It’s cheaper. Not sure why. There must be a leveraged affect of the additional chemicals because it woudn’t make sense to spend the time manipulating cocaine in order to sell it cheaper.
Because it’s cheaper. The statistics I read were for some particular east-coast city in the early 1990’s, but it went like this: powdered cocaine is roughly $1000 an ounce. From this, you can combine it with baking soda and create about 1000 vials of crack, which you can sell for $5 each. So simply by converting expensive powdered cocaine into crack, the dealer can make $4000, and greatly expand the pool of users who are able to buy their product, since most anybody can beg, borrow, or steal enough to come up with $5.
The downside, of course, is that there’s not very much cocaine in your five bucks worth of crack. But since you’re smoking it, it gets to your brain about as fast as possible, so you get an intense high. Of course, then it only lasts for twenty or thirty seconds.
I never understood why somebody would use crack since the effects, though intense, don’t last long. But heck, I don’t see why people still use cocaine at all, since amphetamines are available. From what I understand, their effects last hours instead of minutes.
As the Ninth Circuit said back in 1992:
From US v. Harding, 971 F.2d 410 (1992). The opinion goes on to point out that every federal circuit considering the issue reached a similar decision.
So a single dose of crack has less kick than 1/1000 of an ounce of powdered cocaine? That doesn’t make sense to me. What am I missing, here?
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread…” -Anatole France
Yes, indeed.
The law also forbids rich and poor alike from insider trading, bid rigging, price fixing, grading land without a permit, etc.
Cocaine gives longer lasting anesthesia than most of the other topical 'caines. However, that can be made up for by adding epinephrine to the lidocaine, to prolong its effects.
Cocaine also gives more powerful decongestion than most other topicals.
Cocaine is also used in a mix with tetracaine and epinephrine to make a topical anesthetic for regular skin, thus numbing it without injection, prior to suturing wounds.
Cocaine is also a component of Brompton’s Cocktail, which also contains Morphine and Alcohol (whee!). It’s used as an anagesic/stimulant for terminally ill patients, relieving their pain with less sedation.
It is an impressive pharmaceutical, with its ability to decongest, anesthetize, and stimulate the central nervous system all at once.
How much legal powder cocaine is dispensed in this country in a year?
So… since poor people can actually afford it, the poor crack users deserve to be punished more harshly than the rich powder cocaine users? Seems kind of like circular reasoning to me.
What also makes this especially egregious is that a drug supplier who is higher up the supply chain is actually going to get punished less than a dealer lower on the supply chain, because the latter has mixed the powder with baking soda in order to sell it on the street.
Police targeting of crack is concentrated on black communities even though it is as great a problem in white communites. That makes it racial.
In fact, your response is pretty much the hallmark of institutional racism: there is no overt effort to inflict more harm on the black community, however policies are pursued that will have a greater negative impact on the black community than the white community and the response is that it is just tough luck. Equal enforcement would require more effort, so it is just “bad luck” that the police go looking to find black users and dealers more than white users and dealers even though white offenders greatly outnumber black offenders.
Human Rights Watch documented this about ten years ago and the situation has not changed in the ensuing years: RACIALLY DISPROPORTIONATE DRUG ARRESTS
The initial reports of rising crime and violence trace back to the earliest years following the introduction of crack when there was a new market and, hence, more turf wars over distribution. The numbers have remained stable for over a decade, now, yet the police have not changed their tactics to address the wider issue, finding it easier to target the black community.
Do you happen to have a cite for your claim that crack cocaine “is as great a problem in white communities”?
Anyway, if I wanted to purchase some crack cocaine, I know where I would go and it would not be to the Upper West Side. No, I would go to Harlem or Bed Stuy or Newark.
Lol. I guess that’s because the racist police are indifferent to the drug dealing that takes place in black neighborhoods. Those &^ racists!!
Maybe they should come in and bust all those drug dealers and lock them up. But wait a sec – then their conduct would disproportionately impact black people. Those *&^% racists!!!
No idea.
Even assuming this is correct, which I doubt, wouldn’t that easily be explained by the fact the poor blacks tend to live in inner cities and poor whites in more rural communities? If you identified Crack as this evil and wanted to stop it, wouldn’t you expend your limited resource where there is more concentrated (geographically) use?
As far as your general claim of racism. I’m pretty sure that more whites than blacks are busted in relation to crystal meth labs. Is that, then, also indicative of racism?
My take is that crack is more destructive to communities than ordinary coke, and therefore is treated more harshly.
Excellent response to a tired old saw that is regurgitated way to often around here.
Crack and powder cocaine are not pharmacologically identical. The ligand at the receptor(s) may be identical molecules, but due to the route of administration and subsequent metabolic journey, their effects aren’t the same. Powder takes 14 minutes, on average, to achieve peak effect, whereas crack takes 90 seconds. The latter is also associated with greater dependence liability and more severe dependence at that.
That said, there’s a distinction to be made here. Although I prefer a legal but regulated drug regime, crack ought to have harsher punishment than powder cocaine, if there’s to be penalties for drug possession. The issue is that the disparity enacted in the 80s is excessive and implicitly racially motivated based on the demographics of crack use, not that there is a disparity.
So even though more whites than blacks are being harmed by the drug, the police are justified in exerting far more energy where the pickings are easier rather than where they will do the most good?
Why would it be? More whites than blacks (numerically rather than as a percentage) are involved with both drugs. On the other hand, there is no evidence that the police specifically target white communities looking for meth as they do black communities looking for crack.
Your take appears to be based on the anecdotes that made it into circulation between 1985 and 1992 in which crack was blamed for all sorts of problems based on fresh drug wars among distributors. The increase in crack use flatlined in the early 1990s and the drug distributor turfs stabilized around the same time so that the claim that crack, in and of itself, harms specific communities disproportionately appears to be about 15 years out of date, yet the drug enforcement folks continue to rely on the outdated argument to rationalize their behavior.
My very first post and its link.
Stupidquestion.com had an article claiming that Peru sold 1.49 tons for medical use in 1988, half of which (~1500 lbs.) came to the U.S.
I have no idea how accurate or current the information might be.
Would you mind quoting the part which you believe supports your claim that crack cocaine “is as great a problem in white communities”? Because I couldn’t find it.
Thanks.
Also, do you have any explanation for the (apparent) fact that it’s much easier to wander into a black neighborhood in a big city and buy crack than it is to do the same in a white neighborhood?
Is my impression just plain wrong? I kinda doubt it.