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