September 24, 2013 • 46 mins
Back in the mid-1980s a new and extremely potent drug hit the scene: crack cocaine. In short order, America was in the grip of both a sweeping addiction and a state of hysteria over use of the drug and the social consequences of crack, like crack babies. Now, 30 years on SYSK takes a look back at the receding wave of the crack epidemic and its lasting legacy on America.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there,
and uh, this is stuff you should know. Jerry just
waved like she's waving at the audience of this anger.
(00:25):
She's waving to the world. It's a little weird. She
may be on something. Uh, Josh, you know what's whack? Uh?
The Zach Attack from Saved by the Bell. I don't
even know what it is. You don't know what's Saved
by the Bell is what's wrong with No? I know
that I know what that show is, but I've never
heard of the Zach Attack. It's just Zach being Zach. Gotcha?
(00:48):
That is whack? Yeah, well, never mind. I thought Crack
was whack, but the Zach Attack is truly wack. No,
I disagree. I was gonna say, no, it's not right,
because that's actually a pretty good show. But okay, Crack
his whack. This we're like imminent up in here. We're
what we're like eminem up in here. Yeah, I guess,
so refer to Hip Hop episode now. No, I'm just
(01:13):
saying people that they're confused about why we sound so
stilted and square. Just go listen to hip hop and
that explains everything. People like that one. Surprisingly, Yeah, it's
a good one. Man. We got a good email from
me or a Facebook post from a graffiti artist. Yeah, yeah,
good stuff. I can't remember his tag, but it was
like really nice. But he was complimenting us or he
was just saying hey. No, he's like, hey, I'm a
(01:35):
graffiti artist and here's my my work. And uh, I
was very impressed. And he is not on crack, no,
because he's not whack right exactly, So Chuck, I have
a little, uh, a little intro. Great, just if you'll
bear with me. And the year was okay, I was fourteen. Okay,
(01:58):
what is it when you p b g very early
on UM cocaine, which is a drug that had been
sweeping the nation for about ten years by then. Yeah,
uh was up to a hundred and fifty dollars a graham.
(02:20):
That's thanks to the demand um and the available income
of its well healed yuppie users who are willing to
spend that kind of money on it. It's very much
an expensive, white, upwardly mobile person's drug. Cocaine run. Yeah,
(02:42):
and there were at the time articles that kind of said,
cocaine's probably not that addictive. We shouldn't worry that much
about cocaine. It's not a very big deal. It was mostly,
like I said, a white drug. That same year, a
new drug hit the scene. It was cheap, five to
(03:03):
ten bucks pop. It gave you a very quick, very
intense high, short lived, and it swept through lower income
African American areas of the United States, and all of
a sudden we had a problem, an epidemic. Yes, because
(03:24):
it was cocaine in a different form. Yeah, the country
went crazy for it. And not only was it cocaine
in a different form, it was cocaine being used by
a different demographic that, as we'll see, America has always
been threatened by and always made legislation to damp and
drug use among Yeah, it's pretty interesting when you dig
(03:45):
into this stuff. And so when people started to get worried,
Nancy Reagan became concerned. And when Nancy Reagan became concerned,
as as usual, she started to lie. And we will
we will get into what allegedly might have happened and
why crack might have been introduced in this country because
(04:08):
some people think it was the U. S. Government straight
up c I A. Yeah, that's a really um good point.
So what you're referring to is UM Garry Webb's Dark
Alliance article. Yeah, series of articles in our book from
I believe. Garry Webb was an investigative journalist for the
(04:28):
San Jose Mercury News, and Um, they had a front
page story where he basically figured out the connection between
the CIA and the crack epidemic that started in I
think in Los Angeles south central. It was a dude
named Freeway Ricky Ross, who's still around I think, yeah. Um,
(04:49):
And he was the largest cocaine distributor UH African American
cocaine distributor in l A. He was big time, and
all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he had a
new product called crack and it became very popular, very quickly. UM,
and Gary Webb in trace the origin of this epidemic
(05:12):
back to through Ricky Ross, back to some Nicaraguan freedom
fighting guerrillas that were backed and trained and possibly commanded
by the CIA. We're getting into this, so we just
go ahead and dive in. Yeah, do you want to? Yeah?
Why not? Um? All right, here's the deal. In Nicaragua,
(05:35):
Central American country. UM, in the nineteen thirties, man named
Anastasio uh Samosa took power, and then about forty years later,
in nineteen seventy nine, the people revolted, um overthrew him,
and they were called the Sandinistas. Yes, so you know
the whole Contra Sandinista war in Nicaragua that raged in
(05:59):
the seventies and eighties, that's what we're talking about. And
the Sandinista's um, we're a communist and that didn't fly
so well with the US, who would long cherished Nicaragua
for their farmland and like to have a toe in
their pond, so to speak. And so communists and there
didn't fly. And so they said, you know what, I
think maybe we should fund the contrast maybe give them
(06:21):
a little bit of financial assistance. Yeah, And the contrasts
weren't just one group. They were it was like an
umbrella term for any democratic or um an anti communist
group that was trying to paramilitarily overthrow the socialist leadership
in Nicaragua. That's right. So we decided to help fund
(06:41):
their civil war. And UM, the problem was that there
wasn't a lot of dough like that we could say, like, hey,
let's use this money to do this. Because it was
a secret war. There was no congressional approval. It was
a proxy war with the Soviet Union at the time.
So some allege that this is when um, the Reagan
administration and the CIA got together to literally introduce cocaine
(07:06):
dealers in cocaine H two South Central and crack cocaine
to spread throughout the ghettos, to raise money and use
that money to fund the contrast. Right, So here's the thing,
like that was never proven and Gary Webb never ever
said he did not He didn't say that the government
(07:26):
directly introduced it on purpose or with the aim of
creating an epidemic in the ghetto. He found connections between
the CIA and drug lords, specifically Ricky Ross on one end,
and then the CIA backed impossibly commanded UM, the Nicaraguan
(07:48):
Democratic Force, the this contra force. UM, it's so their
their business. Their group was funded entirely from cocaine sales
in trafficking, and they all went to this guy, Ricky Ross.
And there's no way that the CIA didn't know about this. Yeah,
(08:11):
and there were at the time, well we'll get back
to web in a second. But UM, in the eighties,
there was you know, when the whole Iron Contra thing
broke out, there was the Carry Committee who did some investigating.
The Carry Committee report, UH from John Cary. Obviously, UM
found that quote the Contra drug links included payments to
(08:32):
drug traffickers by the U. S. State Department funds authorized
by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the contrash. And
then later on there was an internal CIA investigation in
the nineties where they found that there is no evidence
that UM, the CIA actually brought drugs into the United States. UM. However,
(08:54):
and these these royal quotes. However, during the Contra era,
the CIA worked with a variety of people to support
the Contract program, and let me be frank, there are
instances where the CIA did not in an expeditious or
consistent fashion cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contract
program who are alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.
(09:15):
So basically, the internal investigation said, well, there might have
been some people, we were dealing with it, we're doing this,
and as it turns out, we didn't really do much
about it. Right, So, as far as you can go
without hyperbole, and it's still pretty shocking. Sure, the CIA backed, trained,
(09:35):
and possibly commanded UM at least one guerrilla group, the
Nicaraguan Democratic Force and the Nicaraguan Democratic Force the f
d n UM sold cocaine to Freeway Ricky Ross. Freeway
Ricky Ross is where the crack epidemic originated. And so
(09:57):
just to finish up with web though Um, after he
wrote this Dark Alliance series, he was shunned by mainstream
press in the United States. Sadly, all three of the
major newspapers. Um, you know, the l A Times, New
York Times, and I guess was that Washington Post came
out and it was not only shun they like tried
(10:20):
to discredit him. Oh yeah, they wrote articles they put
um seventeen reporters in twenty words to a three day
rebuttal of Dark Alliance. That was the the l A Times. Yeah.
Rather than pick up the story, they tried to demolish it.
And Webb New York Times um suggested he was a
reckless reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. He already
(10:41):
had wanted pull a surprise at this point, I think
for something else, and Um the Mercury News defended it
for a little while and then backed off and apologized.
He ended up quitting and committed a very weird suicide
in which he shot himself in the head twice. Uh,
(11:03):
who knows. Obviously, if you get on the internet, there
are tons of outlets that say, well, obviously it's not
a suicide. It was a murder. Um so who knows
about that? Other other people have said no, it does
look kinky, but the first shot wasn't fatal and he
was able to do it twice. Who knows. Draw your
own conclusions. It's some raw nerve right there. But he
(11:25):
claimed that there were people like, you know, he saw
what he thought were c i A. People like climbing
up his fire escape and stuff the previous days. And
who knows. All I'm saying is they're making a movie
about it with Jeremy Renner this summer. Oh is that right? Great? Good?
I'm glad he I ran across him when I wrote
an article on America's Army. Jeremy Renner. Yeah, he wrote
(11:49):
an expose a America's army. Is this Uh it's a
video game and it's basically like a training game for
the army where you can play this free game. Um,
but you sign up to be contacted. If you're any
good at it, the Army contacts you. And he did this.
It's like a recruiting tool through video games. But the
(12:10):
Army categorically denied that's what it was. But that's obviously
what it was. And Gary Gary Webb, one of the
last expose as was on that, and you know, we
should mention that today all three of those major news
outlets all say, boy, we kind of got that one wrong. Yeah, um,
we shouldn't have done that. Maybe we shouldn't have driven
Gary Webb to his possible suicide. Um. So, so Gary
(12:34):
Webb did all this investigation, did all this leg We're
canning connect to the dots pretty well, but there's still
this maddening question of tantalizing question, who invented crack? It
came out of nowhere? And so to kind of answer that,
which we can't, Um, you have to look at how
crack is made, and look at how crack is made.
(12:56):
You have to go back a lot further than the nineties.
You have to go back to the eight and eighties
and actually a little further before then, when cocaine first
was introduced to the United States after it was isolated.
The alkaloid was isolated from the coca plant in the
mid nineteenth century. Yeah, and that's when it was isolated
in I mean for centuries. People in South America were
(13:18):
wise to the fact that if you chew on this plant,
it'll give you some go juice. You didn't work more, yea,
and people still chew the heck out of it. Yeah,
so it was it was no secret to the South Americans.
But like you said, it was the mid eighteen eighties
when it was actually isolated and UM became a narcotic,
(13:39):
an abused narcotic drug. Right. But first UM you could
buy it all over the place. You could order it
through catalogs. UM you can, doctors could prescribe it. Sigmund
Freud was an ardent prescriber of it um and it
was a very popular drug found in tonic cocacola for real,
(14:02):
that's not a myth. Um and cocaine was. Everybody loved
it for a while, ye until well not until they
still loved it and still do today, I imagine. But
in nineteen fourteen it was made illegal with the Harrison
Narcotics Tax Act and UM right, which do you remember
I said earlier that like everything like this, crack has
(14:25):
a real history of um. It shows the history of
racism in regards to drug laws. So the Harrison Narcotic
Act Um outlawed opiates and cocaine for the first time
in the United States, and it was based on concerns
like Chinaman were luring white women there were to their
(14:47):
to their dens of iniquity in open Chinatown through opium
and Uh, Southern blacks were sniffing cocaine and it gave
them super him and strength, and they were raping white
women as a result. So those those two things were past,
and we have federal legislation from as a result of
(15:08):
those kind of fears. And if you kind of if
you keep that in the back of your mind and
then pay attention to the drug policy that comes out
later on from crack, you'll it's been going on since
then and it continues to today. Are you saying a
pattern emerges, a pattern emerges? So, UH, cocaine is um.
Cocaine powder is you have to actually manufacture it. You
(15:30):
don't find a cocoa plant and like not shake it
and shake it and white powder falls out. It makes
like a tinkling sound of the way. Uh. It is
made by dissolving the paste, the cocoa paste um in
a mixture of hydrochloric acid and water. Then you had
some potassium salt separate out the bad junk, maybe had
a little ammonia, and then the powder is separated out
(15:52):
and you've got cocaine powder cocaine and from there you
can sniff it. You can add a little water to
it and inject it. Yeah, or you can something called
free base. Yeah. I never quite understood what free base was.
I thought it was. I thought free basing was a thing.
It is, yeah, but free base is also and it's
a noun aniverb Okay, so you free base, free base.
(16:14):
Oh you see, I've been doing it wrong. You verb
the down So he've been doing this stuff doesn't work.
I don't know what everybody's so excited about. Um. So
with free base, you take cocaine and you add something
highly flammable, say ether um, and you after you dissolved
(16:39):
the the cocaine in an ammonia, you add ether to it.
Then you smoke it. But you're smoking something that has
like a highly flammable solution involved. To Richard, Parker. Yes,
in night when he was filming Busting Loose, he caught
himself on fire because he was he was smoking free Base.
He was smoking free Base and drinking one if do
(17:00):
you want proof rome one night and I think he
was doing it in his garage to which so it
was unventilated and he caught fire. Yeah, but you know what,
there's also reports that he set himself on fire on purpose,
that he poured the stuff all over his head and
lit a match. Oh, we went a little little self immolation. Um,
(17:20):
I think that may be the right story. Now. I
just saw a documentary on him, and I think that's
what they say. I'm so glad you just corrected me
mid podcasts. Do you have any emails you prevent? Well?
I mean that was the long stories that he free based,
and I think he even came out later and said like, yeah,
I was free basing, but I also purposely set myself
on fire in the ravages of a free basing binge. Okay,
(17:43):
so free basing it was a thing, at least as early,
but it was it was difficult to do multi step
process and you needed something like ether. Ether is not
the easiest thing to get your hands on and dangerous obviously,
sure um. But there was a way to smoke cocaine,
and free base was the way to do it, but
(18:05):
that never really got a big foothold in any demographic
in the country. It was just kind of a thing
that some people like Richard Pryor did right looking for
a more intense high. I guess then all of a sudden, mysteriously,
out of nowhere, there is crack cocaine. Yeah, crack is
also manufactured UM, but it doesn't require something like either
(18:25):
or anything flammable. UM. You dissolve it in a mixture
of water and either baking soda, sodium bicarbonate UM, or ammonia,
and you boil it up, separate it out into the solid,
cool it down, and then break it up and you've
got your little white, ish or tan crack rocks. And
if you buy it on the street, supposedly they range
(18:48):
in size from point one to point five grams UM
and they contain the d e A says between seventy
five and pure cocaine. So it's quite a rush for you,
sure um, because it's so easy to make crack from
cocaine UM. Like nobody imports cracked across the border into
(19:11):
the US. It's all coke that comes into the US,
and then Wesley Snipes converts it into crack uh and
a factory operated and run by naked people because he
doesn't trust them. What was that new Jack City? Oh man,
I was like played, Yeah, I forgot all about Jack City.
(19:34):
That was great. And they call it crack because it
makes a crackling sound. That's the baking soda when you
put the fire on it, and speaking you put the
fire on it. That's how you do it. Um, you
have a little I mean, there's different kinds of pipes,
but the most often crack pipe you will see is
the little straight shooter, a little glass tube. Yep. I
find him on my dog walks in my neighborhood. Yeah,
(19:58):
crack is still around. It's not like it when anywhere.
Um he thought, Oh they got that problem all under control.
Lickt uh. So you you you know, you have the
crack in one end and then a filter of some
kind like a steel wool or something in the other.
You heat it up with your lighter, yeah, under like
on the outside of the glass tube or you can
I guess hit it with the flame. But I think
(20:19):
if you light it under the glass tube, that's generally
the way to do it. I think it vaporizes it,
that's right, and you smoke it and um pretty much immediately, Uh,
you're gonna feel the effects. It's it's an immediate rush
that lasts only about ten or fifteen minutes. And that's
something that I didn't used to know. I learned it
a few years ago, but I had no idea. I
(20:39):
thought a crack high was like, you know, a couple
of hours or something. No, I think it's one of
the shortest ties on the market, which is I guess
why it's so addictive and dangerous rampant because you come
down and you're like, I'd like to do that again,
exactly because it's a short high, but it's also an
extremely intense high to so um. Yeah, the the the
(21:03):
it's addictiveness or potential for addictiveness is really high. Yeah.
And so I know this article summarized very nicely for
you exactly how it reacts with the brain. And so
why don't you go ahead and just lay it on people? Alright?
It has to do a dopamine, as we know, Yeah, dopamine.
It's like your pleasure center it's it's the the basis
(21:23):
of the reward system that we have, which is how
we learn to eat and how we learn to have sex,
to reproduce. Like we we feel good when we do
certain things, we want to do it again, and the
basis of that is dopamine. So in the brain, the
way it functions normally is UH neuron will release dopamine
and it will travel to a neighboring neuron, causing it
(21:45):
to fire and release a pleasurable sensation. And then that
dopamine UH molecule travels back to the original neuron via
a transporter and is reabsorbed. So it does it's little
thing and then goes back home, and it's good. Right,
there's a certain finite amount of pleasure humans are designed
(22:06):
to experience naturally because that when we say reabsorbed, we
said it said that a lot. I don't think people
understand that means basically, it turns that off again. Right,
It does its thing, and it's done. It doesn't do
his thing and do its thing and do its thing
and do its thing. It does its thing once and
goes back to the original neuron exactly sits on the
couch in this little neuron waits to be released again.
(22:27):
Let me know when you have sex again or eat
something to some pizza. UM. So with with crack or
other drugs that UM target the dopamine system, UM, they
interrupt the process. Crack specifically interrupts the process of reuptake
or reabsorption. So you're you're smoking the crack, right, and
(22:50):
it triggers this dopamine release flood. But crack attaches to
the transporter which keeps the the dopamine from being reabsorbed,
which means it's just floating around in the synapse, the
area between two neurons, like hitting that one neuron again
and again and again, and it does it all throughout
(23:12):
the brain or all throughout the ventral tegmental area, and
you have this long or well not long, but you
have this very intense pleasurable sensation. Right. So basically the
re uptake, they just shut that down. So you're out
there on your own and then floating around. Yes, your
brain is a big pleasure center. And then after I
(23:32):
guess five to fifteen minutes, like the crack wears off
in the dopamine is taken up once more. That's right,
and the high is over and your are left going
I want to do that again, exactly. I guess we
should talk about some of the effects of crack use. Um. Obviously,
just like with cocaine any kind of stimulant like that
(23:53):
or in phetamine, you're gonna be at risk for heart attack. Yeah,
sometimes on the spot. And because you smoke it too,
like it has real, um, real potential for problems with
your respiratory system and your cardio pulmonary system in general. Yeah,
stroke is also a risk. Um. It's gonna make you
very energize at first. You might although your senses may
(24:15):
be heightened temporarily, your heart rate is gonna shoot through
the roof, your pupils are gonna dilate, your temperature is
gonna rise. Um, you're gonna be pretty anxious or irritable
as you start to come down, and then you could
be really aggressive and you could, you know, be more
prone to start a fight with a cop, feel like
(24:37):
you have superhuman strength, or say some crazy stuff to
a passer by on the sidewalk because you have and
you have a went to a gunk on the corners
of your mouth. That's true. Uh, if you have it
with alcohol, that's not a good combination, because that produces
a chemical called uh coca ethylene. Yeah, lifts up like
this is a thing. It's like toxic, is I'll get out. Well,
(24:57):
it's the crack or cocaine and alcohol, um produce a
third drug, basically a hybrid drug that's more than the
sum of its parts. And um, it creates a longer
lasting intense or high from crack. Um. But it's also
really toxic to the liver, really bad for you. Yeah,
(25:21):
as if alcohol itself wasn't. Yeah, And it's not like
you have to do anything to it or to to
get this thing. Like you just drink and smoke crack
and your body does the rest. Your your metabolism breaks
the stuff down and creates this coca ethylene and it's
like alcohol on cocaine. Right. So, as we said, it's
(25:41):
super addictive. Um. And of course all this stuff whenever
you hear about drugs being addictive, it's all dependent on
the person. Of course. One person might smoke crack and
never want to do it again. One person might be
hooked immediately. Uh. It all depends on your your susceptibility
to addiction, which varies greatly for sure. Um. I remember
(26:03):
learning when I was a kid that you smoke crack
once and you're addictive for life. Yeah. I heard that
about heroin too. Um. Yeah, the but there is a
very high potential for abuse with crack because it's long life.
It's short, short term, short high, but an intense high. Yeah.
And we don't want to say, like crack it's not addictive,
(26:25):
but we don't want to spread the misinformation, Yeah, which
was really big in the eighties in the in the
Nancy Reagan War on Drug era, Like a lot of
misinformation was put out there just to scare people. Um. Yeah.
So um, we're talking about it being addictive. It's addictive
(26:45):
and because of the effect that it has on dopamine,
but it's also deletrious to your health because of the
effect that it has on your dopamine reward system. Well yeah,
because uh, and I know we've covered this in other drugs.
If you do enough drugs like this, um, it rewires
your brain to the point where it just isn't working
(27:05):
the same any longer. Your brain has like something some
sort of sensor in there that's like, Okay, there's way
too much dopamine going on. This person should not be
feeling this much pleasure. So I'm going to just stop
producing as much dopamine naturally don't need it. I'm going
to destroy the dopamine that's floating around in the synapsism,
going to reduce the level so that when you now,
(27:28):
when you stop smoking crack, the the letdown is way
worse because you don't have as much natural dopamine as
you did before you started smoking crack. And um, so
you're craving. Your desire for crack to get back up
is much more intense, much higher. Yeah, and here's the
thing with crack, which is a little weird. Um many
(27:50):
times you need to smoke more and more of it
because of what you were just talking about, because you
need to get that high. But sometimes it'll act so
you make you more sensitive to it, and you will
get super high off crack, even as an addict, super quick,
and you could super die instantly. Um, which I'm not
(28:12):
sure if they've reconciled how it can do both of
those things depending on who you are. Well, I think
it's the same thing. It's like, you know, some people
get addicted to it immediately and other people take longer. Yeah,
but I'm just talking about how it affects you. But
I guess it's the same with alcohol, because some hardcore
alcoholics take a long time to get drunk and some
get drunk like really quickly. Yeah, so it gets this
(28:33):
the same deal. I guess I'd probably have to do
with metabolism, pantons metabolism, right, I guess so. So. Um,
once you, once you are fully addicted, if you stop
smoking crack, which by the way, I think I speak
for Chuck too, and I say we highly recommend it
if you smoke crack, to stop smoking crack. Yeah, and
(28:54):
if you haven't started yet, then just keep that up. Yes,
do not start smoking crack, no reason to um if
you have are if it's if you listen to this
podcast after you became addicted to crack. Um. If you
withdraw from crack, you're going to experience a pretty big
calm down in general, severe depression, anxiety, cravings. You're gonna
(29:16):
be not fun to be around. You're gonna be really
irritable and anxious, um and exhausted yet like agitated all
at the same time. Yeah. The good news is that
your brain will eventually restructure itself to return its dopamine
levels back to normal or somewhere near normal. UM, So
(29:37):
you won't be depressed or withdrawn or anxious or irritated,
irritable for the rest of your life. It's just while
you're undergoing withdrawals. That's what it's going to be like.
And it won't be pretty. It won't be pretty now.
And there's no UM medication designed to specifically treat crack UM.
And most therapies are pretty standard rehab therapy, like cognitive
(30:03):
behavioral therapy, which teaches you how to UM, how to
basically go through life resisting the temptation of smoking crack,
how to disassociate maybe UM triggers like places you go
just from that lifestyle. Yeah, just to thecouple your mentality
(30:23):
from being addicted. It's just standard rehab treatment pretty much.
And we covered that like extensively in addiction. And there's
another type of treatment that I hadn't heard of, UM
called contingency management. Had you heard of that? No? I hadn't. Actually,
it's apparently fairly popular for crack treatment. Well what is it? Well,
basically it's UM you are rewarded for not smoking crack,
(30:47):
which I'm sure goes over really well with Republicans. Where's
my reward exactly. I haven't smoked crack ever, Well, you
haven't been addicted. You have to be addicted. So um,
the you're given like a voucher or something, you make
it like thirty days you get a free movie ticket
or something, or like you're giving stuff to um. Yeah,
(31:08):
Incent not doing crack, and I'm sure stuff that is healthy,
good for you distracts you from thinking about crack. That
kind of thing. I hadn't heard of that before this article.
Give someone a movie ticket. You know you did good
today by not smoking crack. Here's a movie ticket. I
always like the street terms. We should go over those
(31:29):
real quick, because street terms, I think you're probably just
made up by the media. Yeah, you know, I always
feel like they probably just call it crack or rock, right,
or they call it bassa or French fries or real
tops or glow glow. That's like, um, wasn't that the drug?
And strangers with candy? Was Jerry like rubbed on her
(31:52):
gums and they call it like glow? Probably that great
um rock san that's my favorite, hot cakes, c d s.
Where is that candy? Sugar yam, jelly beans. I guess
they kind of makes sense. Jelly beans and French fries
makes sense. French fries does, yeah, because I mean doesn't
it look kind of like little pieces of French fries? Um, Yeah,
(32:15):
it's it's more. It makes more sense than bostha. Well
that's or real tops or here's one. There's no way
that anyone in the history of humanity has ever called
crack this electric kool aid. Yea, they got the wrong
drug there, Yeah, that would be acid from the famous book, Like,
(32:35):
what is that? I don't know. I think those are
newspaper writers who've never been on the streets. The kids
today are on the electric kool aid. Uh. So. One
thing that we talked about about crack is the weird
sentencing um laws dating back to nineteen fourteen and up
(32:57):
until two thousand and ten, when we past the Fair
Sentencing Act. If you were caught with one gram of
crack cocaine, you would get as much time as someone
caught with one hundred grams of cocaine powder. Yes, and
let's go back over this. In a graham of cocaine
powdered cocaine cost a hundred dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars,
(33:17):
and it was extraordinarily favored predominantly by white people. Crack
comes along five to ten bucks, cheap, intense, high um,
and it becomes favored by African Americans statistically speaking. Yeah,
so some might allege that the US government actually had
a hand in introducing crack to the ghettos and then
(33:42):
made stiffer sentencing once people were addicted to crack to
put And I'm not saying crack users are like awesome
people and people should do this, but it's a non
violent crime, and they were being put in prison for
the same amount of time as white counterparts who may
be raped and murdered people hundred to one ratio. To
get caught with a hundred times the powdered cocaine, to
(34:06):
get the same sentence as somebody caught with a hundredth
of that amount of crack, they were all well hold on.
When there was one other thing too, There were mandatory
minimum sentences that were extraordinarily harsh. Just getting caught with
a little bit of crack on you, any amount of crack,
I believe you got five years automatically, five years that
(34:26):
was the mandatory minimum for possession. Five years in prison
for nothing else, Like you could just be walking down
the street and get caught with crack and never have
committed another crime in your entire life, and you would
get five years in prison for that. And that was
from the Anti Drug Abuse Act, of which screams Nancy Reagan. Um.
(34:49):
And it was that was a big deal. It was
the law of the land until two thousand. Yeah, and uh,
finally Congress past the Fair Sentencing Act, which reverted the
ratio to one to eight teen instead of uh one
to a hundred by weight, and I got rid of
that mandatory minimum. And now Attorney General Eric Holder is
(35:09):
actually trying to get some retroactivity in these sentences and
not trying to they are actually releasing some people from prison. Um.
I remember we talked about that in the Presidential Partner episode.
That was something that a lot of people were calling for,
was blanket pardoned non violent crack users who had been
(35:29):
busted under this these mandatory minimums. Here's an idea rehab somebody.
But even still there's still a skew in the ratio
between crack and cocaine. Um. Uh, probably arrest, no, not
not just that, the the sentences, I guess, Yeah, it's
still an eighteen to one ratio. It used to be
(35:50):
a hundred to one, but it's still eighteen to one,
and people are like, why not just make it one
to want? It's both it's cocaine and it's cocaine exactly, Like,
what's the problem here. So, yeah, there's been a long
history of Um, I guess racism, just put plane and simple.
There's really no other way to put it. Racism among
drug laws. Yeah, and since they introduced the retroactivity releases,
(36:13):
they've reduced seventy sentences for an average of twenty nine
months per inmate and saved American taxpayers five and thirty
million dollars in the process. Um. Other people will say,
you're letting drug offenders out on the streets. Why are
we doing this? And um, so there are two sides. Obviously,
(36:35):
opinion lies that that story. We'd be remiss if we
didn't point out that people are upset about it in
some circles. Oh sure, it's not like it's a it's
a great idea, categorically yeah, Um yeah, there's problems with
it for sure. Uh. Can we talk about crack babies? Yeah?
That was another thing that came out of the eighties
was the so called crack baby. Like, there was a
(36:57):
huge part of this crack epide. Mick wasn't just addiction.
It was babies being born addicted to crack. And thanks
to a paper from by a guy named Dr Ira Chasnoff,
the crack baby fear started sweeping the nation. I mean huge, man.
There's a New York Times video that you can go watch,
(37:20):
like ten minutes long called retro Reports. Is that what
it was called. Yeah, it was really good and it
basically kind of brought and I remember now, you know,
back in the eighties, Peter Jennings on the nightly news
saying that you know, babies are and it's not Peter Jennings,
of course, it's whoever wrote the story. It was Peter
Jennings Dan. Rather it was People Time Newsweek. It basically
(37:41):
saying these babies are being born addicted to drugs. It
will ultimately cost crack babies will cost the United States
five billion dollars. Yeah, they were saying it was going
to be a lost generation, a nation of kids who
are you can't rehab. They're going to be the babies
or aloof They shake, they avoid eye contact, they've void
in contact with their own mothers, which proves that they're
(38:02):
going to be anti social deviance when they grow up.
And this is not like we're not rewriting history, man,
it was like hardcore stuff that they were saying it
was gonna be uh they were One quote was, um,
they will not be able to hold uh to form
to hold a job, or form meaningful relationships. Right, So
they were expected to completely overwhelm the education system, maybe
(38:23):
not even have an IQ of fifty yeah, and then
completely overwhelmed social services. So basically there was this this
whole um generation of kids that were expected to be
totally messed up because their mothers had smoke crack while
they were pregnant, and so women were having their kids
taken away from them. Some women were arrested, and um,
(38:45):
the the guy, the doctor who wrote the original paper,
Dr Ira chasin Off like started to very quickly back
off of the original statements, which he is still today.
Like he admits like he was pretty mouthy and not
very savvy, pretty meat, a naive, I guess you could
put it. And he said he would give these long
winded statements and then the press would just pick out
(39:06):
like the juiciest part and like this guy single handedly
created the crack baby myth because it never panned out
in any way, shape or form. And what they were
saying was like the twitchy babies that you're seeing on
TV when they're talking about the the symptoms of being
a cracked baby, that's premature babies. Like you take any
(39:27):
premature baby who's premature for any reason, and they're going
to display these symptoms that are supposedly associated with crack babies. Yeah,
they did. The US government sponsored a twenty five year
study of crack babies, not a two year study or
a five year study. Twenty five years. They followed these
babies up into adulthood. Uh is now over the funding
(39:48):
ran out, and they found that um by age four,
the average i Q of cocaine exposed children was UH
seventy nine. The average i Q for the non expos
children was ade UM. When it came to readiness at
age six, about in each group scored in the abnormal range.
Basically all of the findings said, it's the same as
(40:12):
these other kids. But here's the deal. They weren't doing
the study against crack baby babies and white suburban kids.
They were doing it against a like model, which was
other you know, poor black kids basically that were not
crack babies, and they said they are all below average.
So the deal is is it's poverty. Right, it's not
(40:33):
crack cocaine. They're scoring the same as non non crack babies,
and they're all scoring lower because of poverty and and
basically bad postnatal care through adulthood. Right, like you, you
might not have any problems physiologically or not as not
(40:53):
or cognitively from being exposed to crack in the womb,
but if your mom's still smoking crack after you're born,
you're probably not to get the best care from your
parents as possible. Um. And they did find in that
same study that children that were being raised in like
a supporting, encouraging house, even in um poverty stricken conditions,
(41:14):
uh tended to excel. So um it is it's pop.
It was poverty they found out, and um postnatal care
like you said, and being born premature. But yes, but
the correct baby thing never happened. It was another example
of hysterics. So right about now, I want to say,
if if it sounds like Chuck and I are being cavalier,
(41:35):
have been cavalier with the idea of crack. Uh we're
not We're not being cavalier with crack or addiction. That's
nothing to take lightly. But I think what's created a
bit of freneticness or passion maybe in this one is
just this idea that we're able to look back now
thirty years on and say, wow, like America was genuinely
(41:59):
hysteric coal and it's it's something to be amazed by
and a little disconcerted with. Two. Yeah, of course you
should not take cocaine or smoke crack when you're pregnant.
No doctor on earth is going to say that's a
good thing. But the crack baby was a myth. And
the one Emory professor that was in that New York
Times researcher in the New York Times video came out
(42:22):
and said, you know what, alcohol does much more physical
damage and is much more widespread as an abuse drug
during pregnancy than crack or cocaine ever is. But they're
not lacking ladies up that are pregnant for drinking. And
the reason they were doing it back then, it's because
(42:42):
they were poor black women. Right. Um, we should say
the crack epidemic. Also, while the sentences were stiffer, the
the amount you got caught with was a hundred times
smaller to get the same The same rap is getting
caught with powdered cocaine. There was something that came out
(43:03):
of this crack epidemic that was a real threat, and
that was the rise of the modern um inter city gang,
at least as far as we know it. Like crips
and bloods and folks and all those guys, they they
came out of this era. They were able to buy
the guns that they bought and fight the turf force
(43:25):
that they fought because they had this incredibly addictive drug
that they could sell and control pretty easily in their
hands all of a sudden. So where that came from,
who knows, but you can all you can. The big
problem with the crack epidemic that you can trace directly
(43:45):
back to it is the rise of the modern gang
drug gang. So in summary, crack whack, Yeah, crack babies,
crack sentencing laws, Why back whack Gary webb Um whacked
whack very nice? I got nothing else perfect. Well, since
(44:11):
I said something perfect, I am going to tell you
to go ahead and research crack more on our website
how stuff works dot Com. One of our websites these days. Um,
you can type crack into the search bar and I'll
bring up this article. And since I said search bar,
it's time for a message break, chuckers, how about you
(44:35):
take us out with some listener mail. All right, this
is from Rebecca and it is about PTSD and UH
police chases. UM. I've been a fan of you guys
since the inception. I've listened to every episode. I always
wanted to write in until now, I didn't have a reason.
Listening to the Police Chase podcast made me want to
(44:55):
share my story. Years ago, I was a victim of
a police chase. Some teenagers had stolen a car and
were pursued by the cops. I'm not sure what caused
them to pursue at high speeds, but they did. The
chase resulted in the kids t boning my car when
I was stopped at a red light. The kids tried
to take an incredibly sharp turn. Essentially you turn onto
another road and they're going way too fast. Um. The
(45:17):
chase escalated to an on foot chase. UM, and it
actually did end and arrests. I ended up having to
be cut out of the car with the jaws of
life only suffered minor head injuries despite my car being totaled.
As a result of the incident, I began having anxiety
and PTSD symptoms that were triggered by police irons and
intense stress. I had to receive treatment similar to some
(45:40):
of what you discussed in the PTSD episode all as well.
Now I didn't take too long, UM with therapy to
overcome everything. I just wanted to share the downside of
police chases. I don't think that incident required a high
speed chase, and the result could have been much moss worse.
I really wish that police would stop to think before
they pursued for minor crimes UH and would get fined
(46:02):
even or have some sort of penalty for causing accidents
within US at five standards. And that is Rebecca. Thanks Rebecca,
I appreciate you sharing that. Sorry that happened to you.
I'm glad you're doing better. UM. If you want to
share a personal experience from something that we have talked
about in this episode or another one, you can tweet
(46:22):
to us. That's y SK podcast, Facebook dot com, slash
Stuff You Should Know Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com,
and then check out our website. It's Stuff you should
know dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Like
(46:49):
a good neighbor, state farm is there with eighteen thousand
agents across the country who are ready to help you.
Seven three. That's getting to a better state.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there,
and uh, this is stuff you should know. Jerry just
waved like she's waving at the audience of this anger.
(00:25):
She's waving to the world. It's a little weird. She
may be on something. Uh, Josh, you know what's whack? Uh?
The Zach Attack from Saved by the Bell. I don't
even know what it is. You don't know what's Saved
by the Bell is what's wrong with No? I know
that I know what that show is, but I've never
heard of the Zach Attack. It's just Zach being Zach. Gotcha?
(00:48):
That is whack? Yeah, well, never mind. I thought Crack
was whack, but the Zach Attack is truly wack. No,
I disagree. I was gonna say, no, it's not right,
because that's actually a pretty good show. But okay, Crack
his whack. This we're like imminent up in here. We're
what we're like eminem up in here. Yeah, I guess,
so refer to Hip Hop episode now. No, I'm just
(01:13):
saying people that they're confused about why we sound so
stilted and square. Just go listen to hip hop and
that explains everything. People like that one. Surprisingly, Yeah, it's
a good one. Man. We got a good email from
me or a Facebook post from a graffiti artist. Yeah, yeah,
good stuff. I can't remember his tag, but it was
like really nice. But he was complimenting us or he
was just saying hey. No, he's like, hey, I'm a
(01:35):
graffiti artist and here's my my work. And uh, I
was very impressed. And he is not on crack, no,
because he's not whack right exactly, So Chuck, I have
a little, uh, a little intro. Great, just if you'll
bear with me. And the year was okay, I was fourteen. Okay,
(01:58):
what is it when you p b g very early
on UM cocaine, which is a drug that had been
sweeping the nation for about ten years by then. Yeah,
uh was up to a hundred and fifty dollars a graham.
(02:20):
That's thanks to the demand um and the available income
of its well healed yuppie users who are willing to
spend that kind of money on it. It's very much
an expensive, white, upwardly mobile person's drug. Cocaine run. Yeah,
(02:42):
and there were at the time articles that kind of said,
cocaine's probably not that addictive. We shouldn't worry that much
about cocaine. It's not a very big deal. It was mostly,
like I said, a white drug. That same year, a
new drug hit the scene. It was cheap, five to
(03:03):
ten bucks pop. It gave you a very quick, very
intense high, short lived, and it swept through lower income
African American areas of the United States, and all of
a sudden we had a problem, an epidemic. Yes, because
(03:24):
it was cocaine in a different form. Yeah, the country
went crazy for it. And not only was it cocaine
in a different form, it was cocaine being used by
a different demographic that, as we'll see, America has always
been threatened by and always made legislation to damp and
drug use among Yeah, it's pretty interesting when you dig
(03:45):
into this stuff. And so when people started to get worried,
Nancy Reagan became concerned. And when Nancy Reagan became concerned,
as as usual, she started to lie. And we will
we will get into what allegedly might have happened and
why crack might have been introduced in this country because
(04:08):
some people think it was the U. S. Government straight
up c I A. Yeah, that's a really um good point.
So what you're referring to is UM Garry Webb's Dark
Alliance article. Yeah, series of articles in our book from
I believe. Garry Webb was an investigative journalist for the
(04:28):
San Jose Mercury News, and Um, they had a front
page story where he basically figured out the connection between
the CIA and the crack epidemic that started in I
think in Los Angeles south central. It was a dude
named Freeway Ricky Ross, who's still around I think, yeah. Um,
(04:49):
And he was the largest cocaine distributor UH African American
cocaine distributor in l A. He was big time, and
all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he had a
new product called crack and it became very popular, very quickly. UM,
and Gary Webb in trace the origin of this epidemic
(05:12):
back to through Ricky Ross, back to some Nicaraguan freedom
fighting guerrillas that were backed and trained and possibly commanded
by the CIA. We're getting into this, so we just
go ahead and dive in. Yeah, do you want to? Yeah?
Why not? Um? All right, here's the deal. In Nicaragua,
(05:35):
Central American country. UM, in the nineteen thirties, man named
Anastasio uh Samosa took power, and then about forty years later,
in nineteen seventy nine, the people revolted, um overthrew him,
and they were called the Sandinistas. Yes, so you know
the whole Contra Sandinista war in Nicaragua that raged in
(05:59):
the seventies and eighties, that's what we're talking about. And
the Sandinista's um, we're a communist and that didn't fly
so well with the US, who would long cherished Nicaragua
for their farmland and like to have a toe in
their pond, so to speak. And so communists and there
didn't fly. And so they said, you know what, I
think maybe we should fund the contrast maybe give them
(06:21):
a little bit of financial assistance. Yeah, And the contrasts
weren't just one group. They were it was like an
umbrella term for any democratic or um an anti communist
group that was trying to paramilitarily overthrow the socialist leadership
in Nicaragua. That's right. So we decided to help fund
(06:41):
their civil war. And UM, the problem was that there
wasn't a lot of dough like that we could say, like, hey,
let's use this money to do this. Because it was
a secret war. There was no congressional approval. It was
a proxy war with the Soviet Union at the time.
So some allege that this is when um, the Reagan
administration and the CIA got together to literally introduce cocaine
(07:06):
dealers in cocaine H two South Central and crack cocaine
to spread throughout the ghettos, to raise money and use
that money to fund the contrast. Right, So here's the thing,
like that was never proven and Gary Webb never ever
said he did not He didn't say that the government
(07:26):
directly introduced it on purpose or with the aim of
creating an epidemic in the ghetto. He found connections between
the CIA and drug lords, specifically Ricky Ross on one end,
and then the CIA backed impossibly commanded UM, the Nicaraguan
(07:48):
Democratic Force, the this contra force. UM, it's so their
their business. Their group was funded entirely from cocaine sales
in trafficking, and they all went to this guy, Ricky Ross.
And there's no way that the CIA didn't know about this. Yeah,
(08:11):
and there were at the time, well we'll get back
to web in a second. But UM, in the eighties,
there was you know, when the whole Iron Contra thing
broke out, there was the Carry Committee who did some investigating.
The Carry Committee report, UH from John Cary. Obviously, UM
found that quote the Contra drug links included payments to
(08:32):
drug traffickers by the U. S. State Department funds authorized
by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the contrash. And
then later on there was an internal CIA investigation in
the nineties where they found that there is no evidence
that UM, the CIA actually brought drugs into the United States. UM. However,
(08:54):
and these these royal quotes. However, during the Contra era,
the CIA worked with a variety of people to support
the Contract program, and let me be frank, there are
instances where the CIA did not in an expeditious or
consistent fashion cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contract
program who are alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.
(09:15):
So basically, the internal investigation said, well, there might have
been some people, we were dealing with it, we're doing this,
and as it turns out, we didn't really do much
about it. Right, So, as far as you can go
without hyperbole, and it's still pretty shocking. Sure, the CIA backed, trained,
(09:35):
and possibly commanded UM at least one guerrilla group, the
Nicaraguan Democratic Force and the Nicaraguan Democratic Force the f
d n UM sold cocaine to Freeway Ricky Ross. Freeway
Ricky Ross is where the crack epidemic originated. And so
(09:57):
just to finish up with web though Um, after he
wrote this Dark Alliance series, he was shunned by mainstream
press in the United States. Sadly, all three of the
major newspapers. Um, you know, the l A Times, New
York Times, and I guess was that Washington Post came
out and it was not only shun they like tried
(10:20):
to discredit him. Oh yeah, they wrote articles they put
um seventeen reporters in twenty words to a three day
rebuttal of Dark Alliance. That was the the l A Times. Yeah.
Rather than pick up the story, they tried to demolish it.
And Webb New York Times um suggested he was a
reckless reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. He already
(10:41):
had wanted pull a surprise at this point, I think
for something else, and Um the Mercury News defended it
for a little while and then backed off and apologized.
He ended up quitting and committed a very weird suicide
in which he shot himself in the head twice. Uh,
(11:03):
who knows. Obviously, if you get on the internet, there
are tons of outlets that say, well, obviously it's not
a suicide. It was a murder. Um so who knows
about that? Other other people have said no, it does
look kinky, but the first shot wasn't fatal and he
was able to do it twice. Who knows. Draw your
own conclusions. It's some raw nerve right there. But he
(11:25):
claimed that there were people like, you know, he saw
what he thought were c i A. People like climbing
up his fire escape and stuff the previous days. And
who knows. All I'm saying is they're making a movie
about it with Jeremy Renner this summer. Oh is that right? Great? Good?
I'm glad he I ran across him when I wrote
an article on America's Army. Jeremy Renner. Yeah, he wrote
(11:49):
an expose a America's army. Is this Uh it's a
video game and it's basically like a training game for
the army where you can play this free game. Um,
but you sign up to be contacted. If you're any
good at it, the Army contacts you. And he did this.
It's like a recruiting tool through video games. But the
(12:10):
Army categorically denied that's what it was. But that's obviously
what it was. And Gary Gary Webb, one of the
last expose as was on that, and you know, we
should mention that today all three of those major news
outlets all say, boy, we kind of got that one wrong. Yeah, um,
we shouldn't have done that. Maybe we shouldn't have driven
Gary Webb to his possible suicide. Um. So, so Gary
(12:34):
Webb did all this investigation, did all this leg We're
canning connect to the dots pretty well, but there's still
this maddening question of tantalizing question, who invented crack? It
came out of nowhere? And so to kind of answer that,
which we can't, Um, you have to look at how
crack is made, and look at how crack is made.
(12:56):
You have to go back a lot further than the nineties.
You have to go back to the eight and eighties
and actually a little further before then, when cocaine first
was introduced to the United States after it was isolated.
The alkaloid was isolated from the coca plant in the
mid nineteenth century. Yeah, and that's when it was isolated
in I mean for centuries. People in South America were
(13:18):
wise to the fact that if you chew on this plant,
it'll give you some go juice. You didn't work more, yea,
and people still chew the heck out of it. Yeah,
so it was it was no secret to the South Americans.
But like you said, it was the mid eighteen eighties
when it was actually isolated and UM became a narcotic,
(13:39):
an abused narcotic drug. Right. But first UM you could
buy it all over the place. You could order it
through catalogs. UM you can, doctors could prescribe it. Sigmund
Freud was an ardent prescriber of it um and it
was a very popular drug found in tonic cocacola for real,
(14:02):
that's not a myth. Um and cocaine was. Everybody loved
it for a while, ye until well not until they
still loved it and still do today, I imagine. But
in nineteen fourteen it was made illegal with the Harrison
Narcotics Tax Act and UM right, which do you remember
I said earlier that like everything like this, crack has
(14:25):
a real history of um. It shows the history of
racism in regards to drug laws. So the Harrison Narcotic
Act Um outlawed opiates and cocaine for the first time
in the United States, and it was based on concerns
like Chinaman were luring white women there were to their
(14:47):
to their dens of iniquity in open Chinatown through opium
and Uh, Southern blacks were sniffing cocaine and it gave
them super him and strength, and they were raping white
women as a result. So those those two things were past,
and we have federal legislation from as a result of
(15:08):
those kind of fears. And if you kind of if
you keep that in the back of your mind and
then pay attention to the drug policy that comes out
later on from crack, you'll it's been going on since
then and it continues to today. Are you saying a
pattern emerges, a pattern emerges? So, UH, cocaine is um.
Cocaine powder is you have to actually manufacture it. You
(15:30):
don't find a cocoa plant and like not shake it
and shake it and white powder falls out. It makes
like a tinkling sound of the way. Uh. It is
made by dissolving the paste, the cocoa paste um in
a mixture of hydrochloric acid and water. Then you had
some potassium salt separate out the bad junk, maybe had
a little ammonia, and then the powder is separated out
(15:52):
and you've got cocaine powder cocaine and from there you
can sniff it. You can add a little water to
it and inject it. Yeah, or you can something called
free base. Yeah. I never quite understood what free base was.
I thought it was. I thought free basing was a thing.
It is, yeah, but free base is also and it's
a noun aniverb Okay, so you free base, free base.
(16:14):
Oh you see, I've been doing it wrong. You verb
the down So he've been doing this stuff doesn't work.
I don't know what everybody's so excited about. Um. So
with free base, you take cocaine and you add something
highly flammable, say ether um, and you after you dissolved
(16:39):
the the cocaine in an ammonia, you add ether to it.
Then you smoke it. But you're smoking something that has
like a highly flammable solution involved. To Richard, Parker. Yes,
in night when he was filming Busting Loose, he caught
himself on fire because he was he was smoking free Base.
He was smoking free Base and drinking one if do
(17:00):
you want proof rome one night and I think he
was doing it in his garage to which so it
was unventilated and he caught fire. Yeah, but you know what,
there's also reports that he set himself on fire on purpose,
that he poured the stuff all over his head and
lit a match. Oh, we went a little little self immolation. Um,
(17:20):
I think that may be the right story. Now. I
just saw a documentary on him, and I think that's
what they say. I'm so glad you just corrected me
mid podcasts. Do you have any emails you prevent? Well?
I mean that was the long stories that he free based,
and I think he even came out later and said like, yeah,
I was free basing, but I also purposely set myself
on fire in the ravages of a free basing binge. Okay,
(17:43):
so free basing it was a thing, at least as early,
but it was it was difficult to do multi step
process and you needed something like ether. Ether is not
the easiest thing to get your hands on and dangerous obviously,
sure um. But there was a way to smoke cocaine,
and free base was the way to do it, but
(18:05):
that never really got a big foothold in any demographic
in the country. It was just kind of a thing
that some people like Richard Pryor did right looking for
a more intense high. I guess then all of a sudden, mysteriously,
out of nowhere, there is crack cocaine. Yeah, crack is
also manufactured UM, but it doesn't require something like either
(18:25):
or anything flammable. UM. You dissolve it in a mixture
of water and either baking soda, sodium bicarbonate UM, or ammonia,
and you boil it up, separate it out into the solid,
cool it down, and then break it up and you've
got your little white, ish or tan crack rocks. And
if you buy it on the street, supposedly they range
(18:48):
in size from point one to point five grams UM
and they contain the d e A says between seventy
five and pure cocaine. So it's quite a rush for you,
sure um, because it's so easy to make crack from
cocaine UM. Like nobody imports cracked across the border into
(19:11):
the US. It's all coke that comes into the US,
and then Wesley Snipes converts it into crack uh and
a factory operated and run by naked people because he
doesn't trust them. What was that new Jack City? Oh man,
I was like played, Yeah, I forgot all about Jack City.
(19:34):
That was great. And they call it crack because it
makes a crackling sound. That's the baking soda when you
put the fire on it, and speaking you put the
fire on it. That's how you do it. Um, you
have a little I mean, there's different kinds of pipes,
but the most often crack pipe you will see is
the little straight shooter, a little glass tube. Yep. I
find him on my dog walks in my neighborhood. Yeah,
(19:58):
crack is still around. It's not like it when anywhere.
Um he thought, Oh they got that problem all under control.
Lickt uh. So you you you know, you have the
crack in one end and then a filter of some
kind like a steel wool or something in the other.
You heat it up with your lighter, yeah, under like
on the outside of the glass tube or you can
I guess hit it with the flame. But I think
(20:19):
if you light it under the glass tube, that's generally
the way to do it. I think it vaporizes it,
that's right, and you smoke it and um pretty much immediately, Uh,
you're gonna feel the effects. It's it's an immediate rush
that lasts only about ten or fifteen minutes. And that's
something that I didn't used to know. I learned it
a few years ago, but I had no idea. I
(20:39):
thought a crack high was like, you know, a couple
of hours or something. No, I think it's one of
the shortest ties on the market, which is I guess
why it's so addictive and dangerous rampant because you come
down and you're like, I'd like to do that again,
exactly because it's a short high, but it's also an
extremely intense high to so um. Yeah, the the the
(21:03):
it's addictiveness or potential for addictiveness is really high. Yeah.
And so I know this article summarized very nicely for
you exactly how it reacts with the brain. And so
why don't you go ahead and just lay it on people? Alright?
It has to do a dopamine, as we know, Yeah, dopamine.
It's like your pleasure center it's it's the the basis
(21:23):
of the reward system that we have, which is how
we learn to eat and how we learn to have sex,
to reproduce. Like we we feel good when we do
certain things, we want to do it again, and the
basis of that is dopamine. So in the brain, the
way it functions normally is UH neuron will release dopamine
and it will travel to a neighboring neuron, causing it
(21:45):
to fire and release a pleasurable sensation. And then that
dopamine UH molecule travels back to the original neuron via
a transporter and is reabsorbed. So it does it's little
thing and then goes back home, and it's good. Right,
there's a certain finite amount of pleasure humans are designed
(22:06):
to experience naturally because that when we say reabsorbed, we
said it said that a lot. I don't think people
understand that means basically, it turns that off again. Right,
It does its thing, and it's done. It doesn't do
his thing and do its thing and do its thing
and do its thing. It does its thing once and
goes back to the original neuron exactly sits on the
couch in this little neuron waits to be released again.
(22:27):
Let me know when you have sex again or eat
something to some pizza. UM. So with with crack or
other drugs that UM target the dopamine system, UM, they
interrupt the process. Crack specifically interrupts the process of reuptake
or reabsorption. So you're you're smoking the crack, right, and
(22:50):
it triggers this dopamine release flood. But crack attaches to
the transporter which keeps the the dopamine from being reabsorbed,
which means it's just floating around in the synapse, the
area between two neurons, like hitting that one neuron again
and again and again, and it does it all throughout
(23:12):
the brain or all throughout the ventral tegmental area, and
you have this long or well not long, but you
have this very intense pleasurable sensation. Right. So basically the
re uptake, they just shut that down. So you're out
there on your own and then floating around. Yes, your
brain is a big pleasure center. And then after I
(23:32):
guess five to fifteen minutes, like the crack wears off
in the dopamine is taken up once more. That's right,
and the high is over and your are left going
I want to do that again, exactly. I guess we
should talk about some of the effects of crack use. Um. Obviously,
just like with cocaine any kind of stimulant like that
(23:53):
or in phetamine, you're gonna be at risk for heart attack. Yeah,
sometimes on the spot. And because you smoke it too,
like it has real, um, real potential for problems with
your respiratory system and your cardio pulmonary system in general. Yeah,
stroke is also a risk. Um. It's gonna make you
very energize at first. You might although your senses may
(24:15):
be heightened temporarily, your heart rate is gonna shoot through
the roof, your pupils are gonna dilate, your temperature is
gonna rise. Um, you're gonna be pretty anxious or irritable
as you start to come down, and then you could
be really aggressive and you could, you know, be more
prone to start a fight with a cop, feel like
(24:37):
you have superhuman strength, or say some crazy stuff to
a passer by on the sidewalk because you have and
you have a went to a gunk on the corners
of your mouth. That's true. Uh, if you have it
with alcohol, that's not a good combination, because that produces
a chemical called uh coca ethylene. Yeah, lifts up like
this is a thing. It's like toxic, is I'll get out. Well,
(24:57):
it's the crack or cocaine and alcohol, um produce a
third drug, basically a hybrid drug that's more than the
sum of its parts. And um, it creates a longer
lasting intense or high from crack. Um. But it's also
really toxic to the liver, really bad for you. Yeah,
(25:21):
as if alcohol itself wasn't. Yeah, And it's not like
you have to do anything to it or to to
get this thing. Like you just drink and smoke crack
and your body does the rest. Your your metabolism breaks
the stuff down and creates this coca ethylene and it's
like alcohol on cocaine. Right. So, as we said, it's
(25:41):
super addictive. Um. And of course all this stuff whenever
you hear about drugs being addictive, it's all dependent on
the person. Of course. One person might smoke crack and
never want to do it again. One person might be
hooked immediately. Uh. It all depends on your your susceptibility
to addiction, which varies greatly for sure. Um. I remember
(26:03):
learning when I was a kid that you smoke crack
once and you're addictive for life. Yeah. I heard that
about heroin too. Um. Yeah, the but there is a
very high potential for abuse with crack because it's long life.
It's short, short term, short high, but an intense high. Yeah.
And we don't want to say, like crack it's not addictive,
(26:25):
but we don't want to spread the misinformation, Yeah, which
was really big in the eighties in the in the
Nancy Reagan War on Drug era, Like a lot of
misinformation was put out there just to scare people. Um. Yeah.
So um, we're talking about it being addictive. It's addictive
(26:45):
and because of the effect that it has on dopamine,
but it's also deletrious to your health because of the
effect that it has on your dopamine reward system. Well yeah,
because uh, and I know we've covered this in other drugs.
If you do enough drugs like this, um, it rewires
your brain to the point where it just isn't working
(27:05):
the same any longer. Your brain has like something some
sort of sensor in there that's like, Okay, there's way
too much dopamine going on. This person should not be
feeling this much pleasure. So I'm going to just stop
producing as much dopamine naturally don't need it. I'm going
to destroy the dopamine that's floating around in the synapsism,
going to reduce the level so that when you now,
(27:28):
when you stop smoking crack, the the letdown is way
worse because you don't have as much natural dopamine as
you did before you started smoking crack. And um, so
you're craving. Your desire for crack to get back up
is much more intense, much higher. Yeah, and here's the
thing with crack, which is a little weird. Um many
(27:50):
times you need to smoke more and more of it
because of what you were just talking about, because you
need to get that high. But sometimes it'll act so
you make you more sensitive to it, and you will
get super high off crack, even as an addict, super quick,
and you could super die instantly. Um, which I'm not
(28:12):
sure if they've reconciled how it can do both of
those things depending on who you are. Well, I think
it's the same thing. It's like, you know, some people
get addicted to it immediately and other people take longer. Yeah,
but I'm just talking about how it affects you. But
I guess it's the same with alcohol, because some hardcore
alcoholics take a long time to get drunk and some
get drunk like really quickly. Yeah, so it gets this
(28:33):
the same deal. I guess I'd probably have to do
with metabolism, pantons metabolism, right, I guess so. So. Um,
once you, once you are fully addicted, if you stop
smoking crack, which by the way, I think I speak
for Chuck too, and I say we highly recommend it
if you smoke crack, to stop smoking crack. Yeah, and
(28:54):
if you haven't started yet, then just keep that up. Yes,
do not start smoking crack, no reason to um if
you have are if it's if you listen to this
podcast after you became addicted to crack. Um. If you
withdraw from crack, you're going to experience a pretty big
calm down in general, severe depression, anxiety, cravings. You're gonna
(29:16):
be not fun to be around. You're gonna be really
irritable and anxious, um and exhausted yet like agitated all
at the same time. Yeah. The good news is that
your brain will eventually restructure itself to return its dopamine
levels back to normal or somewhere near normal. UM, So
(29:37):
you won't be depressed or withdrawn or anxious or irritated,
irritable for the rest of your life. It's just while
you're undergoing withdrawals. That's what it's going to be like.
And it won't be pretty. It won't be pretty now.
And there's no UM medication designed to specifically treat crack UM.
And most therapies are pretty standard rehab therapy, like cognitive
(30:03):
behavioral therapy, which teaches you how to UM, how to
basically go through life resisting the temptation of smoking crack,
how to disassociate maybe UM triggers like places you go
just from that lifestyle. Yeah, just to thecouple your mentality
(30:23):
from being addicted. It's just standard rehab treatment pretty much.
And we covered that like extensively in addiction. And there's
another type of treatment that I hadn't heard of, UM
called contingency management. Had you heard of that? No? I hadn't. Actually,
it's apparently fairly popular for crack treatment. Well what is it? Well,
basically it's UM you are rewarded for not smoking crack,
(30:47):
which I'm sure goes over really well with Republicans. Where's
my reward exactly. I haven't smoked crack ever, Well, you
haven't been addicted. You have to be addicted. So um,
the you're given like a voucher or something, you make
it like thirty days you get a free movie ticket
or something, or like you're giving stuff to um. Yeah,
(31:08):
Incent not doing crack, and I'm sure stuff that is healthy,
good for you distracts you from thinking about crack. That
kind of thing. I hadn't heard of that before this article.
Give someone a movie ticket. You know you did good
today by not smoking crack. Here's a movie ticket. I
always like the street terms. We should go over those
(31:29):
real quick, because street terms, I think you're probably just
made up by the media. Yeah, you know, I always
feel like they probably just call it crack or rock, right,
or they call it bassa or French fries or real
tops or glow glow. That's like, um, wasn't that the drug?
And strangers with candy? Was Jerry like rubbed on her
(31:52):
gums and they call it like glow? Probably that great
um rock san that's my favorite, hot cakes, c d s.
Where is that candy? Sugar yam, jelly beans. I guess
they kind of makes sense. Jelly beans and French fries
makes sense. French fries does, yeah, because I mean doesn't
it look kind of like little pieces of French fries? Um, Yeah,
(32:15):
it's it's more. It makes more sense than bostha. Well
that's or real tops or here's one. There's no way
that anyone in the history of humanity has ever called
crack this electric kool aid. Yea, they got the wrong
drug there, Yeah, that would be acid from the famous book, Like,
(32:35):
what is that? I don't know. I think those are
newspaper writers who've never been on the streets. The kids
today are on the electric kool aid. Uh. So. One
thing that we talked about about crack is the weird
sentencing um laws dating back to nineteen fourteen and up
(32:57):
until two thousand and ten, when we past the Fair
Sentencing Act. If you were caught with one gram of
crack cocaine, you would get as much time as someone
caught with one hundred grams of cocaine powder. Yes, and
let's go back over this. In a graham of cocaine
powdered cocaine cost a hundred dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars,
(33:17):
and it was extraordinarily favored predominantly by white people. Crack
comes along five to ten bucks, cheap, intense, high um,
and it becomes favored by African Americans statistically speaking. Yeah,
so some might allege that the US government actually had
a hand in introducing crack to the ghettos and then
(33:42):
made stiffer sentencing once people were addicted to crack to
put And I'm not saying crack users are like awesome
people and people should do this, but it's a non
violent crime, and they were being put in prison for
the same amount of time as white counterparts who may
be raped and murdered people hundred to one ratio. To
get caught with a hundred times the powdered cocaine, to
(34:06):
get the same sentence as somebody caught with a hundredth
of that amount of crack, they were all well hold on.
When there was one other thing too, There were mandatory
minimum sentences that were extraordinarily harsh. Just getting caught with
a little bit of crack on you, any amount of crack,
I believe you got five years automatically, five years that
(34:26):
was the mandatory minimum for possession. Five years in prison
for nothing else, Like you could just be walking down
the street and get caught with crack and never have
committed another crime in your entire life, and you would
get five years in prison for that. And that was
from the Anti Drug Abuse Act, of which screams Nancy Reagan. Um.
(34:49):
And it was that was a big deal. It was
the law of the land until two thousand. Yeah, and uh,
finally Congress past the Fair Sentencing Act, which reverted the
ratio to one to eight teen instead of uh one
to a hundred by weight, and I got rid of
that mandatory minimum. And now Attorney General Eric Holder is
(35:09):
actually trying to get some retroactivity in these sentences and
not trying to they are actually releasing some people from prison. Um.
I remember we talked about that in the Presidential Partner episode.
That was something that a lot of people were calling for,
was blanket pardoned non violent crack users who had been
(35:29):
busted under this these mandatory minimums. Here's an idea rehab somebody.
But even still there's still a skew in the ratio
between crack and cocaine. Um. Uh, probably arrest, no, not
not just that, the the sentences, I guess, Yeah, it's
still an eighteen to one ratio. It used to be
(35:50):
a hundred to one, but it's still eighteen to one,
and people are like, why not just make it one
to want? It's both it's cocaine and it's cocaine exactly, Like,
what's the problem here. So, yeah, there's been a long
history of Um, I guess racism, just put plane and simple.
There's really no other way to put it. Racism among
drug laws. Yeah, and since they introduced the retroactivity releases,
(36:13):
they've reduced seventy sentences for an average of twenty nine
months per inmate and saved American taxpayers five and thirty
million dollars in the process. Um. Other people will say,
you're letting drug offenders out on the streets. Why are
we doing this? And um, so there are two sides. Obviously,
(36:35):
opinion lies that that story. We'd be remiss if we
didn't point out that people are upset about it in
some circles. Oh sure, it's not like it's a it's
a great idea, categorically yeah, Um yeah, there's problems with
it for sure. Uh. Can we talk about crack babies? Yeah?
That was another thing that came out of the eighties
was the so called crack baby. Like, there was a
(36:57):
huge part of this crack epide. Mick wasn't just addiction.
It was babies being born addicted to crack. And thanks
to a paper from by a guy named Dr Ira Chasnoff,
the crack baby fear started sweeping the nation. I mean huge, man.
There's a New York Times video that you can go watch,
(37:20):
like ten minutes long called retro Reports. Is that what
it was called. Yeah, it was really good and it
basically kind of brought and I remember now, you know,
back in the eighties, Peter Jennings on the nightly news
saying that you know, babies are and it's not Peter Jennings,
of course, it's whoever wrote the story. It was Peter
Jennings Dan. Rather it was People Time Newsweek. It basically
(37:41):
saying these babies are being born addicted to drugs. It
will ultimately cost crack babies will cost the United States
five billion dollars. Yeah, they were saying it was going
to be a lost generation, a nation of kids who
are you can't rehab. They're going to be the babies
or aloof They shake, they avoid eye contact, they've void
in contact with their own mothers, which proves that they're
(38:02):
going to be anti social deviance when they grow up.
And this is not like we're not rewriting history, man,
it was like hardcore stuff that they were saying it
was gonna be uh they were One quote was, um,
they will not be able to hold uh to form
to hold a job, or form meaningful relationships. Right, So
they were expected to completely overwhelm the education system, maybe
(38:23):
not even have an IQ of fifty yeah, and then
completely overwhelmed social services. So basically there was this this
whole um generation of kids that were expected to be
totally messed up because their mothers had smoke crack while
they were pregnant, and so women were having their kids
taken away from them. Some women were arrested, and um,
(38:45):
the the guy, the doctor who wrote the original paper,
Dr Ira chasin Off like started to very quickly back
off of the original statements, which he is still today.
Like he admits like he was pretty mouthy and not
very savvy, pretty meat, a naive, I guess you could
put it. And he said he would give these long
winded statements and then the press would just pick out
(39:06):
like the juiciest part and like this guy single handedly
created the crack baby myth because it never panned out
in any way, shape or form. And what they were
saying was like the twitchy babies that you're seeing on
TV when they're talking about the the symptoms of being
a cracked baby, that's premature babies. Like you take any
(39:27):
premature baby who's premature for any reason, and they're going
to display these symptoms that are supposedly associated with crack babies. Yeah,
they did. The US government sponsored a twenty five year
study of crack babies, not a two year study or
a five year study. Twenty five years. They followed these
babies up into adulthood. Uh is now over the funding
(39:48):
ran out, and they found that um by age four,
the average i Q of cocaine exposed children was UH
seventy nine. The average i Q for the non expos
children was ade UM. When it came to readiness at
age six, about in each group scored in the abnormal range.
Basically all of the findings said, it's the same as
(40:12):
these other kids. But here's the deal. They weren't doing
the study against crack baby babies and white suburban kids.
They were doing it against a like model, which was
other you know, poor black kids basically that were not
crack babies, and they said they are all below average.
So the deal is is it's poverty. Right, it's not
(40:33):
crack cocaine. They're scoring the same as non non crack babies,
and they're all scoring lower because of poverty and and
basically bad postnatal care through adulthood. Right, like you, you
might not have any problems physiologically or not as not
(40:53):
or cognitively from being exposed to crack in the womb,
but if your mom's still smoking crack after you're born,
you're probably not to get the best care from your
parents as possible. Um. And they did find in that
same study that children that were being raised in like
a supporting, encouraging house, even in um poverty stricken conditions,
(41:14):
uh tended to excel. So um it is it's pop.
It was poverty they found out, and um postnatal care
like you said, and being born premature. But yes, but
the correct baby thing never happened. It was another example
of hysterics. So right about now, I want to say,
if if it sounds like Chuck and I are being cavalier,
(41:35):
have been cavalier with the idea of crack. Uh we're
not We're not being cavalier with crack or addiction. That's
nothing to take lightly. But I think what's created a
bit of freneticness or passion maybe in this one is
just this idea that we're able to look back now
thirty years on and say, wow, like America was genuinely
(41:59):
hysteric coal and it's it's something to be amazed by
and a little disconcerted with. Two. Yeah, of course you
should not take cocaine or smoke crack when you're pregnant.
No doctor on earth is going to say that's a
good thing. But the crack baby was a myth. And
the one Emory professor that was in that New York
Times researcher in the New York Times video came out
(42:22):
and said, you know what, alcohol does much more physical
damage and is much more widespread as an abuse drug
during pregnancy than crack or cocaine ever is. But they're
not lacking ladies up that are pregnant for drinking. And
the reason they were doing it back then, it's because
(42:42):
they were poor black women. Right. Um, we should say
the crack epidemic. Also, while the sentences were stiffer, the
the amount you got caught with was a hundred times
smaller to get the same The same rap is getting
caught with powdered cocaine. There was something that came out
(43:03):
of this crack epidemic that was a real threat, and
that was the rise of the modern um inter city gang,
at least as far as we know it. Like crips
and bloods and folks and all those guys, they they
came out of this era. They were able to buy
the guns that they bought and fight the turf force
(43:25):
that they fought because they had this incredibly addictive drug
that they could sell and control pretty easily in their
hands all of a sudden. So where that came from,
who knows, but you can all you can. The big
problem with the crack epidemic that you can trace directly
(43:45):
back to it is the rise of the modern gang
drug gang. So in summary, crack whack, Yeah, crack babies,
crack sentencing laws, Why back whack Gary webb Um whacked
whack very nice? I got nothing else perfect. Well, since
(44:11):
I said something perfect, I am going to tell you
to go ahead and research crack more on our website
how stuff works dot Com. One of our websites these days. Um,
you can type crack into the search bar and I'll
bring up this article. And since I said search bar,
it's time for a message break, chuckers, how about you
(44:35):
take us out with some listener mail. All right, this
is from Rebecca and it is about PTSD and UH
police chases. UM. I've been a fan of you guys
since the inception. I've listened to every episode. I always
wanted to write in until now, I didn't have a reason.
Listening to the Police Chase podcast made me want to
(44:55):
share my story. Years ago, I was a victim of
a police chase. Some teenagers had stolen a car and
were pursued by the cops. I'm not sure what caused
them to pursue at high speeds, but they did. The
chase resulted in the kids t boning my car when
I was stopped at a red light. The kids tried
to take an incredibly sharp turn. Essentially you turn onto
another road and they're going way too fast. Um. The
(45:17):
chase escalated to an on foot chase. UM, and it
actually did end and arrests. I ended up having to
be cut out of the car with the jaws of
life only suffered minor head injuries despite my car being totaled.
As a result of the incident, I began having anxiety
and PTSD symptoms that were triggered by police irons and
intense stress. I had to receive treatment similar to some
(45:40):
of what you discussed in the PTSD episode all as well.
Now I didn't take too long, UM with therapy to
overcome everything. I just wanted to share the downside of
police chases. I don't think that incident required a high
speed chase, and the result could have been much moss worse.
I really wish that police would stop to think before
they pursued for minor crimes UH and would get fined
(46:02):
even or have some sort of penalty for causing accidents
within US at five standards. And that is Rebecca. Thanks Rebecca,
I appreciate you sharing that. Sorry that happened to you.
I'm glad you're doing better. UM. If you want to
share a personal experience from something that we have talked
about in this episode or another one, you can tweet
(46:22):
to us. That's y SK podcast, Facebook dot com, slash
Stuff You Should Know Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com,
and then check out our website. It's Stuff you should
know dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Like
(46:49):
a good neighbor, state farm is there with eighteen thousand
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