Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses by Heather E. Quinlan

Author:Heather E. Quinlan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE CRACK EPIDEMIC

The name “crack” first appeared in The New York Times on November 17, 1985. In an article titled “Program for Cocaine-Abuse Under Way,” reporter Donna Boundy quoted Ellen Morehouse, the director of outpatient adolescent services at a program called The Recovery Center: “‘Last year one-third of the students seen in the Student Assistance programs reported having tried cocaine,’ she said. ‘That was considerably more than we’d seen in other years.’ Three teen-agers have sought this treatment already this year, she continued, for cocaine dependence resulting from the use of a new form of the drug called ‘crack,’ or rock-like pieces of prepared ‘freebase’ (concentrated) cocaine.”

It oddly sounds like a more innocent time—a time when a reporter had to describe what crack was and put it in quotes. Now, the crack epidemic—so named because it spread like an epidemic—goes hand in hand with memories of 1980s urban decay for those who lived through it and YouTube videos for anyone who didn’t. A year after Donna Boundy’s article came out, more than 1,000 articles on crack were written: it got famous.

The crack epidemic didn’t begin in a squatter house on the edge of town; it began with drug kingpins faced with daunting economics. In the early 1980s, so much cocaine was coming into Miami from the Caribbean that its price plummeted. In economic terms, this is called negative inflation, or deflation; more product was being produced than the demand required. (Yes, economics applies to the drug trade as well.) This is where crack came in. Suppliers converted cocaine—a powder—into a solid, smokeable form and sold it in smaller quantities with a potency, or purity, that made the demand soar. Also, it was easier to slip it by the Coast Guard and the Navy. As early as 1981, people were starting to smoke crack beginning in the Caribbean and extending all the way to California.

The term “purity” is ironically often used to describe illegal drugs, especially cocaine. The more actual cocaine that is being sold to a user, the purer it is because when a user buys cocaine, they’re not buying only cocaine.

A supplier gets a brick of pure coke, which will get diluted enough so that the supplier will end up with two bricks—they’ll have added ingredients to increase the yield. If you’ve ever heard of cutting coke, it means adding agents like baking soda, laundry powder, laxatives, or even other drugs like novocaine into the mix. The cutting starts with the supplier, then recurs again and again through the ranks until it reaches the dealer on the street. In some cases, a user is barely left with anything more than baking soda.

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