Speaker 1: Hello everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode how Crack Works,
Speaker 1: and Boyle Boy does the title ever say at all?
Speaker 1: Because we really really explain how crack works. So enjoy
Speaker 1: How Crack Works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, and uh, this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you should Know. Jerry just waved like she's waving at
Speaker 1: the audience of the anger. She's waving to the world.
Speaker 1: It's a little weird. She may be on home Bloom. Uh, Josh,
Speaker 1: you know what's whack? Uh? Zach Attack from Saved by
Speaker 1: the Bell. I don't even know what it is. You
Speaker 1: don't know it's Saved by the Bell? Is what's wrong
Speaker 1: with No? I know that I know what that show is,
Speaker 1: but I've never heard of the Zach Attack. It's just
Speaker 1: Zack being zack. Gotcha? That is whack? Yeah, well, never mind.
Speaker 1: I thought Crack was whack, but the Zach Attack is
Speaker 1: truly whack. No, I disagree. I was gonna say no,
Speaker 1: it's not right because that's actually a pretty good show.
Speaker 1: But okay, yes, you crack his whack this. We're like
Speaker 1: imminent up in here. We're what we're like eminem up
Speaker 1: in here. Yeah, I guess so refer to R hip
Speaker 1: Hop episode now. No, I'm just saying people that they're
Speaker 1: confused about why we sound so stilted and square, just
Speaker 1: go listen to hip hop and that explains everything. People
Speaker 1: like that one. Surprisingly, Yeah, it's a good one. Man.
Speaker 1: We got a good email from a or a Facebook
Speaker 1: post from a graffiti artist. Oh yeah, yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 1: I can't remember his tag, but it was like really nice.
Speaker 1: But he was complimenting us or he was just saying hey, No,
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, I'm a graffiti artist and here's my
Speaker 1: my work. And I was very impressed. And he is
Speaker 1: not on crack no, because he's not whack right exactly,
Speaker 1: So Chuck, I have a little, uh a little intro
Speaker 1: just if you'll bear with me. And the year was okay,
Speaker 1: I was fourteen, Okay, what is it? It's one year
Speaker 1: p b G very early on um cocaine, which is
Speaker 1: a drug that had been sweeping the nation for about
Speaker 1: ten years by then. Yeah, uh, was up to a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars a graham. That's thanks to the
Speaker 1: demand um and the available income of its well healed
Speaker 1: yuppie users who were willing to spend that kind of
Speaker 1: money on it. Sure, it's very much an expensive, white,
Speaker 1: upwardly mobile person's drug. Cocaine was wall st Yeah, and
Speaker 1: 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 in when people started to
Speaker 1: get worried, Nancy Reagan became concerned. And when Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: became concerned, as as usual, she started to lie. And
Speaker 1: we will we will get into what allegedly might have
Speaker 1: happened and why crack might have been introduced in this
Speaker 1: country because some people think it was the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government straight up. C I A, yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: um good point. So what you're referring to is um
Speaker 1: Gary Webb's Dark Alliance article, right, yeah, series of articles
Speaker 1: in our book from I believe. Gary Webb was an
Speaker 1: investigative journalist for the San Jose Mercury News, and um,
Speaker 1: they had a front page story where he basically figured
Speaker 1: out the connection between the CIA and the crack epidem
Speaker 1: that started in I think in Los Angeles south central.
Speaker 1: There was a dude named Freeway Ricky Ross who's still
Speaker 1: around I think, yeah, Um, And he was the largest
Speaker 1: cocaine distributor UH African American cocaine distributor in l A.
Speaker 1: He was big time, and all of a sudden, out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, he had a new product called crack, and
Speaker 1: it became very popular, very quickly. Um, and Gary webb
Speaker 1: In traced the origin of this epidemic back to through
Speaker 1: Ricky Ross, back to some Nicaraguan freedom fighting guerrillas that
Speaker 1: were backed and trained and possibly commanded by the CIA.
Speaker 1: We're getting into this, so we just go ahead and
Speaker 1: dive in. Dive in. Yeah, do you want to? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why not? Okay? Um, all right, here's the deal. In Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: Central American country. Um, in the nineteen thirties, a man
Speaker 1: name Anastasio uh Samosa took power, and then about forty
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen seventy nine, the people revolted, um
Speaker 1: overthrew him, and they were called the Sandinistas. Yes, so
Speaker 1: you know the whole Contra Sandinista war in Nicaragua that
Speaker 1: raged in the seventies and eighties, that's what we're talking about. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the Sandinistas. Um, we're a communist and that didn't
Speaker 1: fly so well with the US who had long uh
Speaker 1: cherished Nicaragua for their farmland and like to have a
Speaker 1: toe in their pond, so to speak. And so communism
Speaker 1: there didn't fly. And so they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should fund the contrast, maybe give
Speaker 1: them a little bit of financial assistance. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: contrasts weren't just one group. They were it was like
Speaker 1: an umbrella term for any democratic or UM an anti
Speaker 1: communist group that was trying to paramilitarily overthrow the socialist
Speaker 1: leadership in Nicaragua. That's right. So we decided to help
Speaker 1: fund their civil war. And UM. The problem was that
Speaker 1: there 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 UH to 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. Yes, the this Contra force. UM. So their
Speaker 1: their business, their group was funded entirely from cocaine sales
Speaker 1: and 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 Webb in a second. But UM, in the eighties
Speaker 1: there was you know, when the whole Iran Contra thing
Speaker 1: broke out, there was the Carry Committee who did some investigating.
Speaker 1: The Carry Committee report, UH from John Carey. 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 con tris UH.
Speaker 1: And then later on there was an internal CIA investigation
Speaker 1: in the nineties where they found that there is no
Speaker 1: evidence that UM, the CIA actually brought drugs into the
Speaker 1: United States. UM. However, and these are these are aal quotes. However,
Speaker 1: during the Contra era, the CIA worked with a variety
Speaker 1: of people to support the Contrat program. And let me
Speaker 1: be frank, there are instances where the CIA did not
Speaker 1: in an expeditious or consistent fashion cut off relationships with
Speaker 1: individuals supporting the CONTRAT program who are alleged to have
Speaker 1: engaged in drug trafficking activity. So basically, the internal investigation said, well,
Speaker 1: there might have been some people we were dealing with
Speaker 1: that we're doing this, and as it turns out, we
Speaker 1: didn't really do much about it. Right, So, as far
Speaker 1: as you can go without hyperbole, and it's still pretty shocking. Sure,
Speaker 1: the CIA backed, trained, and possibly commanded UM at least
Speaker 1: one Perilla group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force and the Nicaraguan
Speaker 1: Democratic Force the f d n UM sold cocaine to
Speaker 1: Freeway Ricky Ross. Freeway Ricky Ross is where the crack
Speaker 1: epidemic originated. And so just to finish up with web
Speaker 1: though Um after he wrote this Dark Alliance series, he
Speaker 1: was shunned by mainstream press in the United States. Sadly,
Speaker 1: all three of the major newspapers, UM, you know, the
Speaker 1: l A Times, New York Times, and I guess was
Speaker 1: that Washington Post Post came out and they were not
Speaker 1: only shunned, they like tried to discredit him. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they wrote articles they put UM seventeen reporters in twenty
Speaker 1: words to a three day rebuttal of Dark Alliance that
Speaker 1: was the The l A Times. Yeah. Rather than pick
Speaker 1: up the story, they tried to de demolish it, and
Speaker 1: Webb New York Times um suggested he was a reckless
Speaker 1: reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. He already had
Speaker 1: wanted pull a surprise at this point, I think for
Speaker 1: something else, and um The Mercury News defended it for
Speaker 1: a little while and then backed off and apologized. He
Speaker 1: ended up quitting and committed a very weird suicide in
Speaker 1: which he shot himself in the head twice. Uh, who knows. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you get on the internet, there are tons of
Speaker 1: outlets that say, well, obviously it's not a suicide. It
Speaker 1: was a murder. Um, so who knows about that? Other
Speaker 1: other people have said, no, it does look kinky, but
Speaker 1: the first shot wasn't fatal and he was able to
Speaker 1: do it twice. Who knows, draw your own conclusions. Some
Speaker 1: raw nerve right there. But he claimed that there were
Speaker 1: people like you know, he saw what he thought were
Speaker 1: c i A. People like climbing up his fire escape
Speaker 1: and stuff the previous days. And who knows. All I'm
Speaker 1: saying is they're making a movie about it with Jeremy
Speaker 1: Renner this summer is it right? Great good? I'm glad
Speaker 1: he I ran across him when I wrote an article
Speaker 1: on America's Army Jeremy Renner. Yeah, he wrote an expose
Speaker 1: America's Army is this. Uh, it's a video game and
Speaker 1: it's basically like a training game for the army where
Speaker 1: you can play this free game. Um, but you sign
Speaker 1: up to be contacted. If you're any good at it,
Speaker 1: the Army contacts you. And he did this. It's like
Speaker 1: a recruiting tool through video games. But the Army categorically
Speaker 1: denied that's what it was. But that's obviously what it was.
Speaker 1: And Gary Gary Webb, one of his last expose a
Speaker 1: was on that, and you know, we should mention that
Speaker 1: today all three of those major news outlets all say, boy,
Speaker 1: we kind of got that one wrong. Yeah, um, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have done that. Maybe we shouldn't have driven Gary
Speaker 1: Webb to his possible suicide. So Gary Webb did all
Speaker 1: this investigation, did all this leg We're canning connect to
Speaker 1: the dots pretty well, but there's still this maddening question
Speaker 1: of tantalizing question who invented crack it came out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and so to kind of answer that which we can't, UM,
Speaker 1: you have to look at how crack is made, and
Speaker 1: look at how crack is made. You have to go
Speaker 1: back a lot further than the nine eighties. You have
Speaker 1: to go back to the eighteen eighties, and actually a
Speaker 1: little further before then, when cocaine first was introduced to
Speaker 1: the United States after it was isolated the alkaloid was
Speaker 1: isolated from the coca plant in the mid nineteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's when it was isolated in I mean for centuries.
Speaker 1: People in South America were wise to the fact that
Speaker 1: if you chew on this plant, it'll give you some
Speaker 1: go juice you can work more. Yeah, and people still
Speaker 1: chew the heck out of it. Yeah, So it was
Speaker 1: it was no secret to the South Americans. But like
Speaker 1: you said, it was the mid eighteen eighties when it
Speaker 1: was actually isolated and UM became a narcotic, an abused
Speaker 1: narcotic drug. Right. But first UM you could buy it
Speaker 1: all over the place. You could order it through catalogs.
Speaker 1: UM you can doctors could prescribe it. Sigmund Freud was
Speaker 1: an ardent prescriber of it UM and it was a
Speaker 1: very popular drug found in tonics. Coca cola for real,
Speaker 1: that's not a myth. Um and cocaine was everybody loved
Speaker 1: it for a while, yeah 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 and open Chinatown through opium
Speaker 1: and uh, Southern blacks were sniffing cocaine and it gave
Speaker 1: them superhuman strength and they were raping white women as
Speaker 1: a result. So those two things were passed, and we
Speaker 1: have federal legislation from as a result of those kind
Speaker 1: of fears. And if you kind of if you keep
Speaker 1: that in the back of your mind and then pay
Speaker 1: attention to the drug policy that comes out later on
Speaker 1: from crack. You'll it's been going on since then and
Speaker 1: it continues to today. Are you saying a pattern emerges?
Speaker 1: A pattern emerges? So, uh, cocaine is um. Cocaine powder
Speaker 1: is You have to actually manufacture it it. You don't
Speaker 1: find a cocoa plant and like not shake it and
Speaker 1: shake it and white powder falls out. It makes like
Speaker 1: a tinkling sound in It is made by dissolving the paste,
Speaker 1: the cocoa paste um in a mixture of hydrochloric acid
Speaker 1: and water. Then you had some potassium salt separate out
Speaker 1: the bad junk, maybe had a little ammonia, and then
Speaker 1: the powder is separated out and you've got cocaine powder,
Speaker 1: cocaine and from there you can sniff it. You can
Speaker 1: add a little water to it and inject it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you can make something called free base. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: never quite understood what free base was. I thought it was.
Speaker 1: I thought free basing was a thing. It is, yeah,
Speaker 1: but free base is also and it's a noun anniverb Okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe I do free base free base. Oh you see,
Speaker 1: I've been doing it wrong. You've verb the noun. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've been doing it just just stuff doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I don't know what everybody 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 ammonia, you add ether to it
Speaker 1: and then you smoke it. But you're smoking something that
Speaker 1: has like a highly flammable solution involved. All that to
Speaker 1: Richard Pryer, Yes, when he was filming Busting Loose, he
Speaker 1: caught himself on fire. He was smoking free base and
Speaker 1: drinking one one proof rome one night and I think
Speaker 1: he was doing it in his garage to which so
Speaker 1: it was unventilated and he caught fire. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know what, there's also reports that he set himself on
Speaker 1: fire on purpose, that he poured the stuff all over
Speaker 1: his head and let him match. Oh we went a
Speaker 1: little little cocko self immolation. Um. I think that may
Speaker 1: be the right story. Now. I just saw a documentary
Speaker 1: on him, and I think that's what they say. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you just corrected me mid podcasts. Do you
Speaker 1: have any emails you prevented? Well, I mean that was
Speaker 1: the long stories that he free based, and I think
Speaker 1: he even came out later and said like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was free basing, but I also purposely set myself on
Speaker 1: fire in the ravages of a free basing binge. Okay,
Speaker 1: so free basing it was a thing at least as
Speaker 1: early as but it was it was difficult to do
Speaker 1: multi step process and you needed something like ether. Ether
Speaker 1: is not the easiest thing to get your hands on
Speaker 1: and dangerous obviously. Sure, um, but there was a way
Speaker 1: to smoke cocaine, and free base was the way to
Speaker 1: do it. But that never really got a big foothold
Speaker 1: in any demographic in the country. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of a thing that some people like Richard Pryor did
Speaker 1: looking for a more intense high. I guess then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, mysteriously, out of nowhere, there is crack cocaine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: crack is also manufactured um, but it doesn't require something
Speaker 1: like either or anything flammable. Um. You dissolve it in
Speaker 1: a mixture of water and either baking soda, sodium bicarbonate,
Speaker 1: UM or ammonia, and you boil it up, separate it
Speaker 1: out into the solid, cool it down, and then break
Speaker 1: it up and you've got your little whiteish or tan
Speaker 1: crack rocks. And if you buy it on the street.
Speaker 1: Supposedly they range in size from point one to point
Speaker 1: five grams um and they contain the d e A
Speaker 1: says between seventy pure cocaine. So it's quite a rush
Speaker 1: for you, sure, um, because it's so easy to make
Speaker 1: crack from cocaine. Um. Like, nobody imports cracked across the
Speaker 1: border into the US. It's all coke that comes into
Speaker 1: the US and then Wesley Snipes converts it into crack
Speaker 1: uh in a factory operated and run by naked people
Speaker 1: because he doesn't trust them. What was that new Jack City? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I was like blade, Yeah, man, I forgot all about
Speaker 1: the Jack City. That was great. And they call it
Speaker 1: crack because it makes a crackling sound. That's the baking
Speaker 1: soda when you put the fire on it, and speaking
Speaker 1: you put the fire on it. That's how you do it. Um,
Speaker 1: you 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, find
Speaker 1: him on my dog walks in my neighborhood. Do you
Speaker 1: really still yeah, crack is still around. It's not like
Speaker 1: it went anywhere. Um, he thought oh, they got that
Speaker 1: problem all under control. It's lift uh. So you you
Speaker 1: you know, you have the crack in one end and
Speaker 1: then a filter of some kind like a steel wool
Speaker 1: or something in the other. You heat it up with
Speaker 1: your lighter, yeah, under like on the outside of the
Speaker 1: glass tube, or you can yeah, I guess hit it
Speaker 1: with the flame. But I think if you light it
Speaker 1: under the glass tube, that's generally the way to do it.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, it vaporizes it, that's right, and you
Speaker 1: smoke it and and um, pretty much immediately, Uh, you're
Speaker 1: going to 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, Hi, I was like, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of hours or something. No. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the shortest ties on the market, which is I
Speaker 1: guess why it's so addictive and dangerous rampant, because you
Speaker 1: come down and you're like, I'd like to do that
Speaker 1: again exactly minutes. It's a short high, but it's also
Speaker 1: an extremely intense high too, So um. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: the 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 with 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 its 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 when we say reabsorbed, we said
Speaker 1: it said that a lot. I don't think people understand
Speaker 1: that means basically, it turns that off again. Right, It
Speaker 1: does its thing and it's done. It doesn't do its
Speaker 1: thing and do its thing and do its thing and
Speaker 1: do its thing. It does its thing once and goes
Speaker 1: back to the original neuron exactly, sits on the couch
Speaker 1: and its little neuron waits to be released again. Let
Speaker 1: me know when you have sex again or eat something
Speaker 1: or some pizza. UM. So with with crack or other
Speaker 1: drugs that UM target the dopamine system, UM, they interrupt
Speaker 1: the process. Crack specifically interrupts the process of reuptake or reabsorption.
Speaker 1: So you're you're smoking the crack, right, and it triggers
Speaker 1: this dopamine release flood. But crack attaches to the transporter
Speaker 1: which keeps the UH, the dopamine from being reabsorbed, which
Speaker 1: means it's just floating around in the synapse, the area
Speaker 1: between two neurons, like hitting that one neuron again and
Speaker 1: again and again. And it does it all throughout the
Speaker 1: brain or all throughout the ventral tegmental area. And you
Speaker 1: have this long or well not long, but you have
Speaker 1: this very intense pleasurable sensation. Right, So basically the re uptake,
Speaker 1: they just shut that down, so you're out there on
Speaker 1: your own and then just floating around. Yes, your brain
Speaker 1: is a big pleasure center. And then after I guess
Speaker 1: five to fifteen minutes, like the crack wears off in
Speaker 1: the dopamine is taken up once more. That's right, and
Speaker 1: the high is over and your are left going I
Speaker 1: want to do that again, exactly. I guess we should
Speaker 1: 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 yeel 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 went to a gunk on the corners of
Speaker 1: your mouth. That's true. Uh. If you have it with alcohol,
Speaker 1: that's not a good combination because that produces a chemical
Speaker 1: called uh coca ethylene. Yeah, lifts up like this is
Speaker 1: 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 the 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. So, as we said, it's super addictive. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course all this stuff whenever you hear about
Speaker 1: drugs being addictive, it's all dependent on the person. Of course.
Speaker 1: One person might smoke crack and never want to do
Speaker 1: it again. One person might be hooked immediately. Uh. It
Speaker 1: all depends on your your susceptibility to addiction, which varies
Speaker 1: greatly for sure. Um. I remember learning when I was
Speaker 1: a kid that you smoke crack once and you're addictive
Speaker 1: for life. Yeah. I heard that about heroin too. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The but there is a very high potential for abuse
Speaker 1: with crack because it's long, it's short, short term, short high,
Speaker 1: but an intense high. Yeah. And what we don't want
Speaker 1: to say, like crack it's not addictive, but we don't
Speaker 1: want to spread the uh misinformation once you're hooked, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was really big in the eighties and the in
Speaker 1: the Nancy Reagan War on Drug era, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of 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 you atually needed. Your brain has
Speaker 1: like something some sort of sensor in there that's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's way too much dopamine going on. This person should
Speaker 1: not be feeling this much pleasure. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: just stop producing as much dopamine naturally don't need it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to destroy the dopamine that's floating around in
Speaker 1: the synapsism, going to reduce the level so that when
Speaker 1: you now, when you stop smoking crack, the the let
Speaker 1: down is way worse because you don't have as much
Speaker 1: natural dopamine as you did before you started smoking crack.
Speaker 1: And um, so you're craving. Your desire for crack to
Speaker 1: get back up is much more intense, much higher. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing with crack, which is a little weird. Um,
Speaker 1: many times you need to smoke more and more of
Speaker 1: it because of what you were just talking about, because
Speaker 1: you need to get that high. But sometimes it will
Speaker 1: actually make you more sensitive to it. And you will
Speaker 1: get super high off crack even as an addict, super
Speaker 1: quick and you could super die instantly. Um, which I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if they've reconciled how it can do both
Speaker 1: of those things depending on who you are. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's the same thing. It's like, you know, some
Speaker 1: people get addicted to it immediately and other people take longer. No,
Speaker 1: but I'm just talking about how it affects you. But
Speaker 1: I guess is 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. Right, yeah, so it gets
Speaker 1: this the same deal. I guess I'd probably have to
Speaker 1: do with metabolism, passons 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 all 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. Yeah, severe depression, anxiety, cravings. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be not fun to be around. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: really irritable and anxious UM and exhausted yet like agitated
Speaker 1: all at the same time. Yeah. The good news is
Speaker 1: that your brain will eventually restructure itself to return its
Speaker 1: dopamine levels back to normal or somewhere near normal. UM,
Speaker 1: So you won't be depressed or withdrawn or anxious or
Speaker 1: irritated irritable for the rest of your life. It's just
Speaker 1: while 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 decouple your mentality
Speaker 1: from being addicted. It's just standard. You have treatment pretty
Speaker 1: much and we covered that like extensively in addiction. And
Speaker 1: there's another type of treatment that I hadn't heard of,
Speaker 1: UM called contingency management. Had you heard of that? No?
Speaker 1: I hadn't. Actually, it's apparently fairly popular for crack treatment.
Speaker 1: Well what is it. Well, basically, it's, um, you are
Speaker 1: rewarded for not smoking crack, which I'm sure goes over
Speaker 1: really well with Republicans. Where's my reward exactly? I haven't
Speaker 1: smoked crack ever, Well, you haven't been addicted. You have
Speaker 1: to be addicted, so um, the uh, you're given like
Speaker 1: a voucher or something. You make it like thirty days
Speaker 1: you get a free movie ticket or something, or like
Speaker 1: you're given stuff to um Yeah, incentive not doing crack.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure stuff that is healthy, good for you
Speaker 1: distracts you from thinking about crack. That kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of that before this article. Give someone
Speaker 1: a movie ticket. You know you did good today by
Speaker 1: not smoking crack. Here's a movie ticket, right. Uh. Always
Speaker 1: like the street terms, we should go over those real quick,
Speaker 1: because street terms, I think you're probably just made up
Speaker 1: by the media. Yeah, you know, I always feel like
Speaker 1: they probably just call it crack or rock or they
Speaker 1: call it bassa or French fries or real tops or
Speaker 1: glow glow that's like, um, wasn't that the drug? And
Speaker 1: strangers with candy was jerry like rubbed down or gums
Speaker 1: and they call it like glow. Probably that great um
Speaker 1: rock sand 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 bossa. 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. Yeah, they got the wrong
Speaker 1: drug there. Yeah, that would be acid from the famous
Speaker 1: book Like what is that? I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: those are newspaper writers who've never been on the streets
Speaker 1: the kids today around the electric coolie. So one thing
Speaker 1: that we talked about about crack is the weird sentencing
Speaker 1: um laws dating back to nineteen and up until two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, when we passed the Fair Sentencing Act.
Speaker 1: If you were caught with one gram of crack cocaine,
Speaker 1: you would get as much time as someone caught with
Speaker 1: one grams of cocaine. Outer. Yes, and let's go back
Speaker 1: over this. In a graham of cocaine, powdered cocaine cost
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars, and it
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily favored predominantly by white people. Crack comes along
Speaker 1: five to ten bucks, cheap, intense, high um, and it
Speaker 1: becomes favored by African Americans statistically speaking. Yeah, so some
Speaker 1: might allege that the US government actually had a hand
Speaker 1: in introducing crack to the ghettos and then made stiffer
Speaker 1: sentencing once people were addicted to crack to put And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying crack users are like awesome people and
Speaker 1: people should do this, but it's a non violent crime,
Speaker 1: and they were being put in prison for the same
Speaker 1: amount of time as white counterparts who may be raped
Speaker 1: and murdered people a hundred to one ratio to get
Speaker 1: caught with a hundred times the powdered cocaine, to get
Speaker 1: the same sentence as somebody caught with a hundredth of
Speaker 1: that amount of crack and it's not like that anymore.
Speaker 1: They were all well hold on when there was one
Speaker 1: other thing too, There were mandatory minimum sentences that were
Speaker 1: extraordinarily harsh. Just getting caught with a little bit of
Speaker 1: crack on you, any amount of crack. I believe you
Speaker 1: got five years automatically five years. That was the mandatory
Speaker 1: minimum for possession. Five years in prison for nothing else.
Speaker 1: Like you could just be walking down the street and
Speaker 1: get caught with crack and never have committed another crime
Speaker 1: in your entire life, and you would get five years
Speaker 1: in prison for that. And that was from the Anti
Speaker 1: Drug Abuse Act, of which screams Nancy Reagan, um. And
Speaker 1: it was that was a big deal. It was the
Speaker 1: 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 eighteen instead of UH one to
Speaker 1: a hundred by weight, and I got rid of that
Speaker 1: mandatory minimum. And now Attorney General Eric Holder is actually
Speaker 1: trying to get some retroactivity in these sentences and not
Speaker 1: 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: Like that was something that a lot of people were
Speaker 1: calling for was blanket pardoned non violent crack users who
Speaker 1: had been busted under this these mandatory minimums. Here's an
Speaker 1: idea rehab somebody. But even still, there's still a skew
Speaker 1: in the ratio between crack and cocaine. Um. Uh, probably arrests, no,
Speaker 1: not not just that, the the sentences. I guess it's
Speaker 1: still an eighteen to one ratio. It used to be
Speaker 1: a hundred one, but it's still eighteen to one, And
Speaker 1: people are like, why not just make it one to
Speaker 1: 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 plain and simple.
Speaker 1: There's really no other way to put it. Racism among
Speaker 1: drug law. 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 wise to 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 that's a that'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 epidemic wasn't just addiction. It
Speaker 1: was babies being born addicted to crack. And Uh, thanks
Speaker 1: to a paper from by a guy named Dr Ira
Speaker 1: ch has No Off, the crack baby fear started sweeping
Speaker 1: the nation. I mean huge, man. There's a New York
Speaker 1: Times video that you can go watch, like ten minutes
Speaker 1: long called retro Reports. Is that what it was called. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really good and it basically kind of brought
Speaker 1: and I remember now, you know, back in the eighties
Speaker 1: Peter Jennings on the nightly news saying that you know,
Speaker 1: babies are and it's not Peter Jennings, of course, it's
Speaker 1: whoever wrote the story. It was Peter Jennings Dan. Rather,
Speaker 1: it was People Time Newsweek. Basically saying, these babies are
Speaker 1: being born addicted to drugs. It will ultimately cost crack
Speaker 1: babies will cost the United States five billion dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were saying it was going to be a lost
Speaker 1: generation and a nation of kids who are you can't rehab.
Speaker 1: They're going to be the babies or aloof They shake,
Speaker 1: they avoid eye contact, they avoid eye contact with their
Speaker 1: own mothers, which proves that they're going to be anti
Speaker 1: social deviance when they grow up. Yeah. And this is
Speaker 1: not like we're not rewriting history, man, it was like
Speaker 1: hardcore stuff that they were saying it was gonna be
Speaker 1: uh they were One quote was, um, they will not
Speaker 1: be able to hold uh, to form to hold a job,
Speaker 1: or form meaningful relationships. Right, So they were expected to
Speaker 1: completely overwhelm the education system, maybe not even have an
Speaker 1: i Q of fifty, Yeah, and then completely overwhelmed social services.
Speaker 1: So basically there was this this whole um generation of
Speaker 1: kids that were expected to be totally messed up because
Speaker 1: their mothers had smoke crack while they were pregnant, and
Speaker 1: so women were having their kids taken away from them.
Speaker 1: Some women were arrested and um, the the guy the
Speaker 1: doctor who wrote the original paper, Dr Ira chsn Off
Speaker 1: like started to very quickly back off of his original statements,
Speaker 1: which he's still today, Like he admits, like he was
Speaker 1: pretty mouthy and not very savvy, pretty media naive, I
Speaker 1: guess you could put it. And he said he would
Speaker 1: give these long winded statements and then the press would
Speaker 1: just pick out like the juiciest part. And like this
Speaker 1: guy single handedly created the crack baby myth because it
Speaker 1: never panned out in any way, shape or form. And
Speaker 1: what they were saying was like the twitchy babies that
Speaker 1: you're seeing on TV when they're talking about the the
Speaker 1: symptoms of being a cracked baby. That's premature babies. Like
Speaker 1: you take any premature baby who's premature for any reason,
Speaker 1: and they're going to display these symptoms that are supposedly
Speaker 1: associated with crack babies. Yeah, they did. The US government
Speaker 1: sponsored a twenty five year study of crack babies, not
Speaker 1: a two year study or a five year study. Twenty
Speaker 1: five years. They followed these babies up into adulthood. Uh
Speaker 1: is now over the funding ran out, and they found
Speaker 1: that um by age four, the average i Q of
Speaker 1: cocaine exposed children was UH seventy nine. The average i
Speaker 1: Q for the non exposed children was one UM. When
Speaker 1: it came to readiness at age six, about in each
Speaker 1: group scored in the abnormal range. Basically, all of the
Speaker 1: findings said, it's the same as these other kids. But
Speaker 1: here's the deal. They weren't doing the study against crack
Speaker 1: baby babies and white suburban kids. They were doing it
Speaker 1: against a like model, which was other you know, poor
Speaker 1: black kids basically that were not crack babies. And they
Speaker 1: said they are all below average. So the deal is
Speaker 1: is it's poverty. Right, it's not crack cocaine. They're scoring
Speaker 1: the same as non non crack babies, and they're all
Speaker 1: scoring lower because of poverty and and basically bad postnatal
Speaker 1: care through adulthood. Right, like you, you might not have
Speaker 1: any problems physiologically or not as not or cognitively from
Speaker 1: being exposed to crack in the womb, but if your
Speaker 1: mom's still smoking crack after you're born, you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to get the best care from your parents as possible. UM.
Speaker 1: And they did find in that same study that children
Speaker 1: that were being raised in like a porting encouraging house,
Speaker 1: even in um poverty stricken conditions uh tended to excel. So,
Speaker 1: um it is it's pop. It was poverty they found out,
Speaker 1: and um, postnatal care like you said, and being born premature.
Speaker 1: But yes, but the correct baby thing never happened. It
Speaker 1: was another example of hysterics. So right about now, I
Speaker 1: want to say, if if it sounds like Chuck and
Speaker 1: I are being cavalier, have been cavalier with the idea
Speaker 1: of crack, uh, we're not. We're not being cavalier with
Speaker 1: crack or addiction. That's nothing to take lightly. But I
Speaker 1: think what's created a bit of freneticness or passion maybe
Speaker 1: in this one is just this idea that we're able
Speaker 1: to look back now thirty years on and say, wow,
Speaker 1: like America was genuinely hysterical, and that's it's something to
Speaker 1: be amazed by and a little disconcerted with. Two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course you should not take cocaine or smoke crack
Speaker 1: when you're pregnant. No doctor on earth is going to
Speaker 1: say that's a good thing. But the crack baby was
Speaker 1: a myth. And the one Emory professor that was in
Speaker 1: that New York Times researcher in the New York Times
Speaker 1: video came out and said, you know what alcohol does
Speaker 1: much more physical damage and is much more widespread as
Speaker 1: an abuse drug during pregnancy than crack or cocaine ever is.
Speaker 1: But they're not lacking ladies up that are pregnant for drinking.
Speaker 1: And the reason they were doing it back then it
Speaker 1: is because they were poor black women, right, Um, we
Speaker 1: should say the crack epidemic also, while the sentences were stiffer,
Speaker 1: the the amount you got caught with was a hundred
Speaker 1: times smaller to get the same the same rap is
Speaker 1: getting caught with powdered cocaine. Yeah, there was something that
Speaker 1: came out of this crack epidemic that was a real threat,
Speaker 1: and that was the rise of the modern um inter
Speaker 1: city gang, at least as far as we know it.
Speaker 1: Like crips and Bloods and folks and all those guys.
Speaker 1: They they came out of this era. They were able
Speaker 1: to buy the guns that they bought and fight the
Speaker 1: turf force that they fought because they had this incredibly
Speaker 1: addictive drug that they could sell and control pretty easily
Speaker 1: in their hands all of a sudden. So where that
Speaker 1: came from, who knows, but you can all you can.
Speaker 1: The big problem with the crack epidemic that you can
Speaker 1: trace directly back to it is the rise of the
Speaker 1: modern gang drug gang. So in summary, crack whack, Yeah,
Speaker 1: crack babies, myth, crack sentencing laws, whack whack, Gary webb
Speaker 1: Um whacked whack. Very nice. I got nothing else? Okay,
Speaker 1: perfect chuckers, how about you take us out with some
Speaker 1: listener mail. All right, this is from Rebecca and it
Speaker 1: is about PTSD and uh police chases. Um. I've been
Speaker 1: a fan of you guys since the inception. I've listened
Speaker 1: to every episode. I always wanted to write in until now,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a reason. Listening to the Police Chase
Speaker 1: podcast made me want to share my story. Years ago,
Speaker 1: I was the victim of a police chase. Some teenagers
Speaker 1: had stolen a car and were pursued by the cops.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what caused them to pursue at high speeds,
Speaker 1: but they did. The chase resulted in the kids t
Speaker 1: boning my car when I was stopped at a red light.
Speaker 1: The kids tried to take an incredibly sharp turn. Essentially,
Speaker 1: you turned onto another road and they're going way too fast. Um.
Speaker 1: The chase escalated to an on foot chase. UM, and
Speaker 1: it actually did end and arrests I ended up having
Speaker 1: to be cut out of the car with the jaws
Speaker 1: of life only suffered minor head injuries despite my car
Speaker 1: being totaled. As a result of the incident, I began
Speaker 1: having anxiety and pts D symptoms that were triggered by
Speaker 1: police irons in intense stress. I had to receive treatment
Speaker 1: similar to some of what you discussed in the PTSD
Speaker 1: episode all as well. Now didn't take too long, um,
Speaker 1: with therapy to overcome everything. I just wanted to share
Speaker 1: the downside of police chases. I don't think that incident
Speaker 1: required a high speed chase, and the result could have
Speaker 1: been much much worse. I really wish that police would
Speaker 1: stop to think before they pursued for minor crimes uh
Speaker 1: and would get fined even or have some sort of
Speaker 1: penalty for causing accidents within US at by standards. And
Speaker 1: that is Rebecca. Well, thanks Rebecca, I appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker 1: Sorry that happened to you. I'm glad you're doing better. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to share a personal experience from something
Speaker 1: that we have talked about in this episode or another one,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us s y SK podcast, Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know Stuff podcast to
Speaker 1: how Stuff worce dot com and has always joined us
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