Crack cocaine
| Our secret stash of |
| Highs and lows |
- If you were looking for Rob Ford or Marion Barry, check out our article on corruption.
Crack cocaine is a form of pre-processed freebase cocaine, in which the cocaine has been cooked with chemicals including sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Since it has been rendered insoluble, it is smoked rather than snorted. In this form of cocaine the drug has undergone a process known as freebasing (essentially this process removes the hydrochloride base from powdered cocaine)[1] and derives its name from the cracking noise that one hears when producing it.
[edit] The "poor person's drug"
Crack cocaine is generally considered a poor person's drug; it is fairly inexpensive compared to powdered cocaine and first rose to popularity in the inner cities of the United States in the mid-1980s. Though a dose of crack cocaine has roughly the same potency as the equivalent of powdered cocaine, in the US at least penalties for crack dealing and possession are substantially higher than those for powder cocaine, worsening already disproportionate representation of black and Hispanic minorities in the US prison population. The disparity was introduced in 1986 as a 100:1 ratio in which 50 grams of crack or 5,000 grams of powder cocaine would trigger a 10-year penalty; this was later reduced to an 18:1 ratio.[2]
Crack has also been blamed for an even further decline of the already poor and economically depressed inner cities, due to gang activity allied with organized crime both inside the US and from Latin America. Some community activists have gone so far as to concoct conspiracy theories blaming the United States Government, especially the CIA, for introducing crack to the inner city populations in a backdoor attempt to reintroduce a Jim Crow-like society.
The phenomenon of "crack babies," children born in poverty to mothers with cocaine addictions, was feared to be a major public health problem in the 1980s. While many -- perhaps even most -- such children had far fewer developmental problems than were feared, they remain a symbol of the potential hazards of drug abuse and poverty.
[edit] More addictive?
Since crack is smoked rather than snorted, the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream more rapidly. This causes a quicker "hit," and can hypothetically cause a stronger psychological association between the act of smoking and the onset of the drug's euphoric effects since less time passes between the two.
However, this claim has been challenged, at least in the academic press. Morgan and Zimmer wrote that available data indicated that "...smoking cocaine by itself does not increase markedly the likelihood of dependence... The claim that cocaine is much more addictive when smoked must be reexamined."[3]
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Ask Erowid
- ↑ Steiker, Carol (2013) Lessons from Two Failures, Duke University
- ↑ Morgan, John P.; Zimmer, Lynn (1997). "Social Pharmacology of Smokeable Cocaine". In Reinarman, Craig; Levine, Harry G.. Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice. Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press.