treatment for substance abuse. "It just made me feel good."
Fakri A., a 17-year-old from the Bronx who is now in treatment, recalled that he was once so drunk after drinking six 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor that he staggered obliviously through a firefight between drug dealers. "I guess God was looking out for me that day," he mused.
Darryl McDaniels, a 28-year-old member of the rap group Run-DMC, recently told a rap magazine that he had been hospitalized for alcoholic pancreatitis, the result of years of drinking as many as eight 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor a day. 'Pack a Lot of Punch'

The 40-ounce bottle was introduced beginning in the mid-80's as a "retailer and consumer convenience," according to Ron Richards, a spokesman for the Miller Brewing Company, maker of the Magnum brand of malt liquor. Store owners like them, he said, because they take up far less shelf space than six-packs.
And in the wake of their introduction, national malt liquor consumption has increased to 82.9 million 2.5-gallon cases in 1992 from 73.6 million in 1989, according to the Jobson Publishing Corporation's Beer Handbook, which predicts sales of 97.8 million cases this year.
The reason for such sales, market researchers say, is the promise of more alcohol for less money.
"If you measure your serving size by 40 ounces," said Peter Reid, editor of Modern Brewery Age, "it's going to pack a lot of punch."
In a comparative analysis, the Marin Institute found that 40 ounces of St. Ides, which at 8 percent alcohol is one of the most powerful malt liquors, has more alcohol than a six-pack of standard beer, and roughly the same amount as five 5-ounce glasses of wine.
Brewery officials deny that their pursuit of a small but lucrative segment of the American liquor market is an effort to entice underage or irresponsible drinking, and they insist that they are not unduly targeting young minority drinkers. Noting that malt liquor sales have always been the highest among minority drinkers, they say they are simply following the dictates of maintaining a market they want to continue to serve.
"You obviously gear the advertising of any products to groups that tend to prefer them," said Randy Smith, a vice president of the G. Heileman Brewing Company of LaCrosse, Wis., the maker of Colt 45.
He and officials of other breweries say they regularly advertise against irresponsible and underage drinking. And they say they also sponsor a variety of service activities in minority neighborhoods, from concerts, to literacy programs, to scholarships.
"The industry is very sensitive and spends a lot of money to be responsible," said Frank Walters, director of research for M. Shanken Communications in New York, publishers of Impact and Market Watch, leading trade publications.
Two years ago, Heileman Brewing came under fire from black consumer groups and civil rights organizations after introducing Power Master, its most powerful malt liquor at 5.9 percent alcohol, and marketing it specifically to black drinkers. Regulators ordered it off the market, saying the word "power" on the label violated a law against using brand names to promote alcohol content. Linking Success With Liquor
Heileman now faces criticism over an advertising campaign for Colt 45 that is aimed at a younger black consumer than before. Gone is a middle-aged black actor, Billy Dee Williams; instead, a polished, soft-spoken younger black man talks of commitment, giving back and success. As he does, he reaches for a can of Colt 45.
Linking black success with malt liquor is cynical and exploitative, critics of the ads say.
"All this speaks of a slick marketing campaign that has tremendous impact on African-Americans," said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts 3d of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Mr. Butts has led a campaign to stem the advertising of alcohol and tobacco products in poor neighborhoods. Popular at Hooky Parties
Judy Corman, a spokeswoman for Phoenix House, a drug-rehabilitation organization, said she was surprised by the response when she asked a roomful of Manhattan teen-agers recently if they had drunk 40-ounce malt liquor.
"You should have seen the hands go up," she said. "Nearly everyone raised their hands."
Jennifer O. was one of them.
The 15-year-old Bronx high school student said she seldom went to classes last year, preferring instead to attend hooky parties at friends' houses, in basements and on rooftops. "As long as there was music and people," recalled Jennifer, who is Puerto Rican.
"When I went to hooky parties, we used to have boxes and boxes and boxes of 40 ounces in the refrigerator, and we would go crazy," she said. She drank to impress her friends, she said, and her ability to drink two bottles of malt liquor back-to-back earned her the nickname, "Shorty Two Forties."
"The most I drank was three and a half bottles and I was drunk out of my mind," Jennifer said.
When asked if there was anything she regretted about her days of drunken malt liquor binges, she paused, and nodded.
"I lost my virginity," she said, "when I was drunk on 40's."