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Speaker 1: Oh, prop Sophie. Ye, Hey, what's the word, homie? You

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Speaker 1: know I'm a big fall guy. I love pumpkin spice.

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Speaker 1: I love walking through falling leaves. You know, the colors

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Speaker 1: start to change. What do you say this fall? We

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Speaker 1: all get together as buddies and we spend like seven

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Speaker 1: or eight hours talking about the crack epidemic, the c

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Speaker 1: I A Iran contra, the Gary Webb story that broke

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Speaker 1: it all that then had him hounded into self destruction

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Speaker 1: by the CIA and the New York Times. What do

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Speaker 1: we just did that for the first entire week of October?

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be a hoot? I feel like I feel

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Speaker 1: like this would be a good time because it kind

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Speaker 1: of matches all the stuff that kind of happens when

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Speaker 1: we sit around the table anyway, talk about crack. What

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Speaker 1: should we what should we call? What should we call this? Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, the Germans have a holiday during this period

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Speaker 1: in time, and I feel like if it's German, were

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Speaker 1: allowed to co opt it, So why don't we call

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Speaker 1: it cractober Fest. Listen, I'm waiting. You know what I'm

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Speaker 1: saying October crack October because october Fest to me is

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Speaker 1: it's a little too late a hose it for my Yes,

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Speaker 1: yes there will there will be no leader housing, but

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Speaker 1: there will be whatever CIA agents where. Honestly, probably like

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Speaker 1: Patagonia vs. Khaki Slacks. Yeah, yeah, hell of a lot

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Speaker 1: of those. Um Well, this is serving as a general

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Speaker 1: introduction to the series. Prop you have done a blistering

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Speaker 1: two parter on the Iran Contra scandal. I am covering

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Speaker 1: the crack epidemic and the CIA and all sorts of

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Speaker 1: good stuff and um but I think people are gonna

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Speaker 1: be happy. I think you're all gonna have a good

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Speaker 1: eight ish hours learning about everything there is to know

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Speaker 1: about how the CIA actually because like that's like the

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Speaker 1: thing everybody like says, joking, like jokingly says, like the

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Speaker 1: CIA brought crack to the inner cities. Like there's an

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Speaker 1: actual story there, and it's actually kind of worse than

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Speaker 1: than than just like the quick summaries people give. It's

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Speaker 1: worse than the street lower. It really is what you

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Speaker 1: get into it. And I've really felt like, you know,

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Speaker 1: we're always looking for ways to collapse, you know what

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Speaker 1: I'm saying. There's obviously there's a lot of mutual friendship,

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Speaker 1: symbiotic nous between our two uh podcast, but it was like,

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Speaker 1: so there's that we share a Sophie. Uh, but I

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Speaker 1: feel like finding that perfect then diagram that perfect you

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Speaker 1: know meme of the two guys holding hands. What movie

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Speaker 1: is that' from Rambo? Right, Commando? What movie is that from?

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Speaker 1: That's from Predator? Actually it's from Predator. I knew it

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Speaker 1: was one of him, but Arnold is from Commando, so

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Speaker 1: it's understanding. Okay, so it's from Predator. Yeah, when they

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Speaker 1: that perfect like where both our stories meet and it

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Speaker 1: couldn't have met better than the crack epidemics he was

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Speaker 1: having right now and how we even got there perfect

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Speaker 1: perfect storm and uh so this so so so this

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Speaker 1: is episode one of five because we're gonna be doing

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Speaker 1: Cracktoberfest all week and you can listen to all five

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Speaker 1: episodes either and they're available in the Hood, Politics, Speed,

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Speaker 1: in the Behind the Bastards. We listened to them wherever

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Speaker 1: you get your podcast. So I officially, uh apologize to

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Speaker 1: all the other podcasts you listen to. You can go

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Speaker 1: ahead and uh go to those fees now and tell

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Speaker 1: them you can subscribe them. Just burn them off of

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Speaker 1: your phone. In fact, throw that old phone away. Get

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Speaker 1: a new phone, keep it pure, just yeah, exactly, all right,

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Speaker 1: all right, here's what's mandatory, my minimums. I'm Robert Evans,

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Speaker 1: host of Behind the Bastards per Wow. Wow, that was powerful, powerful, prop.

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Speaker 1: So man, how are you doing? How are you doing? Buddy?

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Speaker 1: Hey homie? You know what I'm saying. Trickling down quick

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Speaker 1: and ther Reaganomics over here. You feel me? Beautiful now,

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Speaker 1: prop this is our special week. We had it. We

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Speaker 1: we did this introduction, the last one. I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: which of these episodes will introduce it on, but you

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Speaker 1: and I are tackling the crack epidemic, the c I

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Speaker 1: A Iran contra, all of which are individual stories that

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Speaker 1: are fucking wild, and all of which also kind of

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Speaker 1: deserved to be told together because they they're interwoven. Just

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Speaker 1: a bowl of gumbo of bastards man, Yeah, which I

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Speaker 1: feel like it's like the perfect, uh perfect analogy, because

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Speaker 1: everything in gumbo is great by itself. Yeah, then when

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Speaker 1: you get together, it's still amazing. Yeah, that's what I think.

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Speaker 1: When I think about the crack epidemic, I think, wow,

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Speaker 1: that was great by itself. It's perfectly fine by itself

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Speaker 1: without anything else around it. Yes, a plus um proper, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: how do you? How do you? How do you feel

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Speaker 1: about crack? Man? That doesn't seem like the right way

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Speaker 1: to start this. Um let's let's yeah, it's what crack.

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Speaker 1: It's so interesting how it went from like, uh, there

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Speaker 1: was a time where it was like hip hop was.

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Speaker 1: I feel like it's one of the proof proof of

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Speaker 1: concept that if hit hip hop is given the right information,

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Speaker 1: it does the right thing, Because it was it was

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Speaker 1: the butt of a joke to be like you do crack,

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Speaker 1: don't do crack. Crack it's what you know? Uh, and

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Speaker 1: then the self destruction and we're all in the same

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Speaker 1: game was about like, you know, you should do crack,

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Speaker 1: you know, And then all so there was a moment

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Speaker 1: where crack was terrible in in our in our culture,

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Speaker 1: or the butt of every joke. And then the crack

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Speaker 1: sellers became all the rappers, and then it was just

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Speaker 1: it became the coolest thing to sell crack, right, And

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Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, but I'm a crack dealer, Like

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Speaker 1: oh wait, so it's cool again. Yeah, but you supposed

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Speaker 1: to do crack, You're supposed to sell it. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: think maybe a place I might want to start here is.

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Speaker 1: Do you recall the first time you learned Like, is

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Speaker 1: that about like crack? The first time you remember the

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Speaker 1: first time, Yeah, you're you had to talk about it

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Speaker 1: with anyone. I do remember the time. I do remember

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Speaker 1: all the after school specials. I remember all of the

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Speaker 1: like you know, sort of the Dare program, all this

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Speaker 1: stuff around crack. But I think really it was whether

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Speaker 1: it was the movie Knew Jack Swing. I mean I

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Speaker 1: Knew Jack Swing, New Jack City, uh um, but really

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Speaker 1: it was like being in Los Angeles and like what

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Speaker 1: is wrong with that guy? Like and just like seeing

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Speaker 1: what a crackhead was and being like, yo, this is different,

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Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I mean as young

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Speaker 1: as young of a child as I was, like a

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Speaker 1: very young child during this time, like really really like baby,

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Speaker 1: but just being like this is this is different? You know?

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Speaker 1: Uh So I think my and then just somebody explaining

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Speaker 1: all that's crack you you know, you smoke it like

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Speaker 1: this or you shoot it up. You know what I'm saying.

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Speaker 1: It's just people figuring out like what that was. I

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Speaker 1: remember my first syringe. You're stepping over my first syringe,

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Speaker 1: which isn't crack per se, but like a crack pipe,

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Speaker 1: and just knowing what all that stuff was was like, Yo,

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Speaker 1: this is bad a matter of fact, now that i'm talking,

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Speaker 1: I know there's a lot, but now that I'm talking,

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Speaker 1: my neighbor, dang, I haven't thought about this. And so

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Speaker 1: we grew up, you know, in the part of town

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Speaker 1: I was in my my neighbor you know. Um, like

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Speaker 1: I said, I grew up in total neighborhood. So like

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Speaker 1: my neighbor, they were you know, in the life hardcore

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Speaker 1: or whatever, but they were just they were just some

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Speaker 1: of the most loving like people whatever. Right, So anyway,

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Speaker 1: they moved right and when they moved, um, for whatever reason,

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Speaker 1: the next family that came in, I remember didn't turn

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Speaker 1: the electricity on and like they never turned on any

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Speaker 1: of the like utilities, and I just remember being like, oh,

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Speaker 1: that's weird. And then the two little boys who were

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Speaker 1: a little bit younger than me used to always come over,

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Speaker 1: like right at dinner time, like you know what I'm saying,

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Speaker 1: and just all the like, they always smelled a little

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Speaker 1: bit like they weren't clean or whatever, and my parents

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Speaker 1: would like my parents knew was going on. I don't

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Speaker 1: know what's going on, but my parents knew was going on.

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Speaker 1: They would let him in. They'd be like dang, okay,

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Speaker 1: they feed them no more, you know. And then once

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Speaker 1: they put it all together, it and then you know

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Speaker 1: again people all hours at a night going in and

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Speaker 1: out the house. And then finally I realized I lived

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Speaker 1: next door to a crack house. It it was like

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Speaker 1: it was this slow roll of like wait, what, like

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Speaker 1: why do you why do they why do they have

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Speaker 1: so many candles? It's like, oh, it's kind of camping.

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Speaker 1: They cook with candles, you know, and just and then

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Speaker 1: just realized power, yeah, like no, it's crack. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, And obviously for me, it was a much

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Speaker 1: more distant thing, right, it was a thing that like

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Speaker 1: number one, crack was before anything else for me, like

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Speaker 1: a euphemism, yeah, for like something is addictive or also

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Speaker 1: someone is silly, like you're cracked out, Yeah exactly. And

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Speaker 1: it was the adults talked about crack like it was

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Speaker 1: a plague, like it was a disease that it hits

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Speaker 1: certain areas, and the kids talked about crack like it

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Speaker 1: was a euphemism. Right, it was like yeah, just kind

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Speaker 1: of an explanative term that you could throw in. Oh yeah, yeah, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're smoking crack, bro. We're gonna talk today about the

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Speaker 1: crack epidemic and how it happened and what happened as

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Speaker 1: a result of it. All cocaine type drugs, all cocaine

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Speaker 1: derived drugs, which include crack, good old fashioned blow, also

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Speaker 1: tinctures of cocaine, which is how people used to take

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Speaker 1: it back in the past, come from the leaves of

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Speaker 1: the cocould tree um and the co could tree grows

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Speaker 1: mostly in Columbia, Bolivia, and Peru on their own. Naturally,

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Speaker 1: the leaves can be chewed generally with something like potash

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Speaker 1: for a mild to moderate stimulating effect, with a little

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Speaker 1: bit of euphoria thrown in for good measure. I've gotten

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Speaker 1: to chew coca leaves in a couple of occasions and

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Speaker 1: it's very nice. It's a really pleasant and it's also

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Speaker 1: pretty hard to have be a problematic drug. You you

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Speaker 1: should think about coca the way we think about pot

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Speaker 1: or the way we think about like opium poppies, right

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Speaker 1: um opium poppies on their own. Some people do have

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Speaker 1: problems with that is a more serious drug, but it's

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Speaker 1: nothing compared to what happens when you start making heroin

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Speaker 1: or morphaga marijuana as it grows naturally almost impossible to

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Speaker 1: hurt yourself with. Then now people start making it into

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Speaker 1: shatter and stuff and they're blowing up trailer parks and

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Speaker 1: burning their brains out and ship right. Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of the way to think about the way.

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Speaker 1: And this is the way in which indigenous people used

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Speaker 1: coca one of them for probably thousands of years. Right um.

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Speaker 1: I know what we have evidence of coca used going

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Speaker 1: back and as as long pretty much as long as

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Speaker 1: there have been people in the area. It's it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's got to be the most like naive thing to

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Speaker 1: think that like, you know, these just plants that just

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Speaker 1: grew outside, that somebody didn't chew it and go oh

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Speaker 1: you know, and and and that that was just a

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Speaker 1: normal part of life. And maybe the rolls of shamons

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Speaker 1: and profits and they've probably been chewing wild plants forever. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's the same thing with you know, the coffee which

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Speaker 1: which comes from Ethiopia. The Romo people were kind of

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Speaker 1: the first people using the coffee plant. A big part

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Speaker 1: of what a major way it was used is for

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Speaker 1: like hunters, right to keep you going during the hunt.

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Speaker 1: That's probably a big part of how coca leaf was

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Speaker 1: used early on. It's like, right, we're out in the

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Speaker 1: we're out in the woods or the jungle or whatever

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Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks. You know, this should will

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Speaker 1: will keep us moving. Um. And also this is interesting.

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Speaker 1: Most people don't know this coca leaf is an oral anesthetic.

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Speaker 1: It numbs your mouth, so we One of the things

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Speaker 1: that's always been kind of interesting is that in a

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Speaker 1: lot of kind of Latin American areas you have early

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Speaker 1: history of pretty advanced dental work being done in some areas,

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Speaker 1: and maybe that had an impact on it, the fact

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Speaker 1: that they had access to a really effective oral an aesthetic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's actually a really it's a fucking amazing plant. Obviously. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it gets a bad fucking wrap. Well, novacane from the

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Speaker 1: coca leaf. That's where it comes from. Yeah, novacane and cocaine.

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Speaker 1: But he didn't get the song reference. It's okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: I didn't get the song reference. But I'm glad that

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Speaker 1: you brought up no vocane because we get novocane from

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Speaker 1: the coca leaf. See. Um, Yeah, it's just it's a

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Speaker 1: baffling lye useful plant. Um, and it's the root of

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Speaker 1: novocane and light a cane and crack cocaine. Um, they

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Speaker 1: all come from the same thing, right, Um, what kind

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Speaker 1: of Yeah, well it all sorts of canes. Yeah. Um.

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Speaker 1: Europeans really figured out what was up with coca in

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five. They'd noticed people in the areas they

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Speaker 1: were colonizing using it for a while. Um, But it

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Speaker 1: wasn't until eighteen fifty five that pure cocaine was extracted

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Speaker 1: from the leaps for the first time. Again, you've got

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Speaker 1: this bafflingly useful plant that's doing great stuff, and then

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Speaker 1: some white people come in and are like, you know

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Speaker 1: what we could do make a drug that makes people

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Speaker 1: insufferable at parties out of this let's we're gonna ruin

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Speaker 1: a lot of rabes. Like, yeah, now you already you

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Speaker 1: nailed the joke already. There's a way that's exactly a Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you're going to snore a drug in a party, kids,

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Speaker 1: kinta means a lot better anyway. Uh So, obviously, the

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Speaker 1: fact that they're not co signed officially, Yeah, legally, no

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Speaker 1: one is co signing there. So this is a huge

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Speaker 1: moment in medical science. Obviously, like I joked about them

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Speaker 1: ruining it, but actually a lot of really cool number

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Speaker 1: one cocaine. There are some were some early medical uses

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Speaker 1: for it. We get anesthetics like novacaine and lightacne. This

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Speaker 1: is a big deal, and we don't talk again, this

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Speaker 1: is something that people don't think about, but it was

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Speaker 1: not We're we're we're at about like a hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty years or so of effective anesthetics being widespread available, right,

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Speaker 1: that is not a thing in surgery prior to this.

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Speaker 1: If you don't live in a place where there's a

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Speaker 1: good natural oral anesthetic, um and there's a couple of cocaine,

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Speaker 1: coca is not the only one. Also, um cava, which

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Speaker 1: Hawaiian people I believe have been using, Polynesian people using

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Speaker 1: for a long time, works really well for that purpose.

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Speaker 1: But if you don't live somewhere with that plant and

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Speaker 1: you need a tooth taken out, you're probably downing half

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Speaker 1: a handle a liquor and then someone's ripping a bone

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Speaker 1: out your skull, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, then

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Speaker 1: you're then you're looking like a medieval movie, really real gnarly. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was listening to a h I think what was that, uh,

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Speaker 1: what kind of pot was that radio lapped the science

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Speaker 1: one from w might see what anyway, they were talking

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Speaker 1: about like figuring out molecules for new medicines and stuff. Right,

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Speaker 1: so if you figure this thing out, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: you're also looking at like side effects, so like the

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Speaker 1: difference between like a poison, like a narcotic or a medicine,

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Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, or poison. And one of

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Speaker 1: the researchers from China was like, well, they're just molecules,

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Speaker 1: like you know, and that that bifurcation, the difference between

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Speaker 1: like a good molecule and a bad molecule is like

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Speaker 1: it's a very new and sort of Western way to

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Speaker 1: look at this. It's like they all have strengths and weaknesses,

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Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and ways to abuse and

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Speaker 1: not abuse, you know. So even the way the way

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Speaker 1: that you're talking about, you know, the coca leaf is like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure somebody you know, in the ancient past

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Speaker 1: like chew that thing. And then his buddy was like, hey, bro,

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Speaker 1: you gotta chill man, you know what I'm saying, and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, and it was like, yeah, man, that was

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Speaker 1: too far. You know what I'm saying, like there has

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Speaker 1: to have been because again, I feel like the point

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Speaker 1: you're making at this stage in the story is you

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Speaker 1: can't stress enough. It's just a plant. It's just a plant.

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Speaker 1: And and at some point some people figure out how

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Speaker 1: to like supercharge it, right, And so at the same

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Speaker 1: time as you get these early anesthetics, you start getting

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Speaker 1: pure cocaine, right, usually sold as a tincture. So you

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Speaker 1: just get a fucking dropper of cocaine water sheeese right,

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Speaker 1: you can know you can shoot that stuff up. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people injected it. I believe Sherlock Holmes injected cocaine.

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Speaker 1: I think with heroin. Um, this is what guys like

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Speaker 1: Freud are doing. Right. Most of them are not doing lines,

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Speaker 1: you know, um they are. They are taking it as

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Speaker 1: a pure like distilled tincture. You can pick this ship

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Speaker 1: up at the at the drug store. Um. Now, this

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Speaker 1: causes problems because cocaine is incredibly addictive, um, and also

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Speaker 1: not great for your body, especially if you're taking it

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Speaker 1: a lot of it every single day because the doctor

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Speaker 1: told you it's good for you. That actually hurts you

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Speaker 1: a lot. Right, You can choo coca leafs all day long,

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Speaker 1: and it's you're probably not well, not all day long.

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Speaker 1: When you can choot coca leaves on a regular basis

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Speaker 1: and you're not dealing with too huge of a problem.

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Speaker 1: You're doing cocaine every day. People are gonna notice because

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Speaker 1: it's going to destroy you. Yeah, I think they're government.

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Speaker 1: You're just gonna be like, hey man, you know, I

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Speaker 1: mean just doing Yeah, you're gonna get really into White

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Speaker 1: Snake and yeah, then your heart's going to explode. Hey, bro,

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Speaker 1: so make an album. Hey man, we should make album.

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Speaker 1: You want to make an album of night Let's cut

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Speaker 1: we we we gotta bring back fucking prog rock. Man,

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Speaker 1: that's what I want to fucking hear right? Yeah? Um

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Speaker 1: so Europeans eighteen fifty five we get cocaine. Nineteen fourteen

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Speaker 1: is when the US government decides, right, that's enough, that's

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Speaker 1: enough cocaine being available. We gotta we gotta, we gotta

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Speaker 1: lock this one up. So we get the Harrison act

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Speaker 1: Um and and that makes it that's that restricts the

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Speaker 1: sale of cocaine, right, It makes it a lot harder

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Speaker 1: to get. People aren't buying it over the counter anymore.

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Speaker 1: And then in nineteen twenty two, another law gets passed,

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Speaker 1: which is one of the very first anti drug laws

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Speaker 1: in the United States that effectively stops legal US extraction

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Speaker 1: of cocaine. But of course the drug in various forms

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Speaker 1: continued to flow into the United States from Latin America

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Speaker 1: up through its land and sea borders. In the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: cocaine caught on big time as a drug for the

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Speaker 1: rich and the upwardly mobile party set sometime in the

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Speaker 1: late seventies, and obviously there's a lot of history in

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Speaker 1: other countries, especially in Europe outside of the US. I'm

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Speaker 1: focusing on the US here. Sometime in the late nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventies are very early nineteen eighties. We don't exactly know

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Speaker 1: when this happens because it's happening illegally, right, and there's

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Speaker 1: no If we had the internet, then you would have

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Speaker 1: a fucking Reddit post the day people figured out how

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Speaker 1: to make fun and crest. But we don't know exactly

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Speaker 1: when it happened. But sometime between the very end of

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and the start of the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: some drug chemists figure out that you can take powdered

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Speaker 1: cocaine and you can dissolve it in water and then

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Speaker 1: mix in baking powder and cook it down into rock

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Speaker 1: like chunks. Now, this is easy to smoke, which makes

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Speaker 1: it convenient. Right, it's easier to take, but it's also

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Speaker 1: much purer than powder cocaine, right, which is often filler

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Speaker 1: or more. Crack is around pure and it's significantly cheaper

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Speaker 1: because of the way you're manufacturing the per exactly, the

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Speaker 1: per dose cost is a lot less than it is

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Speaker 1: with cocaine. So from kind of similar amounts of raw product,

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Speaker 1: more people can get high, more often for less money.

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Speaker 1: So here's where I fill in pop culture for you.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, the the legend is that it was a

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Speaker 1: dude in Oakland that figured it out. Oh yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's the legend. Don't know that, but that's that's the legend. Right.

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Speaker 1: And once uh you know, once it hit Callie with

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Speaker 1: through like freeway Rick and and just some it starts

359
00:20:09,800 --> 00:20:12,439
Speaker 1: to hit and it starts it's hits hard and ruins

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Speaker 1: the crips and bloods. But that's but we'll get to that. Um.

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Speaker 1: But I think what you're talking about, as far as

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Speaker 1: how to make crack all of half of the slang

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Speaker 1: that gets appropriated from hip hop into the Zeigeister comes

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Speaker 1: out of black culture. Is actually it's crack slang. So

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Speaker 1: like cooking in the kitchen, you know, chef, you know

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Speaker 1: a chef spin, look at the flick of the wrist.

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Speaker 1: All of that is about spinning. Crack over, you know

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Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, it's all crack slang. You know.

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Speaker 1: A huge piece of internet slang right now that Garrison

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Speaker 1: and I say, probably more than is good for our

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Speaker 1: health is based right, it's crack. The term it's it

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Speaker 1: comes from free base right, like the origin and briefly

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Speaker 1: the right wing tried to take it in what I

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Speaker 1: mean like ideologically pure, and now it's just a general

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00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:07,320
Speaker 1: term for cool, yes, and will be being the bad, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it will be being the base God like all these things,

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Speaker 1: Like I think it's gonna happen as this is going,

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Speaker 1: like I'm gonna keep pointing out rap lyrics to you

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00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:19,359
Speaker 1: to be or just slang and being like that's about crack. Yeah,

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00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:21,560
Speaker 1: it is great. And I really love that you point

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Speaker 1: this out because from a from a from a cultural standpoint,

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Speaker 1: crack is like on the level of the Simpsons in

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Speaker 1: terms of how it's influenced the way people talk, yes,

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Speaker 1: we're rappers. Where people called it rappers athletes, they call

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Speaker 1: themselves chefs because they're cooking in the kitchen, which is

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Speaker 1: where you make crack, right, right. So I want to

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00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:48,280
Speaker 1: quote from the New York Times here to kind of

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Speaker 1: go over the economics of this new drug as it

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Speaker 1: starts to hit the market. Quote, the ten dollar sale

390
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:55,880
Speaker 1: price made crack accessible to poor people who could never

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Speaker 1: have come up with two hundred or more that affluent

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00:21:58,040 --> 00:22:00,840
Speaker 1: users paid for a gram of powder. Crack produced an

393
00:22:00,840 --> 00:22:03,440
Speaker 1: intense but fleeting high that pushed many users to buy

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00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:05,760
Speaker 1: again and again until they ran out of money. And

395
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:07,479
Speaker 1: that is one of the things about crack is that

396
00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:10,200
Speaker 1: like it hits harder and faster as generally the case

397
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:13,360
Speaker 1: when you free base something than railing it or insufflating,

398
00:22:13,359 --> 00:22:15,960
Speaker 1: to use the scientist insufflation as the scientific term for

399
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:20,600
Speaker 1: snorting something um like. So, for example, if you're taking

400
00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:23,600
Speaker 1: like a powdered hallucino generous psychedelic like a two C

401
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:26,399
Speaker 1: or something um, if you eat it in a pill, right,

402
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:28,400
Speaker 1: which is the way most people take that sort of drug,

403
00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:30,439
Speaker 1: it could take an hour for you to come up.

404
00:22:30,680 --> 00:22:33,439
Speaker 1: If you snort it, it comes up much faster and

405
00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 1: then insuff like if you're actually free basing something. And

406
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:38,400
Speaker 1: I don't think you can free base most of those drugs,

407
00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:40,719
Speaker 1: although I don't know that anyone's tried, but free basing

408
00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:43,800
Speaker 1: hits you faster, like for example, d m T, which

409
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Speaker 1: is the drug you know that all of the tech

410
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:48,560
Speaker 1: gurus talk about the way in which they tend to

411
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Speaker 1: take it in like the ceremonies that they're kind of

412
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Speaker 1: co opting from indigenous Latin Americans as ayahuasca. You're drinking

413
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Speaker 1: it as a t it takes a while to come up,

414
00:22:56,200 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 1: you vomit a lot. But you can also basically you

415
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:02,440
Speaker 1: can basically free base d MT if you just take

416
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:04,320
Speaker 1: the straight crystals out and you turn it into a

417
00:23:04,320 --> 00:23:06,159
Speaker 1: crystal and you smoke it in a crack pipe and

418
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:09,400
Speaker 1: it hits right the funk away, but it's much shorter, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: most of my most of the people that I do

420
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Speaker 1: know that either got hooked and got off that you

421
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Speaker 1: could communicate with, you know what I'm saying, who figured

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Speaker 1: out a way fought their way through to get off

423
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:24,200
Speaker 1: the stuff. That's what they say. They are like, there's honestly,

424
00:23:24,280 --> 00:23:27,680
Speaker 1: there is nothing like that hit it is so fast

425
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: and so intense, and that's why you get hooked immediately

426
00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:34,720
Speaker 1: and you'll give up everything for it. Because he's like

427
00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:36,920
Speaker 1: they like the Homies would explain to me. It's like,

428
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:39,920
Speaker 1: I'm glad, I'm off it now, but I'm telling you

429
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:43,880
Speaker 1: that high, that first high. You know what I'm saying.

430
00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:45,679
Speaker 1: It's like you never really reached that other high, that

431
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:49,399
Speaker 1: high again, but that first high. They're like, you're there's

432
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: there are no words for it. That's why it's so

433
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 1: I mean you Also, I do want to focus on

434
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: the economics here because another thing is that not only

435
00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,959
Speaker 1: is the high so intense, but you achieve a it's achievable.

436
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 1: So you're looking at if you've got if you're someone

437
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:05,920
Speaker 1: who uses cocaine, and you're looking at, well, it's gonna

438
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: a night of coke is going to be two hundred bucks, right,

439
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,119
Speaker 1: We're probably not going to do that. Some people do

440
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 1: get that addicted, but for most people it's like, okay,

441
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:15,960
Speaker 1: so I will occasionally buy two hundred bucks in cocaine

442
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,960
Speaker 1: for a night to party cracks tin bucks a hit, Yeah,

443
00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: I was gonna gets cheaper that, And that's how it is.

444
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: That's how cheap it is at the start, it gets

445
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot cheaper. So that's something you're

446
00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:28,959
Speaker 1: having a bad day, ship's rough, you're feeling bad, you know,

447
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 1: any time for pocket dollars you can fucking call again, right, yeah,

448
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: any Obviously this becomes a problem. Um. So obviously this

449
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: of course leads to overdoses. Another problem is that it

450
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:48,480
Speaker 1: is actually kind of hard, unless you're being really ridiculous

451
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: with cocaine, to overdose just by snorting it. With actual

452
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:55,639
Speaker 1: like quality cocaine, it's harder to do that than it

453
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,680
Speaker 1: is smoking free base, because you can burn a shipload

454
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: of crack really fast, right, and it's difficult for you

455
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:03,639
Speaker 1: to tell what you're getting, and the cooking like, you know,

456
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 1: the strength can vary and stuff, So people start accidentally

457
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:10,199
Speaker 1: consuming a lot more of the drug than they've been

458
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:13,640
Speaker 1: used to. Obviously. The other issue is that smoking freebase

459
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:17,199
Speaker 1: is so much harsher on the body than just inhaling powder.

460
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 1: You know, it's not good for you obviously to sport cocaine,

461
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: and there's issues like deviated septum and stuff that health

462
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: issues you get from that, But you're not ruining your

463
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: lungs when you're smoking. When you're when you're inhaling cocaine, right,

464
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 1: it's not good for you, but you're not destroying your

465
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:34,800
Speaker 1: lungs in addition to fucking with your heart. Crack is

466
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all the worst parts of cigarettes and

467
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: all of the worst parts of cocaine super charge. It

468
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 1: ages you. Yeah, they're yeah like that that used to

469
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 1: be like for for me, one of the biggest like

470
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:55,159
Speaker 1: deterrence one. N it wasn't none of him commercials, It

471
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 1: wasn't a song. It was the site. Uh, someone you

472
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: went to cool with that now looks like your grandparents

473
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,359
Speaker 1: and it and it was just and the fact that

474
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:12,640
Speaker 1: like and just that nothing else mattered, Like how are

475
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:18,200
Speaker 1: you You're just sitting like if you ever hopefully Robert,

476
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:22,359
Speaker 1: you've never walked into a crack house. Now. I don't

477
00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: know if that's true, but hopefully maybe it's some maybe

478
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: somewhere in Prague knowing your ass. But like, uh, out here,

479
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: like the site, it's it is probably the most heartbreaking

480
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:42,119
Speaker 1: site you can imagine because you're just like, I know these,

481
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: I know y'all, like you, how did you become this? Yeah?

482
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:50,439
Speaker 1: So I think the point that we built to here

483
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,160
Speaker 1: is that crack is indeed a hell of address. Yes,

484
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: And obviously people get better very quickly get better at

485
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: making and I think you know, there's no proving where

486
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: it came from. Oakland is a pretty good guess in

487
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:05,680
Speaker 1: terms of the first people to figure that the ship

488
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: out that that that that makes would make total sense

489
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 1: to me. Obviously, the Bay areas where innovation comes in,

490
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: right resistance, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, um. But you know

491
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 1: who else is constantly innovating? The sponsors of this podcast, well, yes,

492
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:27,359
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies A K. John Dealers, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

493
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 1: and in a much Also, the thing I don't want

494
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: to be doing here is like demonizing and we'll talk

495
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: more about this, is demonizing crack because it is addictive.

496
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: It is a drug that has serious physical consequences. Yeah,

497
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: there's nothing about crack cocaine that is worse than painkillers,

498
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:49,120
Speaker 1: than like than the ox is. Right, there's no a Yeah,

499
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: and when we get to any sentences, there's a big difference. Yes,

500
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:56,160
Speaker 1: we can talk about why that's so problematic. Yeah, we'll

501
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: be talking about that now. But first here's the crack

502
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 1: of products for you. Ah, we're back. So there's a

503
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,200
Speaker 1: lot of misinformation in moral panic, and it is tough

504
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: to kind of seriously talk about how fucking gnarly crack

505
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:21,920
Speaker 1: is for a lot of people, um and also not

506
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: go to the moral panic shift that you get about it,

507
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: which is which is what we're about to talk about now.

508
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 1: Um So, I want to talk before we start talking

509
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:32,160
Speaker 1: about the crack epidemic and the moral panic it causes.

510
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the struggles that Black American

511
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: families were going through as the nineteen seventies gave away

512
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: to the swing in eighties. So from the post World

513
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 1: War One era to the nineteen sixties, Black Americans migrated

514
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: from rural parts of the United States to cities across

515
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:51,720
Speaker 1: the United States and unprecedented numbers. This is probably the

516
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: most significant demographic shift that has ever occurred in the

517
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: history of the United States. A huge fucking thing that happens.

518
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: It's the Great Migration, and my family is one of them.

519
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, and yeah. Um So, because there's

520
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: all sorts of bullshit restrictions on where and which are,

521
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: many of which are legally enforced, but a lot of

522
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: which were just sort of like guys will show up

523
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:14,239
Speaker 1: outside of your house and funk with you and your

524
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: family if you do this on where you can live

525
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: as a black person in this period, a lot of

526
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: the people who are doing this great migration are forced

527
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 1: into crowded neighborhoods with underfunded serve obviously prop like elephant

528
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 1: of the room, you know, all this, Like I'm not

529
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: explaining let's see right right, this is a thing to

530
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 1: go over because it's Yeah, it's history that for certain

531
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: I didn't encounter in school and in anything more than

532
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: the Vegas terms. Yeah, I don't want to feel like

533
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: I'm not explaining your do you know? Do you know

534
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: that this happened to you? Yes? I do know. Yeah, Like,

535
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: are again to add some color to this, like you'll

536
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: probably get to this also too. But like my family,

537
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 1: you know, my father's side, how we got to California

538
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 1: was was through Texas, and that was and and traditionally

539
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: betwe in Texas and Oklahoma. Most families from there probably

540
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 1: got there, uh because of the chance to become a cowboy,

541
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: you know, where you could work for yourself, and that

542
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 1: was you know, almost all of food on your neck.

543
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: Yea of American cowboys were actually free slaves, you know.

544
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: And then and then from there we all went to

545
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego because of these these

546
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: housing projects, like the Watts Towers that that these housing

547
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: vouchers that brought specifically Jason Petty's family to California, you

548
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Yeah, And that's like that's what

549
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: happens to most too, to a huge chunk of people,

550
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: and they get forced into these neighborhoods like Watts, right,

551
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 1: and and there's other neighborhoods and their parts of the unit.

552
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,719
Speaker 1: Because this is this is happening a lot in southern California.

553
00:30:57,720 --> 00:30:59,960
Speaker 1: This is also happening just to Shipload and the play

554
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 1: SIT's primarily happening to is like the Eastern seas and

555
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: chunks of the chunks of the urban Midwest, right, Great

556
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: Lakes regions, stuff, Minneapolis. You know, this is when all

557
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 1: of this is happening. And across the board, these black

558
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: families are being forced into not just these crowded neighborhoods

559
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: with underfunded services, but low paid, insecure industrial jobs. Often

560
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: they're being brought in to deal with because unionized white

561
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: workers are too expensive rights, so they're being brought in

562
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 1: as as strike breakers and stuff. And this is and

563
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 1: then as soon as that happens, right, you have so

564
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:34,479
Speaker 1: you have that being done by these capitalists, and then

565
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 1: we get nafta. Right, so suddenly what jobs they had

566
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: start to fall out from under right, um as manufacturing

567
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: and ship moves across the border. Um. It's also worth

568
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,880
Speaker 1: noting that a ton of these of the particularly the

569
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: black men working these industrial jobs, are doing so in

570
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: dangerous like being exposed like deadly chemicals, like in horrific

571
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: ways that would have been that were illegal, but it happened,

572
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:01,560
Speaker 1: you know. Um. So while all this is going on,

573
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: white families are considering their you know, flight to suburban

574
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: areas and at an that takes off to um and

575
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: you know, these suburban houses that cost about as much

576
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: as three good lunches due today, they start moving into

577
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 1: an accumulating wealth. They go up hundreds of thousands of

578
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: dollars in value by the time the owners reach retirement age. Now,

579
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 1: when the civil rights movement wins its major victories, obviously

580
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: a lot had gotten better for black families. But this

581
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: has what one journal of social welfare paper paper i

582
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 1: read called a quote perverse, unintended impact on the inner city.

583
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: And I want to quote from that. Now, successful African

584
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:40,719
Speaker 1: Americans move their families to newly integrated communities, leaving an

585
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 1: even higher concentration of poverty and the predominantly African American

586
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: inner city. Based on an extensive literature review, Small and

587
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: Newman two thousand one identified the increasing concentration of poverty

588
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:54,800
Speaker 1: during the nineteen seventies and into the nineteen eighties, particularly

589
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:58,719
Speaker 1: among African Americans, as primarily the result of three phenomena

590
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: black middle class flight, continued residential discrimination, especially against less

591
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: wealthy African Americans, and the departure of low skilled jobs

592
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: from the Northeast and Midwest cities. And again, one of

593
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: the reasons why this is so devastating is when the

594
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: black families that make money leave these inner city neighborhoods

595
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: because of the way the tax system is set up

596
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: in the United States, all of the income they had

597
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 1: that was going to schools in the inner cities leaves, right.

598
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 1: It's a big part of it. So the nineteen seventies

599
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: are a challenging decade for many people in the United States. Um,

600
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:33,479
Speaker 1: the economic stagna and this is across the board, right,

601
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: this is why Jimmy Carter loses reelection. The economy ships,

602
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: the fucking bed, there's gas lines, everything's fucked up. But obviously,

603
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: where everyone is suffering, nobody suffers worse than Black people

604
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: in the inner cities, that is the most hard the

605
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,959
Speaker 1: hardest hit region of the country. As a more globalized

606
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 1: economy ships factory jobs off to foreign countries, advancing technology

607
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: meant that what good working class jobs remained required computer

608
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: literacy and other training that folks you'd grown up in

609
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:06,360
Speaker 1: economically disadvantaged schools didn't have access to write. Um. Everything

610
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 1: just builds upon itself, So poverty and long term unemployment

611
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 1: are associated with a variety of other negative things overcrowded housing, PTSD,

612
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 1: team pregnancy, school dropout, violence, crime, and drug and alcohol abuse.

613
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: As poverty worsens in the inner cities, all these things

614
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: grow more common for black families. For a variety of reasons,

615
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:26,919
Speaker 1: Black kids since emancipation have been more likely than white

616
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 1: kids to grow up in a one parent household. The

617
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: rate of two parent households was stable among black families

618
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: from emancipation up to the sixties. It was around seventy right,

619
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 1: so about seventy Black kids grow up in two parent households.

620
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:42,920
Speaker 1: For white kids it's ninety percent, so it's lower for

621
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,399
Speaker 1: black families in up to the nineteen sixties, but still

622
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:49,320
Speaker 1: the vast majority of kids, right are growing up in

623
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:53,279
Speaker 1: two parent households. Once you hit the seventies, that or

624
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: the sixth of the late sixties, really that number starts

625
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,760
Speaker 1: to drop like a fucking stone. By the mid nineteen hundreds,

626
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: only a third of Black Aerican children lived in two

627
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 1: parent households. Yeah like that that. I was unaware of

628
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: how fucking sharp that drop it. But there's a there's,

629
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: there's there's depending on how hotep you are, there's a

630
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:14,440
Speaker 1: lot of answers to that, right, But I do think

631
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:19,439
Speaker 1: that this this moment is so it's so pivotal and

632
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:25,880
Speaker 1: so underreported um in the sense that it's like so

633
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:30,200
Speaker 1: much of our culture now is came out of this moment.

634
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:33,279
Speaker 1: So this is this inner city as you're talking about,

635
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 1: especially along the Eastern seaboard. This is the Bronx, the movie,

636
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: the movie Warriors, Right, it's this, It's this moment. It's

637
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: this overcrowding, underfunding, this city that you know, being a

638
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: city of rubble, and that there was you know, broken

639
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:52,160
Speaker 1: down buildings everywhere. Because if you're a slum lord, it's

640
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 1: cheaper to just destroy the building and get the insurance

641
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:59,360
Speaker 1: then try to you know, fix it or or or

642
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: you know, be a responsible landlord. Just burn it down

643
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: and just let the rubble happen. UH A big power

644
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: outage in in UH in New York, which is what

645
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: which actually happened, which is what the movie Warriors takes

646
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 1: place in. But it's ultimately it is this moment that

647
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: d J cool herk from from from Jamaica moves over,

648
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,360
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and plugs his turntable into

649
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,560
Speaker 1: a power line and does the first park jam, which

650
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: creates hip hop. You know what I'm saying. It was

651
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 1: out of this time. This is what creates all this

652
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 1: ship yo saying. It was this moment, and it was,

653
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 1: but it's important to understand. It's like, oh yeah, it

654
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: was cool. They were throwing parties in the park. Well

655
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:47,760
Speaker 1: they were living in rubble. Y understand I'm saying, because

656
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 1: we were forced to with with no music programs in

657
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: our schools. You know, I'm saying nothing, There was nothing

658
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:59,240
Speaker 1: provided that there's no as you talk about the rubble,

659
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 1: it's not you. And I want to really hit on

660
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 1: this because this ties directly back into crack. It's not

661
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:07,879
Speaker 1: just you know, shady landlords. It's not just that things

662
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: are underfunded. It's that we talk about this center Robert

663
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 1: Moses episodes, Black neighborhoods are bulldozed in a bunch literally

664
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: bulldozed in a bunch of countries, sometimes with like the

665
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,799
Speaker 1: military essentially helping to do it in order to make

666
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: way for ship like overpass um that effectively than walls

667
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: those areas off from the rest of the cities. And

668
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:28,680
Speaker 1: what's important here, why I'm going over this, is that

669
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 1: this is a thirty ish year you know, obviously it

670
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: goes back further than that. But this specific process um,

671
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 1: all of these things, these these massive drops and wealth, um,

672
00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: this this collapse of of you know, the rate of

673
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: two parent households in the black community, all of these

674
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:46,800
Speaker 1: things are the result of thirty forty year long trends

675
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: right where things happen very steadily over that period. They

676
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 1: hit their height right as crack becomes a thing. And

677
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 1: so all of them get blamed on crack, right because

678
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: it's easy to say that, well is community. All these

679
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 1: black people got hooked on crack, and that's why everything

680
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:07,320
Speaker 1: fell apart. Ship was falling apart due to specific policy

681
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,479
Speaker 1: decisions for decades, and it hit its height during the crack,

682
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: and that that's critical to know, otherwise you're gonna wind

683
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: up blaming crack for everything. It's not to blame for everything, yes, um,

684
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: it's it just is not. Um. Obviously, it sure doesn't help,

685
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,360
Speaker 1: you know, like it does not reversity of these trends.

686
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:31,880
Speaker 1: But that that's like if it's like somebody has a

687
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 1: heart attack while they're like during a fucking run, and

688
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:38,880
Speaker 1: then you hit him in the head when they finish it,

689
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you know they were having problems

690
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 1: before you hit him on the head. Yes, exactly. I

691
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:46,320
Speaker 1: don't know. That's a bad way to that's a stupid

692
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: way to describe, but I don't know. Again somewhere, so yeah,

693
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: during we're gonna be talking about crack today, obviously, and

694
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:55,239
Speaker 1: it plays a role in this. But again, this is

695
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: this is going on for a long time. And I

696
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 1: want to quote again from that paper I read from earlier.

697
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 1: So policy may have inadvertently contributed to the decline in marriage.

698
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: During the nineteen sixties, many states denied a f DC

699
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 1: payments aid to families with dependent children. The single mothers

700
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: suspected of living with a man. These types of eligibility

701
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: requirements were struck down by the Supreme Court in nineteen

702
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: sixty eight. However, even under the revised welfare policy, poor

703
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 1: couples had an incentive to cohabit instead of mary in

704
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 1: order to maintain welfare eligibility. And there's this is one

705
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: of the thing because one of the things that Crack

706
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 1: gets blamed for is the destruction of the of the

707
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 1: black family, all of these black men who abandoned their families. Right,

708
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: this is the this is the right wing lion on

709
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:38,240
Speaker 1: what happens. And no, in the nineteen sixties, twenty years

710
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: before we've got Crack on the street. US states are

711
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,320
Speaker 1: denying aid to families to single mothers who are suspected

712
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: of living with a man. And what usually happens before

713
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: marriage is you cohabitate, right, Um, so suddenly you're penalized

714
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 1: for that if you're not already married. See that's what

715
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: by like, depending on how hots up you are, because

716
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: that's in a lot of like the black like a

717
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 1: lot of the black act of his circles is like

718
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: that was a process of demasculating and devaluing the black

719
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 1: man even further by being like, uh, well, if y'all

720
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: need help, you can't handle daddy in the house, you

721
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it's like, well, dang. And

722
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 1: then what they talked about among our community is like

723
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: what it might have done to our psyche. Not I

724
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 1: don't think this is very fair, but their argument is

725
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 1: what has done in our psyche to look at our

726
00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: women and be like, you chose to check over me,

727
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And I think that's a

728
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 1: that's a very that's a very man no sphere way

729
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: to look at it. But that being said, the idea

730
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: that like it do kind of feel like the government

731
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 1: pitted us against each other Joe saying, I mean, and

732
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 1: that that move right there, A strong case can be

733
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:53,399
Speaker 1: made it does a lot more damage than crass. Right. Yes,

734
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 1: there's a really good documentary if people want to know

735
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 1: more about this and like the kind of the human

736
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: side of this, called the Pruitt I Go myth prove it.

737
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 1: I Go was a government housing development in St. Louis

738
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 1: Um during this kind of period of time, I think

739
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,279
Speaker 1: fifties sixties, and that documentary does a good job of

740
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: explaining how the way in which benefits were handled, um

741
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,239
Speaker 1: led to the dissolution of a lot of families, and

742
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:17,280
Speaker 1: like kind of incentivized that. It's a very dark story,

743
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:19,839
Speaker 1: but that documentary I found, I felt did a really

744
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: good job of it. Um So, obviously, the cause of

745
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: all of these problems is complicated and goes on for

746
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 1: a while. But where the credit comes, as far as

747
00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:32,239
Speaker 1: the media is concerned and as far as US politicians

748
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 1: are concerned, all of this is the fault of crack cocaine,

749
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:38,760
Speaker 1: which starts to enter US inner city communities in nineteen

750
00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: eighty one, primarily in southern California, although where it would

751
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: take off the most and do the most damage is

752
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 1: the huge dense cities of the Northeast, places like fucking Baltimore. Right.

753
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: Um So, crack is immediately big business. A lot of

754
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 1: it gets sold to people who live who live in

755
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:57,919
Speaker 1: this communities, but and this is often ignored, much, if

756
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: not most, of the money comes from people who lived

757
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: elsewhere outside of the inner city, often in more affluent areas,

758
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 1: who would drive into inner city communities to buy crack.

759
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:12,799
Speaker 1: And what this actually is means there's a graph going

760
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 1: around Twitter right now that shows where money moves within

761
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: kind of a graph of an urban area, and it

762
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: all comes from the inner city out to the suburbs, right,

763
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: because where are the people who live who own the

764
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: buildings that poor people in the inner city live out

765
00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 1: in the fucking suburbs, right. So one of the things

766
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:36,759
Speaker 1: that crack represents is money coming from affluent suburbs and

767
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 1: entering the inner city. Right. Nothing else is doing There's

768
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 1: no way, like really not other meaningful ways money is

769
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 1: coming from outside into the inner city. So that's part

770
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: of why this is a big deal. We've talked about

771
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 1: how negative the impact is on people, but one of

772
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: the things this means is that there's fucking money coming now. Um.

773
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 1: So of course the fortunes to be made meant that

774
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: a lot of money was on the table for people

775
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 1: who were willing to be more violent than other people

776
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: who wanted that money. So you do get a lot

777
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: of as there always is when cash is on the

778
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: table in those quantities, murders over matters of profit and

779
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 1: to keep their operations safe from the police. Um. There

780
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: are of course significant social costs due to the use

781
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 1: of the drugs. There's people who neglect their kids and

782
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 1: mistreat their partners and spend money that are needed for

783
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 1: other things. But narcotics um and the static statistics on

784
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:25,800
Speaker 1: this are pretty bleak, and I don't want to stray

785
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: away from those either, So I'm gonna quote from an

786
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: analysis in Chicago Booth University. Quote the rise and crack

787
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: use from nineteen eighty four and nineteen eighty nine is

788
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: associated with a doubling of the number of murdered black

789
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 1: males aged fourteen to seventeen, a thirty percent to increase

790
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: for those aged eighteen to twenty four, and a ten

791
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 1: percent increase for those twenty five and over. Thus, crack

792
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: accounts for much of the observed variation in homicide rates

793
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 1: over this time period. In addition, the proportion of black

794
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: children in foster care more than doubled, Fetal death rates

795
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 1: and weapons arrests of racks of blacks rose by more

796
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:03,280
Speaker 1: than and black babies low birth weights increased by five percent. Now,

797
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 1: this is really bad. But what what's happening in the

798
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 1: media as this massive murder search happens is crack is

799
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: being associated as a drug that makes people murder, right,

800
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 1: the drug that makes people lose their mind. That is

801
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:19,879
Speaker 1: not what It's not it's it's the money. Yes, it's

802
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 1: normal economics. That happens everywhere else. It's really like what

803
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: you're explaining, I think again, it's like if you just

804
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: under just an understanding of economics in general, Like what

805
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: we're doing is this is an influx of venture capital.

806
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: You know why, Like what fund did. It's like you're

807
00:44:40,680 --> 00:44:42,320
Speaker 1: gonna go to the bank and let them white boys

808
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:43,879
Speaker 1: tell you know. You know what I'm saying, You're gonna

809
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:46,400
Speaker 1: keep you have to keep, you know, dressing up and

810
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: kind of shucking and jiving for these people to come

811
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 1: invest in your things. Or it's like you go get

812
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:52,399
Speaker 1: it out the mud, you go get it, go get

813
00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: it on your own corner. You invest in your own

814
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: So the thought was like, I mean, I mean, it's

815
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:00,839
Speaker 1: literally there. It's the narrative of every jay Z album, right,

816
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: is like I invested in myself. How I did it

817
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,000
Speaker 1: is I sold crack, got out the game and invested

818
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:09,279
Speaker 1: in us. You know what I'm saying, it's it's it's

819
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: nipsey hustle. It's like, so like you said, like you

820
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: can have this media narrative of like, you know, all

821
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:17,239
Speaker 1: this is terrible. You did it on the backs of

822
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:19,399
Speaker 1: each other, which might be true, you know what I'm saying.

823
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: But that being said, it's like, where else is there

824
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:27,320
Speaker 1: any other influx of capital that like that is self

825
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:31,439
Speaker 1: generated and that I don't owe. And it's like where

826
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 1: I mean where you where you think where you think

827
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 1: we got that from? We got it from the mafia,

828
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 1: Like you you learn from the mafia. That's what they did,

829
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: Joe said. So it's like, oh, well, that's okay, that's

830
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 1: how you get it that way. You don't ask nobody else.

831
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:46,439
Speaker 1: You keep it in the family, you know what I mean.

832
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: And it's it's, uh, this is I mean again, the

833
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:52,879
Speaker 1: point that we're making here is that crack there are

834
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 1: specific things and and as we'll talk about like babies

835
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 1: with low birth wings that's a that's a part of that.

836
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 1: There are specific problems that are just due to the

837
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: inherent like characteristics of crack. But the massive increase in

838
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: murders and the proportion of kids who go into foster

839
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 1: care and large part because they've lost parents. Um, that

840
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: is do the thing that has entered the community that

841
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 1: has caused that violence is fucking cash, right, That's what

842
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 1: when we're the Crack epidemic is a fucking yeah, cash epidemic.

843
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:28,920
Speaker 1: It's a gold rush, right, yeah, exactly. Um, so this

844
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 1: is all sucked up, but obviously one of probably even debatably,

845
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 1: the thing that winds up being most toxic from all

846
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: of this is the moral panic that follows article. And

847
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: this is where the moral panic over crack starts. There

848
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 1: is a nineteen article in the New England Journal of

849
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:47,959
Speaker 1: Medicine which goes viral among the media of the time,

850
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: which is just starting to kind of transition into the

851
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycles that we've got now right,

852
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:56,320
Speaker 1: we're in the early stages of that with TV media.

853
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: The author of this article is a guy named Dr

854
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:01,760
Speaker 1: Ira chasten Off, and he claimed, based on a couple

855
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:05,760
Speaker 1: of cases, that children of mothers who used crack were smaller, sicker,

856
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: and less social than other infants. Now, to his credit,

857
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: chat Off is like, hey, we only have a few

858
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:14,480
Speaker 1: people in the study. This is very small, It is imperfect.

859
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: This is I'm doing this because I think there might

860
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: be a problem in this small batch study means that

861
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: we should do a larger study to determine if there

862
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:25,279
Speaker 1: is a serious population wide problem, right, which is how

863
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: you do science. I don't think he's doing anything wrong here.

864
00:47:28,200 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: But the problem and this is again and early we

865
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,279
Speaker 1: start seeing this stuff. We we we've all lived through

866
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: this ship the last couple of years. Right with these

867
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: you get these little studies about oh iver, mecton or whatever.

868
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: There's this and then suddenly that gets blown up to

869
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys people taking fucking fish medicine or whatever,

870
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: and there's people dying and stuff. Um, this is one

871
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 1: of the first times that happens because nobody listens to

872
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:52,359
Speaker 1: chast and Off being like, so, this is a really

873
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:54,439
Speaker 1: tiny study and we need to do more research before

874
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: we draw any conclusions. They lose their fucking babies. And

875
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 1: by the the people losing their minds are the goddamn

876
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, the legacy media, and I'm gonna quote

877
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: from the fucking New York Times here. As a medical writer,

878
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 1: Harriet Washington wrote of this period in her book Medical Apartheid.

879
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:16,680
Speaker 1: Dr Chasnov's provisional research was swallowed whole, then regurgitated in

880
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:20,400
Speaker 1: a racialized form by newspaper, magazine and even medical accounts.

881
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: Americans were told on the nightly news that crack exposure

882
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: in the womb destroyed the unique brain functions that distinguished

883
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: human beings from animals, an observation that no one had

884
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,280
Speaker 1: connected to the chemically identical powdered form of the drug

885
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: that affluent whites were shoveling up their noses. The legal

886
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:39,880
Speaker 1: scholar Dorothy Roberts argues in her Reproductive history, Killing the

887
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 1: Black Body, that by for focusing on maternal use of

888
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: a drug associated with black people, the press promoted the

889
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: notion that the monstrous crack smoking mother was typical of

890
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:54,520
Speaker 1: black women. Yeah, and uh, this is where the real

891
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:59,680
Speaker 1: herding starts. This is what actually, this is crack, gnarly drug.

892
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,359
Speaker 1: Lot of people get hurt because chemically what crack does.

893
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:04,280
Speaker 1: The money that comes in brings a lot of murder

894
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 1: with it. The thing that's most devastating is right here.

895
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: It comes as a result of this fucking moral path.

896
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: The crack ain't the bastard of the story. No, No,

897
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 1: it's curious. Um, yeah, it's it's adjacent to the bastard.

898
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,360
Speaker 1: And you know what's adjacent to behind the bastards? Politics,

899
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:27,919
Speaker 1: the wildhood politics deeply intertwined, especially this week, but also

900
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. So check

901
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:46,280
Speaker 1: this out and purchase things we have returned crack giveaway,

902
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: all right, little Dave's pill reference. Yeah, yeah, of course,

903
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:56,279
Speaker 1: of course. Um so um. I want to continue that

904
00:49:56,360 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: quote from the New York Times about kind of how

905
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: how this all works. Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts argues in

906
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: her history Killing the Black Body that all this focus

907
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 1: on the specific danger to black babies helped push a

908
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:10,360
Speaker 1: notion of the monstrous crack smoking weather in the media.

909
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: Washington Post columnists Charles Croudhammer, famous for having never once

910
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 1: been right, wrote a popular column in which he alleged

911
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: that black women were spawning a bio underclass of impaired

912
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 1: children whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth. Crowdhammer wrote,

913
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:29,239
Speaker 1: the dead babies maybe the lucky ones. Oh my god. Yeah,

914
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:34,840
Speaker 1: this guy still gets paid to right. Shit. Fucking Charles

915
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 1: Crowdhammer again never been right in his entire life? Is it?

916
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 1: Let me stupid? Um? Yeah? I I just again when

917
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:50,919
Speaker 1: you are when you write the words bio underclass, Yeah,

918
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:54,600
Speaker 1: come off, you should wonder Am I doing a phrenology?

919
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:57,239
Speaker 1: Have I just have I just started? Have I reinvented

920
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,759
Speaker 1: race science as a moral panic? Yeah? Baby, doesn't? Am

921
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 1: I doing the thing that men in wigs did a

922
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, like, Um, yes you are Charles Crowd,

923
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: yes man, so yeah, um I yeah. Anyway, Um, all

924
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: this concern over unborn babies and crack fed nicely into

925
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: the Christian extremist movement that had gotten Reagan elected again.

926
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:24,360
Speaker 1: We've talked about this in our episodes on Focus on

927
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: the Family, on Philish Slaflely. Um, this all feeds into

928
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:30,479
Speaker 1: each other. Right, this is all happening at the same time.

929
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: You've got the religious right is a thing and they

930
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:35,759
Speaker 1: have just now because they started out. The religious right

931
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: gets initially involved because they're angry that schools have been integrated.

932
00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: Right that Bob Jones University has been forced to take

933
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 1: in black people because it gets federal funding. Um, you

934
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 1: can't segregate your schools. But that's not popular. So they

935
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:49,919
Speaker 1: turned to abortion as like the real thing to hit. Um.

936
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:53,800
Speaker 1: And right as they're really getting the anti abortion movement

937
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 1: churning up, there's all this concern overr unborn babies and crack,

938
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 1: which which really jels great. Um, And I'm gonna quote

939
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:05,080
Speaker 1: from the Times again here. News organizations embraced far fetched

940
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:07,400
Speaker 1: ideas like the one advanced by doctors who believed they

941
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 1: could discern babies who had been exposed in the womb

942
00:52:10,040 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: by the tone of their cries. In nineteen ninety, Time

943
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: magazine argued that the case for limiting the rights of

944
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,240
Speaker 1: women and elevating the rights of fetuses was gaining strength

945
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: based on the fact that maternity wards around the country

946
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:24,440
Speaker 1: were ringing quote with the high pitched cat cries of

947
00:52:24,480 --> 00:52:27,800
Speaker 1: crack babies who may face lifelong handicaps as a result

948
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,840
Speaker 1: of their mother's drug use. Man, there's so much sinister,

949
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: Like I'm mourn like the amount of this we internalized

950
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 1: and kind of like weaponized against each other, and just

951
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: hearing it now so many years later, it was like

952
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 1: you motherfucker, you know what I'm saying, And and the

953
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 1: reality of like, yeah, dog, like yo, this you shouldn't

954
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 1: be doing crag. Why are you pregnant? Fam you know

955
00:52:57,400 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, and like and and just but just

956
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: all of that sort of together, it's just it makes

957
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: it even more sinister to be like, you know, we

958
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 1: even actually, like even among our own community, peddled somebody,

959
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and that that that kind

960
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: of hurts also, you know, yeah, yeah, um and this, so, so,

961
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: this and and this New York Times article I'm quoting

962
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 1: from is a modern one where they are kind of

963
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:30,879
Speaker 1: taking themselves in the past to task for what they did.

964
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 1: And the New York Times is a huge It's dope.

965
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: It's also like, this isn't the only time that happens

966
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:38,280
Speaker 1: in New York Times. It seems like you guys, actually

967
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 1: often because of these fucking opinion columnist assholes that you

968
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 1: bring on start arguing for like terrible ship that has

969
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 1: nightmarished consequences on the world, and then twenty years later

970
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:51,600
Speaker 1: the good journals will be like, oh, turns out we

971
00:53:51,640 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 1: had a huge fault, like like we we were largely responsible,

972
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 1: but this nightmare. The Times amplifies what gets called the

973
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: damn generation theory. Their editorial page argues in nine nine

974
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:06,520
Speaker 1: that it's going to cost more than seven million dollars

975
00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: to prepare twenty thousand children in the state of Florida

976
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,800
Speaker 1: for school because of like how damaged they were from cracked.

977
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: There's zero evidence of this. That's just a lie. That's

978
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: just fucking nonsense. The former executive editor of The New

979
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:23,840
Speaker 1: York Times, a guy named Abe Rosenthal, writes a column

980
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 1: titled The Poisoned Babies, where he asks authorities to suspend

981
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 1: parental rights for women who are addicted to crack. Um, now,

982
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 1: there's evidence as to what happens when you do that,

983
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 1: and it causes women who are addicted to crack and

984
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:40,840
Speaker 1: pregnant not to seek medical treatment that allows them to

985
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,839
Speaker 1: provide adequate care for their babies, which is what does

986
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:46,439
Speaker 1: the harm more than the crack. It is not look

987
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:51,359
Speaker 1: controversial ground here. Obviously, not good to smoke crack while

988
00:54:51,400 --> 00:54:54,920
Speaker 1: you are pregnant, not good to drink while you're pregnant.

989
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:56,879
Speaker 1: There's a number of things you ought not do while

990
00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 1: you're pregnant. Also, human beings for thousands of years and

991
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 1: many cultures drank alcohol regularly with babies, and and and

992
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:08,799
Speaker 1: those babies came out and we're fine and learned things right.

993
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 1: Um not, it's not good. There are health consequences associated

994
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:16,239
Speaker 1: to smoking crack in the womb. The d data suggests

995
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,120
Speaker 1: the real harm comes from driving these women away from

996
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:22,280
Speaker 1: treatment and adequate medical care, which is what causes problems

997
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: for the baby more than anything. Yeah, yeah again, I

998
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:28,440
Speaker 1: mean not good to smoke crack with the baby. Worst

999
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:30,640
Speaker 1: to do what we did. I mean, it's the same,

1000
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: like it's such a just a like a parallel for

1001
00:55:35,760 --> 00:55:40,560
Speaker 1: even immigration issues. Like if I know, you know what

1002
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:46,759
Speaker 1: I'm saying that you know of a very minor, completely

1003
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:51,760
Speaker 1: treatable thing is if I would just go to the clinic,

1004
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:54,960
Speaker 1: you know, go to the the county, you know, a hospital,

1005
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 1: it'll be fine. But if there are ice agents at there,

1006
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go, you know I'm saying. And even

1007
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:04,839
Speaker 1: when even when the even during the whole like sort

1008
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: of crackdown you know under President Trump about federal you know,

1009
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:14,759
Speaker 1: that mandatory reporting to like immigration from the police, why

1010
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: the police was like, I'm not doing that, and they're like,

1011
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:18,879
Speaker 1: and it's not like I'm patting the police on the back,

1012
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 1: but I'm just just being logical here. And they were

1013
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:24,320
Speaker 1: being logical. They're like, well, then no one's gonna report

1014
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:28,400
Speaker 1: anything because why would I do. So then it's like, well, no,

1015
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:31,359
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell I'm not gonna report nothing because

1016
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:33,400
Speaker 1: if I do, you might deport me or think I

1017
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:35,239
Speaker 1: should be deported, you know what I'm saying. So it's

1018
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 1: like that that that uh policy exacerbates the problem. Is

1019
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:45,040
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, is like and in and in so

1020
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:47,799
Speaker 1: many other areas of culture, it's the same thing. It's like,

1021
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:49,920
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna shoot, I'm not gonna do that. I'm

1022
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:53,080
Speaker 1: not telling y'all nothing, because if you do, that's gonna happen,

1023
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:56,680
Speaker 1: and that and then that avoidance exacerbates the problem. I

1024
00:56:56,719 --> 00:57:00,160
Speaker 1: said that, right, But yeah, yeah, and that's that's where

1025
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:02,960
Speaker 1: the issue comes from. It. In nineteen nine, the New

1026
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:05,880
Speaker 1: York Times is coverage peaked in a front page story

1027
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:09,400
Speaker 1: that warned of an onslaught that fall of the quote

1028
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: first big wave of children exposed to crack in the womb.

1029
00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:16,240
Speaker 1: The journalist who wrote that article now acknowledges it as

1030
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 1: both alarmist and unsubstantiated, which is again nice. But one

1031
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:24,040
Speaker 1: of the things this does is that police, uh, police

1032
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:27,439
Speaker 1: unions and whatnot and political figures start flipping out about

1033
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:30,280
Speaker 1: crack babies like they're like like it's like it's an

1034
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,960
Speaker 1: alien life form coming to the planet Earth to do

1035
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: us harm, and we have to ready our fucking guns

1036
00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:37,959
Speaker 1: to fight the invaders. Right. That is how they talk

1037
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:40,880
Speaker 1: about this, And as the paper of record, it was

1038
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:44,440
Speaker 1: the Times job to lead credence to these claims, so

1039
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:48,400
Speaker 1: that police and political figures can how including Joseph Biden,

1040
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:51,480
Speaker 1: by the way, can howl about super predators and justify

1041
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:55,480
Speaker 1: harsh new mandatory minimum sentences to stop the raging danger

1042
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 1: of drug crime. As the panic reached its peak, Congress

1043
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 1: passed a bill that included the hundred to one rule.

1044
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:04,840
Speaker 1: This made it mandatory to assign a ten year sentence

1045
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: to anyone caught with fifty grams of crack, which is

1046
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: about as much crack in terms of weight as you

1047
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:13,280
Speaker 1: would get in a fun sized bag of chips. For comparison,

1048
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,360
Speaker 1: someone caught with cocaine would need a full suitcase worth

1049
00:58:17,360 --> 00:58:20,360
Speaker 1: of high grade cocaine to qualify for the same penalty.

1050
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:27,320
Speaker 1: So this is what quote unquote destroyed a generation to

1051
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:30,439
Speaker 1: the extent that that actually happened. This is what does

1052
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:32,080
Speaker 1: it And I'm going to read a quote from an

1053
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:35,560
Speaker 1: AP right up here. An Associated Press review of federal

1054
00:58:35,560 --> 00:58:38,640
Speaker 1: and state incarceration data shows that between nineteen seventy five

1055
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:41,800
Speaker 1: and two thousand nineteen, the US prison population jumped from

1056
00:58:41,840 --> 00:58:45,439
Speaker 1: two hundred forty five nine to one point four three

1057
00:58:45,480 --> 00:58:48,960
Speaker 1: million Americans. Among them, about one in five people were

1058
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:52,160
Speaker 1: incarcerated with a drug offense listed as their most serious crime.

1059
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:55,920
Speaker 1: The racial disparities reveal the war is uneven toll. Following

1060
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:58,920
Speaker 1: the passage of stiffer penalties for crack, cocaine, and other drugs,

1061
00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: the black and car sor ration rate in America exploded

1062
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: from about six hundred per one hundred thousand people in

1063
00:59:04,360 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy to eighteen hundred and eight thousand and two

1064
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:11,200
Speaker 1: thousand to eight hundred and eight thousand, sorry the eighteen

1065
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 1: hundred and eight and two thousand. In the same time span,

1066
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:16,920
Speaker 1: the rate for the Latino population grew from two hundred

1067
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 1: and eight per hundred thousand people to six hundred and fifteen. Well,

1068
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 1: the white incarceration rate grew from one hundred and three

1069
00:59:23,320 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: people per hundred thousand to two hundred and forty two.

1070
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:31,960
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're looking at number one, the rate at

1071
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:34,680
Speaker 1: the start of this of this process, the rate of

1072
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:37,760
Speaker 1: incarceration for blacks in America is six times what it

1073
00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:42,760
Speaker 1: is for Americans, and then it triples. Yeah, it's so yeah,

1074
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: I think, like for the listeners sake, like let's let

1075
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: me go back to the hundred to one ratio in

1076
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:55,760
Speaker 1: in that Like, so, what we're saying is one ounce

1077
00:59:55,840 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 1: of crack gets the same amount of jail time as

1078
01:00:00,880 --> 01:00:07,880
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds of cocaine. Like, so one ounce of

1079
01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:12,120
Speaker 1: crack same amount of jail time as a hundred So

1080
01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:14,520
Speaker 1: if you ask, so, if you so, just, I mean,

1081
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: come on, guys, put your thinking caps on. You've got

1082
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:19,800
Speaker 1: a one ounce of crack versus a hundred ounces, Okay,

1083
01:00:19,920 --> 01:00:23,080
Speaker 1: which one of y'all you think is gonna distribute the stuff?

1084
01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:26,280
Speaker 1: Who you thinks the sales person? Do you know what

1085
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:31,560
Speaker 1: I'm saying versus just the user? Like I you're telling

1086
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:35,040
Speaker 1: me we get the same jail time? Do you know

1087
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: much money you have to have to have a hundred

1088
01:00:37,600 --> 01:00:43,560
Speaker 1: ounces of cocaine? Like yeah, So just like like hear

1089
01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:50,440
Speaker 1: how sinister and purposeful? This is like we're not making

1090
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:53,600
Speaker 1: this ship up like this is it. It's not a conspiracy.

1091
01:00:53,680 --> 01:00:57,160
Speaker 1: These are laws. Part of the reason why because this

1092
01:00:57,200 --> 01:00:58,760
Speaker 1: is one of the things that's happening here is we've

1093
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 1: talked about in our Bill Cooper episodes, is that a

1094
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:03,960
Speaker 1: lot of the black community and this some of this

1095
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 1: happens through hip hop, is embracing a set of conspiracy theories.

1096
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:10,120
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that more. But part of why

1097
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:12,560
Speaker 1: they're doing it, because we talk there's some stuff in there.

1098
01:01:12,640 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 1: There's some especially the Bill Cooper stuff that gets adopted

1099
01:01:15,200 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: by hip hop that's not at all accurate. But part

1100
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,080
Speaker 1: of why people would believe in conspiracies is that you

1101
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 1: could not seek to damage a community more than they

1102
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:31,360
Speaker 1: then happens here, right, Like this, it's surgically targeted to

1103
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 1: hurt black communities, Black inner city communities. Like it's like

1104
01:01:34,920 --> 01:01:38,120
Speaker 1: it's like somebody dropped a bomb. Yeah. And when these

1105
01:01:38,200 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 1: laws are yeah, and you're saying, like, am I taking crazy?

1106
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:43,360
Speaker 1: Feels I feel like we're being targeted, Like no, you're not.

1107
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 1: You're just not listen, you're five five, You just you

1108
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:47,640
Speaker 1: don't have any fathers in your home, you know what?

1109
01:01:47,680 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: You just you're just like no. I feel like, well, no,

1110
01:01:50,960 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 1: you guys are just violent. Look, I mean, this is

1111
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 1: what's happening. You guys die more than us, isn't. You're

1112
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: in a jail more like yeah, but I'm trying to

1113
01:01:57,480 --> 01:01:59,960
Speaker 1: tell you family, like it just don't feel to say.

1114
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:02,680
Speaker 1: And it's like it's like, well, there's got to be

1115
01:02:02,760 --> 01:02:06,280
Speaker 1: something going on here. Yeah. And it's worth noting too

1116
01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:09,120
Speaker 1: that this surge and arrests that we've just talked about,

1117
01:02:09,480 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 1: there is no increase in addiction treatment resources and these

1118
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 1: communities that follows the surgeon arrests. Zero I found an

1119
01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:19,800
Speaker 1: article in the Chicago Booth Review that analyzed a recent

1120
01:02:19,880 --> 01:02:23,280
Speaker 1: study measuring the impact of crack cocaine by University of

1121
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:25,840
Speaker 1: Chicago professor Stephen Levitt and a bunch of other smart

1122
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 1: college guys and attempted to determine what actual harms could

1123
01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:31,440
Speaker 1: be laid at the feet of crack as opposed to

1124
01:02:31,520 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 1: things like the legal climate around it. They concluded, quote,

1125
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:37,400
Speaker 1: the destructive effects of crack cocaine were because of the

1126
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:40,960
Speaker 1: prohibition itself rather than the usage. If crack were legal,

1127
01:02:41,040 --> 01:02:43,760
Speaker 1: the authors argue, there would not have been as much violence.

1128
01:02:43,960 --> 01:02:47,680
Speaker 1: Levitt himself added, all the evidence suggests that the violence

1129
01:02:47,720 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 1: is closely tied to the fact that the suppliers of

1130
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:53,280
Speaker 1: crack the gangs were killing each other because they could

1131
01:02:53,320 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: make huge profits. Suppliers were competing. It seems that the

1132
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 1: consumption effects of crack weren't that bad in comparison to

1133
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:03,120
Speaker 1: the one and therefore, while the effective crack is not negligible,

1134
01:03:03,200 --> 01:03:05,240
Speaker 1: it is not as large as some of the doomsayers

1135
01:03:05,240 --> 01:03:09,120
Speaker 1: of claim damn it is not. The problem was not crack.

1136
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:11,440
Speaker 1: If people if if all drugs had been legal, right,

1137
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:13,480
Speaker 1: if we've never had a prohibition culture. In a nineteen

1138
01:03:13,560 --> 01:03:16,920
Speaker 1: eighty one an entrepreneur, some Mark Zuckerberg type right in

1139
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:19,400
Speaker 1: Oakland had been like, I've invent to crack and you

1140
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:23,439
Speaker 1: know has his Apple type announcement for crack cocaine. There's

1141
01:03:23,480 --> 01:03:25,840
Speaker 1: some lives that will be negatively effective, right, some some

1142
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: families will be harmed it. It's not good. Crack is

1143
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:31,920
Speaker 1: Again I'm not a prohibitionist, but it's a gnarly drug.

1144
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:34,200
Speaker 1: It's not good for you to do. But what you

1145
01:03:34,240 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 1: wouldn't have is any of this ship. You would have

1146
01:03:36,840 --> 01:03:39,040
Speaker 1: some specific people that have problems with it, and some

1147
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:42,000
Speaker 1: like specific areas probably where it's more common than others,

1148
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:43,800
Speaker 1: and there would be some gnarly ship as a result

1149
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:47,080
Speaker 1: of that, But you don't have neighborhoods destroy I was

1150
01:03:47,120 --> 01:03:52,120
Speaker 1: gonna say that again. The laura around here is that

1151
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:59,320
Speaker 1: like crack, there's there's there's the cribs before crack, and

1152
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:03,240
Speaker 1: there's the crib after, you know, and the pre Like

1153
01:04:03,320 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the in the when we

1154
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:09,080
Speaker 1: first met in the Black Panther episode of Yeah, it's

1155
01:04:09,120 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 1: like they're just the children. PRIs for the children of

1156
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:13,600
Speaker 1: the of the panthers, you know what I'm saying, and

1157
01:04:13,760 --> 01:04:17,560
Speaker 1: knuckling up, you know, fist fights, rolf rolf housing protecting

1158
01:04:17,560 --> 01:04:23,479
Speaker 1: their turf. It crack has brought the guns. Yeah and

1159
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:27,120
Speaker 1: uh and yeah. So like you saying that like is

1160
01:04:27,160 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's a big that that's that's so important

1161
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:36,840
Speaker 1: to to understand that nuance and it's I have to

1162
01:04:37,320 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize here like we had in this

1163
01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:44,040
Speaker 1: might be a good way to explain it. A bunch

1164
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 1: of because of the mix of this suddenly, this social

1165
01:04:47,160 --> 01:04:50,080
Speaker 1: justice movement inspired by the murder of George Floyd is

1166
01:04:50,320 --> 01:04:52,920
Speaker 1: is everywhere as huge. There's protests. There's also a lot

1167
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:54,920
Speaker 1: of need as a result of the pandemic as a

1168
01:04:54,920 --> 01:04:57,520
Speaker 1: result of issues relating from the protests, and you get

1169
01:04:57,560 --> 01:05:00,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of different community organization in a bunch of

1170
01:05:00,560 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 1: different states raising huge amounts of money through crowdfunding, right,

1171
01:05:04,160 --> 01:05:06,280
Speaker 1: and there's a shiploaded drama that comes from that and

1172
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:08,560
Speaker 1: a drop we're talking drama because a hundred grand came

1173
01:05:08,600 --> 01:05:10,320
Speaker 1: in suddenly, and so people who have never seen that

1174
01:05:10,400 --> 01:05:13,560
Speaker 1: much money in their lives had a plan for it. Originally,

1175
01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: and then ship gets gnarly between people, because that's what

1176
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:18,520
Speaker 1: happens when you introduce a bunch of money suddenly, right

1177
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: with crack, you're talking about suddenly groups like the Crips

1178
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,400
Speaker 1: and the Bloods, who were very different organizations prior to

1179
01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:29,880
Speaker 1: crack looking at million dollars that you can put down

1180
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: in a few yes, right, like you can make that

1181
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:40,480
Speaker 1: money fucking quimmediately. Yeah, of course, of course people get murdered, right, Um, Like, yeah,

1182
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:43,560
Speaker 1: it's it's there's no other way for that to have gone. Now,

1183
01:05:43,560 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 1: what's most interesting about the crack epidemic to me is

1184
01:05:46,600 --> 01:05:50,480
Speaker 1: what stopped it. After nine the link between crack and

1185
01:05:50,520 --> 01:05:55,520
Speaker 1: adverse social outcomes for Black Americans disappears statistically. The only

1186
01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:58,800
Speaker 1: exception is the homicide rate for black men aged eighteen

1187
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:02,600
Speaker 1: to twenty four, which remains is elevated because now a

1188
01:06:02,640 --> 01:06:05,320
Speaker 1: bunch of different groups, the Crypts and the Bloods and

1189
01:06:05,360 --> 01:06:08,160
Speaker 1: other groups like that, have gotten used to selling drugs

1190
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:10,960
Speaker 1: for money and making that a very gnarly business, right,

1191
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: and so yeah, people keep murdering each other. Um, But

1192
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:16,760
Speaker 1: the other stuff we've talked about, including like infant birth

1193
01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:19,840
Speaker 1: weight and stuff that goes away crack use in terms

1194
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 1: of overall quantity remained stable, so the number of people

1195
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:28,080
Speaker 1: the amount of crack consumed does not decline after but

1196
01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:31,200
Speaker 1: the negative effects due to it on a societal basis

1197
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:35,320
Speaker 1: among the black community stop. And what's interesting is that

1198
01:06:35,360 --> 01:06:39,080
Speaker 1: because this is because the there's no expansion in the

1199
01:06:39,160 --> 01:06:42,080
Speaker 1: number of people smoking crack, what researchers find is that

1200
01:06:42,440 --> 01:06:45,840
Speaker 1: people who had been smoking crack don't stop right, they

1201
01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:49,960
Speaker 1: continue to smoke um, but new users stop doing the drug.

1202
01:06:50,440 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 1: So the people who are already addicted stay addicted because

1203
01:06:53,720 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 1: it is crack cocaine and it's very addicted addictive. But

1204
01:06:56,680 --> 01:07:02,120
Speaker 1: after new people don't really start in insignificant population amounts.

1205
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:04,600
Speaker 1: New people are not coming into the ranks of people

1206
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:08,160
Speaker 1: using this drug. The reason that the overall amount consumed

1207
01:07:08,160 --> 01:07:11,000
Speaker 1: remains stable is that there's a breakthrough in crack manufacturing,

1208
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:13,560
Speaker 1: which makes the price plummet, so users are able to

1209
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:16,440
Speaker 1: afford more, and thus the total amount consumed is stable,

1210
01:07:16,640 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 1: but the amount of new people who are doing crack

1211
01:07:19,600 --> 01:07:22,880
Speaker 1: stops expanding. Levitt points out that the expansion of crack

1212
01:07:22,960 --> 01:07:25,680
Speaker 1: in the black community is halted not due to arrests

1213
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:29,720
Speaker 1: or to fearmongering, but from social learning, Yes, what happens

1214
01:07:30,120 --> 01:07:33,240
Speaker 1: is the first generation of people who got addicted. It's bad.

1215
01:07:33,400 --> 01:07:37,440
Speaker 1: It's really bad for them. And yeah they're younger siblings,

1216
01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:41,600
Speaker 1: their cousins, their kids see this and are like, wow,

1217
01:07:41,720 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 1: it seems like I shouldn't do crack. I am because

1218
01:07:45,480 --> 01:07:48,000
Speaker 1: that's what I was explaining before. I am the product

1219
01:07:48,040 --> 01:07:50,800
Speaker 1: of that where I was like, oh, yeah, I don't

1220
01:07:50,800 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 1: know if we should do that. And like I said,

1221
01:07:52,880 --> 01:07:56,160
Speaker 1: like hip hop got together and was like what songs

1222
01:07:56,200 --> 01:08:00,840
Speaker 1: like self destruction and like making sure we made using

1223
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:03,479
Speaker 1: hip hop. We I wasn't. I was five years old,

1224
01:08:03,560 --> 01:08:08,200
Speaker 1: but hip hop made using crack not cool in a

1225
01:08:08,280 --> 01:08:14,880
Speaker 1: lot of ways, you know what I mean. And that's yeah, um,

1226
01:08:14,960 --> 01:08:18,479
Speaker 1: that's that's what happens, right, And so you get you know,

1227
01:08:18,600 --> 01:08:21,479
Speaker 1: the suddenly the you know, the crack baby panic goes

1228
01:08:21,520 --> 01:08:25,200
Speaker 1: away because it was never really real. Um, and because

1229
01:08:25,240 --> 01:08:27,800
Speaker 1: the age of crack users goes steadily up. Right, the

1230
01:08:27,800 --> 01:08:30,120
Speaker 1: same amount of people are smoking, but they're they're not

1231
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:33,600
Speaker 1: having kids anymore because they're older. As profitability drops on

1232
01:08:33,640 --> 01:08:37,160
Speaker 1: a per head basis, violent crime around crack fell as well.

1233
01:08:37,280 --> 01:08:39,839
Speaker 1: It simply was not worth killing for the dollar amount

1234
01:08:39,840 --> 01:08:41,880
Speaker 1: of crack that people were likely to have on them, Right,

1235
01:08:42,040 --> 01:08:44,080
Speaker 1: the same amount is worth ten dollars instead of two

1236
01:08:44,400 --> 01:08:47,679
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. Well, maybe it's not worth throwing down here,

1237
01:08:47,800 --> 01:08:50,400
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And so in spite of everything the

1238
01:08:50,439 --> 01:08:53,960
Speaker 1: government had actually done, the problem got better in part

1239
01:08:54,040 --> 01:08:57,479
Speaker 1: because crack got cheaper and more available. Right. That is

1240
01:08:58,120 --> 01:08:59,519
Speaker 1: for the people who are like, if all of this

1241
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:01,280
Speaker 1: stuff did and legal from the start, we wouldn't have

1242
01:09:01,280 --> 01:09:04,040
Speaker 1: had a problem. That's strong evidence, right then, like crack

1243
01:09:04,120 --> 01:09:07,360
Speaker 1: gets cheaper and the crack epidemic gets less bad. That's

1244
01:09:07,360 --> 01:09:08,880
Speaker 1: not the only thing. Again, a lot of this, as

1245
01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:11,800
Speaker 1: you said, is cultural. It's it's the it's the community

1246
01:09:11,880 --> 01:09:14,960
Speaker 1: taking agency. It's people talking to each other, it's people

1247
01:09:15,000 --> 01:09:18,599
Speaker 1: making wise decisions in their own self interest, and it's

1248
01:09:18,640 --> 01:09:20,760
Speaker 1: people trying to talk to their fellows to get them

1249
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:24,480
Speaker 1: to stay away from this stuff that's pretty bad for you. Um.

1250
01:09:24,520 --> 01:09:27,400
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things. Everything gets better in

1251
01:09:27,479 --> 01:09:29,600
Speaker 1: spite of the government, which if Ronald Reagan was a

1252
01:09:29,600 --> 01:09:33,320
Speaker 1: guy who actually meant anything that he said, right, Because

1253
01:09:33,320 --> 01:09:35,160
Speaker 1: he's the guy who's like, I'm the scariest words in

1254
01:09:35,200 --> 01:09:36,880
Speaker 1: the English language, or I'm from the government, and I'm

1255
01:09:36,880 --> 01:09:39,840
Speaker 1: there to help. If you're actually believe in anything as

1256
01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:42,920
Speaker 1: a conservative, this is a perfect example of things. Right. Oh,

1257
01:09:42,920 --> 01:09:45,479
Speaker 1: the government just made this worse. Yeah, exactly, Like here's

1258
01:09:45,479 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 1: your proof. Yeah. Actually, the free and the free market

1259
01:09:49,280 --> 01:09:54,120
Speaker 1: did kind of solve this one credit where it's dude,

1260
01:09:54,120 --> 01:09:59,479
Speaker 1: this is a um. So. The crack epidemic is well

1261
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:03,080
Speaker 1: past sight by, but it remained a common subject in

1262
01:10:03,120 --> 01:10:05,320
Speaker 1: the news and part of the repeated attempts by guys

1263
01:10:05,360 --> 01:10:08,960
Speaker 1: like Joseph Robinett Biden to expand the prison industrial complex.

1264
01:10:09,360 --> 01:10:12,559
Speaker 1: Black inner city communities were well in recovery by this point,

1265
01:10:12,560 --> 01:10:15,320
Speaker 1: but cracked was a fat crack. Sorry, was a fact

1266
01:10:15,360 --> 01:10:17,280
Speaker 1: of life now, as were the tens of thousands of

1267
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:20,840
Speaker 1: young black men serving decades of time for possession. And

1268
01:10:20,920 --> 01:10:23,960
Speaker 1: it was into this climate in the August of nineteen

1269
01:10:24,120 --> 01:10:27,400
Speaker 1: ninety six that A and again ninety is right. When

1270
01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:29,760
Speaker 1: the crack Evanica is cooling off, things are starting to

1271
01:10:29,800 --> 01:10:32,080
Speaker 1: get better. The black community is starting to breathe a

1272
01:10:32,120 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 1: little bit right. Um August of nineteen ninety six, a

1273
01:10:36,160 --> 01:10:40,160
Speaker 1: young journalist named Gary Webb publishes a massive three part

1274
01:10:40,200 --> 01:10:44,559
Speaker 1: investigation under the title Dark Alliance, The story behind the

1275
01:10:44,640 --> 01:10:48,439
Speaker 1: crack explosion. Now his employer is the San Jose Mercury,

1276
01:10:48,479 --> 01:10:51,559
Speaker 1: which is a scrappy new upstart paper. They had only

1277
01:10:51,600 --> 01:10:53,559
Speaker 1: a fraction of the budget of the l A Times,

1278
01:10:53,560 --> 01:10:56,760
Speaker 1: which is like the fucking New York Times for southern California. Right,

1279
01:10:56,800 --> 01:10:59,160
Speaker 1: it's a big It is a national level outlet, even

1280
01:10:59,160 --> 01:11:02,200
Speaker 1: though it's called the l A Times. Um. But obviously

1281
01:11:02,439 --> 01:11:04,519
Speaker 1: you know, they've got only a little bit of the

1282
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:06,240
Speaker 1: l A Times this budget, and they've got none of

1283
01:11:06,240 --> 01:11:08,719
Speaker 1: the cache. But what they do have is a working

1284
01:11:08,840 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: understanding of this thing that's probably going to be a

1285
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:13,559
Speaker 1: big deal in the future called the Internet. Right, San

1286
01:11:13,640 --> 01:11:17,160
Speaker 1: Jose Mercury figures out that the Internet is where journalism

1287
01:11:17,200 --> 01:11:19,800
Speaker 1: can go viral, and there maybe you could argue the

1288
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:23,559
Speaker 1: very first outlet whoever figures this out in a meaningful way,

1289
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:25,760
Speaker 1: Matt Drudge, is kind of right around the same time

1290
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:27,360
Speaker 1: and gets a lot of this. He's a piece of ship,

1291
01:11:27,439 --> 01:11:32,080
Speaker 1: but he has kind of along those lines. Um. But

1292
01:11:32,240 --> 01:11:35,879
Speaker 1: the San Jose Mercury publishes this whole investigation Dark Alliance

1293
01:11:35,960 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 1: simultaneously online and in print, which is again kind of

1294
01:11:39,280 --> 01:11:41,680
Speaker 1: the first time this has been done for a big investigation.

1295
01:11:42,160 --> 01:11:46,200
Speaker 1: This right, up from the Columbia Journalism Reviews, Peter Cornblue

1296
01:11:46,200 --> 01:11:49,760
Speaker 1: summarizes what happens. The long three part series covered the

1297
01:11:49,800 --> 01:11:53,280
Speaker 1: lives and connections of three career criminals. Freeway Ricky Ross

1298
01:11:53,360 --> 01:11:55,479
Speaker 1: perhaps l A is most renowned crack dealer in the

1299
01:11:55,560 --> 01:11:59,600
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, Oscar Danilo Blanden rays a right wing Nicaraguan

1300
01:11:59,720 --> 01:12:02,599
Speaker 1: X pay treat described by one US Assistant district attorney

1301
01:12:02,640 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 1: as the biggest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States.

1302
01:12:05,840 --> 01:12:09,920
Speaker 1: And Juan Norvin Norvin in some documents Menenzez Cantarero, a

1303
01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:13,599
Speaker 1: friend of the fallen dictator Anastasia Samosa, who allegedly brought

1304
01:12:13,680 --> 01:12:16,200
Speaker 1: Blandon into the drug business to support the contrast and

1305
01:12:16,240 --> 01:12:19,360
Speaker 1: supplied him for an uncertain amount of time with significant

1306
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:23,720
Speaker 1: quantities of cocaine. The first installment of the series, headlined

1307
01:12:23,800 --> 01:12:27,240
Speaker 1: Crack Plagues Roots are in Nicaraguan War, opened with two

1308
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:30,120
Speaker 1: dramatic statements and this is quoting from the original article.

1309
01:12:30,160 --> 01:12:32,160
Speaker 1: Now for the better part of a decade of San

1310
01:12:32,200 --> 01:12:35,439
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay Area drug ring so sold tons of cocaine

1311
01:12:35,520 --> 01:12:37,960
Speaker 1: to the crips and blood street gangs of Los Angeles

1312
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:40,959
Speaker 1: and funneled millions and drug profits to a Latin American

1313
01:12:41,000 --> 01:12:45,640
Speaker 1: guerilla army run by the Central Intelligence Agency. The second paragraph,

1314
01:12:45,720 --> 01:12:48,880
Speaker 1: which captured even more public attention, read, this drug network

1315
01:12:49,000 --> 01:12:52,519
Speaker 1: opened the first pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartels and the

1316
01:12:52,600 --> 01:12:55,599
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as

1317
01:12:55,680 --> 01:13:00,519
Speaker 1: the crack capital of the world. There it is so.

1318
01:13:01,800 --> 01:13:04,880
Speaker 1: If you have ever heard, either in a conversation or

1319
01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:07,720
Speaker 1: most recently in a prominent TV show The Boys, the

1320
01:13:07,800 --> 01:13:11,479
Speaker 1: claim that the CIA introduced crack to the inner cities,

1321
01:13:12,040 --> 01:13:16,160
Speaker 1: this is the origin point. This is one percent where

1322
01:13:16,240 --> 01:13:18,599
Speaker 1: that comes from. You made it. It all comes out

1323
01:13:18,680 --> 01:13:21,559
Speaker 1: of this article, right, because this article is the first

1324
01:13:21,640 --> 01:13:24,519
Speaker 1: time that you have someone saying in a very condensed,

1325
01:13:24,600 --> 01:13:27,559
Speaker 1: clear form, the CIA brought crack to the inner city

1326
01:13:27,640 --> 01:13:30,280
Speaker 1: by in order to fund the contrast. Right, that is

1327
01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:32,680
Speaker 1: that is the way this is. Now, that's actually not

1328
01:13:32,800 --> 01:13:34,960
Speaker 1: what the article says, because the CIA is not bringing

1329
01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:38,360
Speaker 1: crack anywhere. What the CIA is doing is allowing Nicaragua

1330
01:13:38,479 --> 01:13:41,320
Speaker 1: drug dealers to bring cocaine into the United States so

1331
01:13:41,400 --> 01:13:42,960
Speaker 1: that they can sell it to fund to right wing

1332
01:13:43,000 --> 01:13:46,439
Speaker 1: paramilitary in Nicaragua. That cocaine is then being turned into crack,

1333
01:13:46,520 --> 01:13:50,519
Speaker 1: because that's happening at the same time. Um. But yeah,

1334
01:13:50,840 --> 01:13:53,120
Speaker 1: the claims Web made in his article are a bit

1335
01:13:53,240 --> 01:13:55,439
Speaker 1: different from the version of the story that spreads kind

1336
01:13:55,479 --> 01:13:58,200
Speaker 1: of viral. What he provides as evidence to support the

1337
01:13:58,240 --> 01:14:01,320
Speaker 1: assertion that quote a cocaine for weapons trade supported US

1338
01:14:01,400 --> 01:14:05,320
Speaker 1: policy and undermined Black America. Now, while the article did

1339
01:14:05,360 --> 01:14:07,679
Speaker 1: not show, the articles did not show any direct stated

1340
01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:10,080
Speaker 1: intention of the CIA to spark a crack epidemic, it

1341
01:14:10,160 --> 01:14:13,200
Speaker 1: did lay out how the agency supported cocaine smugglers in

1342
01:14:13,280 --> 01:14:15,439
Speaker 1: order to fund the contrast, We're gonna talk that in

1343
01:14:15,479 --> 01:14:17,880
Speaker 1: a minute. But the third article doesn't touch on the

1344
01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:20,160
Speaker 1: CIA at all. It covers what we've just talked about

1345
01:14:20,160 --> 01:14:23,240
Speaker 1: in terms of sentencing discrepancies between black and white people

1346
01:14:23,280 --> 01:14:26,639
Speaker 1: for cocaine trafficking and how that harms the community. Webb

1347
01:14:26,720 --> 01:14:29,679
Speaker 1: pointed out that Ross, who was black, received a life

1348
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:34,320
Speaker 1: sentence without parole. Blandon, a Nicaraguan man, had smuggled cocaine,

1349
01:14:34,360 --> 01:14:37,600
Speaker 1: and whereas Ross had sold crack, and Blandon serves just

1350
01:14:37,760 --> 01:14:39,800
Speaker 1: two years and then gets a bunch of money from

1351
01:14:39,840 --> 01:14:44,120
Speaker 1: the FEDS to be an informant. Um. So the primary gotcha.

1352
01:14:44,320 --> 01:14:46,760
Speaker 1: The story had was that it connected the two right

1353
01:14:46,840 --> 01:14:50,200
Speaker 1: wing dealer not Nicaraguan's, to the f d in freedom

1354
01:14:50,280 --> 01:14:53,600
Speaker 1: fighters and showed that they somewhat inexplicably had escaped a

1355
01:14:53,760 --> 01:14:58,200
Speaker 1: prosecution for a weird number of crimes. And this is

1356
01:14:58,240 --> 01:14:59,600
Speaker 1: the point at which I think we're gonna have to

1357
01:14:59,640 --> 01:15:02,559
Speaker 1: bring things to a close for the day, because we've

1358
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:06,439
Speaker 1: got we'll be talking about in part two, Nicaragua, the contras,

1359
01:15:06,520 --> 01:15:08,920
Speaker 1: all of this, how the actual crack and coke, well,

1360
01:15:08,960 --> 01:15:11,439
Speaker 1: the cocaine tread because again, this is if you want

1361
01:15:11,479 --> 01:15:14,800
Speaker 1: to it's one of those things where, like the the

1362
01:15:14,920 --> 01:15:17,559
Speaker 1: inaccurate version of the story is the CIA brought crack

1363
01:15:17,600 --> 01:15:19,960
Speaker 1: to the inner cities. The act perfectly accurate version is

1364
01:15:20,000 --> 01:15:23,639
Speaker 1: the CIA allowed uh cocaine to be trafficked in mass

1365
01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:26,240
Speaker 1: into southern California, which was then turned into crack and

1366
01:15:26,320 --> 01:15:29,519
Speaker 1: that's what caused the crack epidemic. And then the other

1367
01:15:29,640 --> 01:15:32,840
Speaker 1: accurate for all and then the stuff we talked about

1368
01:15:33,200 --> 01:15:36,080
Speaker 1: in my episodes. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things

1369
01:15:36,080 --> 01:15:37,840
Speaker 1: where if you don't understand it, you might just say

1370
01:15:37,880 --> 01:15:40,439
Speaker 1: the CIA smuggled crack into the inner city. If you

1371
01:15:40,560 --> 01:15:43,479
Speaker 1: really understand it, the summary is still the CIA brought

1372
01:15:43,520 --> 01:15:45,360
Speaker 1: crack in the inter city. It's just a little more

1373
01:15:45,400 --> 01:15:48,679
Speaker 1: detailed that. Yeah, there's a few more steps in between,

1374
01:15:49,000 --> 01:15:52,720
Speaker 1: but the CIA did this. Yeah, yeah, the CIA is

1375
01:15:52,720 --> 01:15:54,280
Speaker 1: a bit well. But also, I mean, and here's the thing.

1376
01:15:54,360 --> 01:15:55,799
Speaker 1: One of the things that I do think is frustrating,

1377
01:15:55,840 --> 01:15:57,559
Speaker 1: because we're gonna we're about to talk in part two

1378
01:15:57,640 --> 01:16:00,960
Speaker 1: all about the CIA and some other groups, is yeah,

1379
01:16:01,000 --> 01:16:02,519
Speaker 1: the CIA has got a lot of blame for this.

1380
01:16:03,080 --> 01:16:06,160
Speaker 1: But um, where I'm standing not more than the New

1381
01:16:06,240 --> 01:16:10,920
Speaker 1: York Times, Right, That's that's where I'm fucking standing here

1382
01:16:10,920 --> 01:16:13,559
Speaker 1: and not and not more than Congress when the people

1383
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:17,640
Speaker 1: passing these laws. Right, Um, that's where I'm fucking standing. Um,

1384
01:16:17,880 --> 01:16:23,800
Speaker 1: it's what it looks like to make oh, y'all multiple bastards. Man. Yeah,

1385
01:16:23,840 --> 01:16:25,320
Speaker 1: well I don't love it, but you know what I mean,

1386
01:16:26,360 --> 01:16:30,559
Speaker 1: that's the crack epidemic. In brief, Um, prop you've got

1387
01:16:30,560 --> 01:16:33,479
Speaker 1: anything to plug here, maybe hood politics, the show that

1388
01:16:33,560 --> 01:16:36,240
Speaker 1: we're doing, yeah, this on partnership with this way, Yeah,

1389
01:16:36,280 --> 01:16:38,320
Speaker 1: this is this is definitely like a you know, a

1390
01:16:38,360 --> 01:16:41,080
Speaker 1: little a newbie thing where we're doing like, you know,

1391
01:16:41,640 --> 01:16:45,639
Speaker 1: a collaboration on this where uh, this story takes place

1392
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 1: in the context of the stories that we're talking about

1393
01:16:47,960 --> 01:16:48,200
Speaker 1: on the