Speaker 1: Oh, prop Sophie. Ye, Hey, what's the word, homie? You
Speaker 1: know I'm a big fall guy. I love pumpkin spice.
Speaker 1: I love walking through falling leaves. You know, the colors
Speaker 1: start to change. What do you say this fall? We
Speaker 1: all get together as buddies and we spend like seven
Speaker 1: or eight hours talking about the crack epidemic, the c
Speaker 1: I A Iran contra, the Gary Webb story that broke
Speaker 1: it all that then had him hounded into self destruction
Speaker 1: by the CIA and the New York Times. What do
Speaker 1: we just did that for the first entire week of October?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be a hoot? I feel like I feel
Speaker 1: like this would be a good time because it kind
Speaker 1: of matches all the stuff that kind of happens when
Speaker 1: we sit around the table anyway, talk about crack. What
Speaker 1: should we what should we call? What should we call this? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the Germans have a holiday during this period
Speaker 1: in time, and I feel like if it's German, were
Speaker 1: allowed to co opt it, So why don't we call
Speaker 1: it cractober Fest. Listen, I'm waiting. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying October crack October because october Fest to me is
Speaker 1: it's a little too late a hose it for my Yes,
Speaker 1: yes there will there will be no leader housing, but
Speaker 1: there will be whatever CIA agents where. Honestly, probably like
Speaker 1: Patagonia vs. Khaki Slacks. Yeah, yeah, hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of those. Um Well, this is serving as a general
Speaker 1: introduction to the series. Prop you have done a blistering
Speaker 1: two parter on the Iran Contra scandal. I am covering
Speaker 1: the crack epidemic and the CIA and all sorts of
Speaker 1: good stuff and um but I think people are gonna
Speaker 1: be happy. I think you're all gonna have a good
Speaker 1: eight ish hours learning about everything there is to know
Speaker 1: about how the CIA actually because like that's like the
Speaker 1: thing everybody like says, joking, like jokingly says, like the
Speaker 1: CIA brought crack to the inner cities. Like there's an
Speaker 1: actual story there, and it's actually kind of worse than
Speaker 1: than than just like the quick summaries people give. It's
Speaker 1: worse than the street lower. It really is what you
Speaker 1: get into it. And I've really felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're always looking for ways to collapse, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. There's obviously there's a lot of mutual friendship,
Speaker 1: symbiotic nous between our two uh podcast, but it was like,
Speaker 1: so there's that we share a Sophie. Uh, but I
Speaker 1: feel like finding that perfect then diagram that perfect you
Speaker 1: know meme of the two guys holding hands. What movie
Speaker 1: is that' from Rambo? Right, Commando? What movie is that from?
Speaker 1: That's from Predator? Actually it's from Predator. I knew it
Speaker 1: was one of him, but Arnold is from Commando, so
Speaker 1: it's understanding. Okay, so it's from Predator. Yeah, when they
Speaker 1: that perfect like where both our stories meet and it
Speaker 1: couldn't have met better than the crack epidemics he was
Speaker 1: having right now and how we even got there perfect
Speaker 1: perfect storm and uh so this so so so this
Speaker 1: is episode one of five because we're gonna be doing
Speaker 1: Cracktoberfest all week and you can listen to all five
Speaker 1: episodes either and they're available in the Hood, Politics, Speed,
Speaker 1: in the Behind the Bastards. We listened to them wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast. So I officially, uh apologize to
Speaker 1: all the other podcasts you listen to. You can go
Speaker 1: ahead and uh go to those fees now and tell
Speaker 1: them you can subscribe them. Just burn them off of
Speaker 1: your phone. In fact, throw that old phone away. Get
Speaker 1: a new phone, keep it pure, just yeah, exactly, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, here's what's mandatory, my minimums. I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: host of Behind the Bastards per Wow. Wow, that was powerful, powerful, prop.
Speaker 1: So man, how are you doing? How are you doing? Buddy?
Speaker 1: Hey homie? You know what I'm saying. Trickling down quick
Speaker 1: and ther Reaganomics over here. You feel me? Beautiful now,
Speaker 1: prop this is our special week. We had it. We
Speaker 1: we did this introduction, the last one. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: which of these episodes will introduce it on, but you
Speaker 1: and I are tackling the crack epidemic, the c I
Speaker 1: A Iran contra, all of which are individual stories that
Speaker 1: are fucking wild, and all of which also kind of
Speaker 1: deserved to be told together because they they're interwoven. Just
Speaker 1: a bowl of gumbo of bastards man, Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like the perfect, uh perfect analogy, because
Speaker 1: everything in gumbo is great by itself. Yeah, then when
Speaker 1: you get together, it's still amazing. Yeah, that's what I think.
Speaker 1: When I think about the crack epidemic, I think, wow,
Speaker 1: that was great by itself. It's perfectly fine by itself
Speaker 1: without anything else around it. Yes, a plus um proper, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you? How do you? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about crack? Man? That doesn't seem like the right way
Speaker 1: to start this. Um let's let's yeah, it's what crack.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting how it went from like, uh, there
Speaker 1: was a time where it was like hip hop was.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's one of the proof proof of
Speaker 1: concept that if hit hip hop is given the right information,
Speaker 1: it does the right thing, Because it was it was
Speaker 1: the butt of a joke to be like you do crack,
Speaker 1: don't do crack. Crack it's what you know? Uh, and
Speaker 1: then the self destruction and we're all in the same
Speaker 1: game was about like, you know, you should do crack,
Speaker 1: you know, And then all so there was a moment
Speaker 1: where crack was terrible in in our in our culture,
Speaker 1: or the butt of every joke. And then the crack
Speaker 1: sellers became all the rappers, and then it was just
Speaker 1: it became the coolest thing to sell crack, right, And
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, but I'm a crack dealer, Like
Speaker 1: oh wait, so it's cool again. Yeah, but you supposed
Speaker 1: to do crack, You're supposed to sell it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think maybe a place I might want to start here is.
Speaker 1: Do you recall the first time you learned Like, is
Speaker 1: that about like crack? The first time you remember the
Speaker 1: first time, Yeah, you're you had to talk about it
Speaker 1: with anyone. I do remember the time. I do remember
Speaker 1: all the after school specials. I remember all of the
Speaker 1: like you know, sort of the Dare program, all this
Speaker 1: stuff around crack. But I think really it was whether
Speaker 1: it was the movie Knew Jack Swing. I mean I
Speaker 1: Knew Jack Swing, New Jack City, uh um, but really
Speaker 1: it was like being in Los Angeles and like what
Speaker 1: is wrong with that guy? Like and just like seeing
Speaker 1: what a crackhead was and being like, yo, this is different,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I mean as young
Speaker 1: as young of a child as I was, like a
Speaker 1: very young child during this time, like really really like baby,
Speaker 1: but just being like this is this is different? You know?
Speaker 1: Uh So I think my and then just somebody explaining
Speaker 1: all that's crack you you know, you smoke it like
Speaker 1: this or you shoot it up. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's just people figuring out like what that was. I
Speaker 1: remember my first syringe. You're stepping over my first syringe,
Speaker 1: which isn't crack per se, but like a crack pipe,
Speaker 1: and just knowing what all that stuff was was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: this is bad a matter of fact, now that i'm talking,
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot, but now that I'm talking,
Speaker 1: my neighbor, dang, I haven't thought about this. And so
Speaker 1: we grew up, you know, in the part of town
Speaker 1: I was in my my neighbor you know. Um, like
Speaker 1: I said, I grew up in total neighborhood. So like
Speaker 1: my neighbor, they were you know, in the life hardcore
Speaker 1: or whatever, but they were just they were just some
Speaker 1: of the most loving like people whatever. Right, So anyway,
Speaker 1: they moved right and when they moved, um, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the next family that came in, I remember didn't turn
Speaker 1: the electricity on and like they never turned on any
Speaker 1: of the like utilities, and I just remember being like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's weird. And then the two little boys who were
Speaker 1: a little bit younger than me used to always come over,
Speaker 1: like right at dinner time, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and just all the like, they always smelled a little
Speaker 1: bit like they weren't clean or whatever, and my parents
Speaker 1: would like my parents knew was going on. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on, but my parents knew was going on.
Speaker 1: They would let him in. They'd be like dang, okay,
Speaker 1: they feed them no more, you know. And then once
Speaker 1: they put it all together, it and then you know
Speaker 1: again people all hours at a night going in and
Speaker 1: out the house. And then finally I realized I lived
Speaker 1: next door to a crack house. It it was like
Speaker 1: it was this slow roll of like wait, what, like
Speaker 1: why do you why do they why do they have
Speaker 1: so many candles? It's like, oh, it's kind of camping.
Speaker 1: They cook with candles, you know, and just and then
Speaker 1: just realized power, yeah, like no, it's crack. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, And obviously for me, it was a much
Speaker 1: more distant thing, right, it was a thing that like
Speaker 1: number one, crack was before anything else for me, like
Speaker 1: a euphemism, yeah, for like something is addictive or also
Speaker 1: someone is silly, like you're cracked out, Yeah exactly. And
Speaker 1: it was the adults talked about crack like it was
Speaker 1: a plague, like it was a disease that it hits
Speaker 1: certain areas, and the kids talked about crack like it
Speaker 1: was a euphemism. Right, it was like yeah, just kind
Speaker 1: of an explanative term that you could throw in. Oh yeah, yeah, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're smoking crack, bro. We're gonna talk today about the
Speaker 1: crack epidemic and how it happened and what happened as
Speaker 1: a result of it. All cocaine type drugs, all cocaine
Speaker 1: derived drugs, which include crack, good old fashioned blow, also
Speaker 1: tinctures of cocaine, which is how people used to take
Speaker 1: it back in the past, come from the leaves of
Speaker 1: the cocould tree um and the co could tree grows
Speaker 1: mostly in Columbia, Bolivia, and Peru on their own. Naturally,
Speaker 1: the leaves can be chewed generally with something like potash
Speaker 1: for a mild to moderate stimulating effect, with a little
Speaker 1: bit of euphoria thrown in for good measure. I've gotten
Speaker 1: to chew coca leaves in a couple of occasions and
Speaker 1: it's very nice. It's a really pleasant and it's also
Speaker 1: pretty hard to have be a problematic drug. You you
Speaker 1: should think about coca the way we think about pot
Speaker 1: or the way we think about like opium poppies, right
Speaker 1: um opium poppies on their own. Some people do have
Speaker 1: problems with that is a more serious drug, but it's
Speaker 1: nothing compared to what happens when you start making heroin
Speaker 1: or morphaga marijuana as it grows naturally almost impossible to
Speaker 1: hurt yourself with. Then now people start making it into
Speaker 1: shatter and stuff and they're blowing up trailer parks and
Speaker 1: burning their brains out and ship right. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the way to think about the way.
Speaker 1: And this is the way in which indigenous people used
Speaker 1: coca one of them for probably thousands of years. Right um.
Speaker 1: I know what we have evidence of coca used going
Speaker 1: back and as as long pretty much as long as
Speaker 1: there have been people in the area. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's got to be the most like naive thing to
Speaker 1: think that like, you know, these just plants that just
Speaker 1: grew outside, that somebody didn't chew it and go oh
Speaker 1: you know, and and and that that was just a
Speaker 1: normal part of life. And maybe the rolls of shamons
Speaker 1: and profits and they've probably been chewing wild plants forever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with you know, the coffee which
Speaker 1: which comes from Ethiopia. The Romo people were kind of
Speaker 1: the first people using the coffee plant. A big part
Speaker 1: of what a major way it was used is for
Speaker 1: like hunters, right to keep you going during the hunt.
Speaker 1: That's probably a big part of how coca leaf was
Speaker 1: used early on. It's like, right, we're out in the
Speaker 1: we're out in the woods or the jungle or whatever
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks. You know, this should will
Speaker 1: will keep us moving. Um. And also this is interesting.
Speaker 1: Most people don't know this coca leaf is an oral anesthetic.
Speaker 1: It numbs your mouth, so we One of the things
Speaker 1: that's always been kind of interesting is that in a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of Latin American areas you have early
Speaker 1: history of pretty advanced dental work being done in some areas,
Speaker 1: and maybe that had an impact on it, the fact
Speaker 1: that they had access to a really effective oral an aesthetic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's actually a really it's a fucking amazing plant. Obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets a bad fucking wrap. Well, novacane from the
Speaker 1: coca leaf. That's where it comes from. Yeah, novacane and cocaine.
Speaker 1: But he didn't get the song reference. It's okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't get the song reference. But I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you brought up no vocane because we get novocane from
Speaker 1: the coca leaf. See. Um, Yeah, it's just it's a
Speaker 1: baffling lye useful plant. Um, and it's the root of
Speaker 1: novocane and light a cane and crack cocaine. Um, they
Speaker 1: all come from the same thing, right, Um, what kind
Speaker 1: of Yeah, well it all sorts of canes. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Europeans really figured out what was up with coca in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five. They'd noticed people in the areas they
Speaker 1: were colonizing using it for a while. Um, But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until eighteen fifty five that pure cocaine was extracted
Speaker 1: from the leaps for the first time. Again, you've got
Speaker 1: this bafflingly useful plant that's doing great stuff, and then
Speaker 1: some white people come in and are like, you know
Speaker 1: what we could do make a drug that makes people
Speaker 1: insufferable at parties out of this let's we're gonna ruin
Speaker 1: a lot of rabes. Like, yeah, now you already you
Speaker 1: nailed the joke already. There's a way that's exactly a Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're going to snore a drug in a party, kids,
Speaker 1: kinta means a lot better anyway. Uh So, obviously, the
Speaker 1: fact that they're not co signed officially, Yeah, legally, no
Speaker 1: one is co signing there. So this is a huge
Speaker 1: moment in medical science. Obviously, like I joked about them
Speaker 1: ruining it, but actually a lot of really cool number
Speaker 1: one cocaine. There are some were some early medical uses
Speaker 1: for it. We get anesthetics like novacaine and lightacne. This
Speaker 1: is a big deal, and we don't talk again, this
Speaker 1: is something that people don't think about, but it was
Speaker 1: not We're we're we're at about like a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years or so of effective anesthetics being widespread available, right,
Speaker 1: that is not a thing in surgery prior to this.
Speaker 1: If you don't live in a place where there's a
Speaker 1: good natural oral anesthetic, um and there's a couple of cocaine,
Speaker 1: coca is not the only one. Also, um cava, which
Speaker 1: Hawaiian people I believe have been using, Polynesian people using
Speaker 1: for a long time, works really well for that purpose.
Speaker 1: But if you don't live somewhere with that plant and
Speaker 1: you need a tooth taken out, you're probably downing half
Speaker 1: a handle a liquor and then someone's ripping a bone
Speaker 1: out your skull, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, then
Speaker 1: you're then you're looking like a medieval movie, really real gnarly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was listening to a h I think what was that, uh,
Speaker 1: what kind of pot was that radio lapped the science
Speaker 1: one from w might see what anyway, they were talking
Speaker 1: about like figuring out molecules for new medicines and stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you figure this thing out, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're also looking at like side effects, so like the
Speaker 1: difference between like a poison, like a narcotic or a medicine,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, or poison. And one of
Speaker 1: the researchers from China was like, well, they're just molecules,
Speaker 1: like you know, and that that bifurcation, the difference between
Speaker 1: like a good molecule and a bad molecule is like
Speaker 1: it's a very new and sort of Western way to
Speaker 1: look at this. It's like they all have strengths and weaknesses,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and ways to abuse and
Speaker 1: not abuse, you know. So even the way the way
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, you know, the coca leaf is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure somebody you know, in the ancient past
Speaker 1: like chew that thing. And then his buddy was like, hey, bro,
Speaker 1: you gotta chill man, you know what I'm saying, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was like, yeah, man, that was
Speaker 1: too far. You know what I'm saying, like there has
Speaker 1: to have been because again, I feel like the point
Speaker 1: you're making at this stage in the story is you
Speaker 1: can't stress enough. It's just a plant. It's just a plant.
Speaker 1: And and at some point some people figure out how
Speaker 1: to like supercharge it, right, And so at the same
Speaker 1: time as you get these early anesthetics, you start getting
Speaker 1: pure cocaine, right, usually sold as a tincture. So you
Speaker 1: just get a fucking dropper of cocaine water sheeese right,
Speaker 1: you can know you can shoot that stuff up. A
Speaker 1: lot of people injected it. I believe Sherlock Holmes injected cocaine.
Speaker 1: I think with heroin. Um, this is what guys like
Speaker 1: Freud are doing. Right. Most of them are not doing lines,
Speaker 1: you know, um they are. They are taking it as
Speaker 1: a pure like distilled tincture. You can pick this ship
Speaker 1: up at the at the drug store. Um. Now, this
Speaker 1: causes problems because cocaine is incredibly addictive, um, and also
Speaker 1: not great for your body, especially if you're taking it
Speaker 1: a lot of it every single day because the doctor
Speaker 1: told you it's good for you. That actually hurts you
Speaker 1: a lot. Right, You can choo coca leafs all day long,
Speaker 1: and it's you're probably not well, not all day long.
Speaker 1: When you can choot coca leaves on a regular basis
Speaker 1: and you're not dealing with too huge of a problem.
Speaker 1: You're doing cocaine every day. People are gonna notice because
Speaker 1: it's going to destroy you. Yeah, I think they're government.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna be like, hey man, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean just doing Yeah, you're gonna get really into White
Speaker 1: Snake and yeah, then your heart's going to explode. Hey, bro,
Speaker 1: so make an album. Hey man, we should make album.
Speaker 1: You want to make an album of night Let's cut
Speaker 1: we we we gotta bring back fucking prog rock. Man,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to fucking hear right? Yeah? Um
Speaker 1: so Europeans eighteen fifty five we get cocaine. Nineteen fourteen
Speaker 1: is when the US government decides, right, that's enough, that's
Speaker 1: enough cocaine being available. We gotta we gotta, we gotta
Speaker 1: lock this one up. So we get the Harrison act
Speaker 1: Um and and that makes it that's that restricts the
Speaker 1: sale of cocaine, right, It makes it a lot harder
Speaker 1: to get. People aren't buying it over the counter anymore.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen twenty two, another law gets passed,
Speaker 1: which is one of the very first anti drug laws
Speaker 1: in the United States that effectively stops legal US extraction
Speaker 1: of cocaine. But of course the drug in various forms
Speaker 1: continued to flow into the United States from Latin America
Speaker 1: up through its land and sea borders. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: cocaine caught on big time as a drug for the
Speaker 1: rich and the upwardly mobile party set sometime in the
Speaker 1: late seventies, and obviously there's a lot of history in
Speaker 1: other countries, especially in Europe outside of the US. I'm
Speaker 1: focusing on the US here. Sometime in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies are very early nineteen eighties. We don't exactly know
Speaker 1: when this happens because it's happening illegally, right, and there's
Speaker 1: no If we had the internet, then you would have
Speaker 1: a fucking Reddit post the day people figured out how
Speaker 1: to make fun and crest. But we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: when it happened. But sometime between the very end of
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and the start of the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: some drug chemists figure out that you can take powdered
Speaker 1: cocaine and you can dissolve it in water and then
Speaker 1: mix in baking powder and cook it down into rock
Speaker 1: like chunks. Now, this is easy to smoke, which makes
Speaker 1: it convenient. Right, it's easier to take, but it's also
Speaker 1: much purer than powder cocaine, right, which is often filler
Speaker 1: or more. Crack is around pure and it's significantly cheaper
Speaker 1: because of the way you're manufacturing the per exactly, the
Speaker 1: per dose cost is a lot less than it is
Speaker 1: with cocaine. So from kind of similar amounts of raw product,
Speaker 1: more people can get high, more often for less money.
Speaker 1: So here's where I fill in pop culture for you.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the the legend is that it was a
Speaker 1: dude in Oakland that figured it out. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the legend. Don't know that, but that's that's the legend. Right.
Speaker 1: And once uh you know, once it hit Callie with
Speaker 1: through like freeway Rick and and just some it starts
Speaker 1: to hit and it starts it's hits hard and ruins
Speaker 1: the crips and bloods. But that's but we'll get to that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think what you're talking about, as far as
Speaker 1: how to make crack all of half of the slang
Speaker 1: that gets appropriated from hip hop into the Zeigeister comes
Speaker 1: out of black culture. Is actually it's crack slang. So
Speaker 1: like cooking in the kitchen, you know, chef, you know
Speaker 1: a chef spin, look at the flick of the wrist.
Speaker 1: All of that is about spinning. Crack over, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, it's all crack slang. You know.
Speaker 1: A huge piece of internet slang right now that Garrison
Speaker 1: and I say, probably more than is good for our
Speaker 1: health is based right, it's crack. The term it's it
Speaker 1: comes from free base right, like the origin and briefly
Speaker 1: the right wing tried to take it in what I
Speaker 1: mean like ideologically pure, and now it's just a general
Speaker 1: term for cool, yes, and will be being the bad, yeah,
Speaker 1: it will be being the base God like all these things,
Speaker 1: Like I think it's gonna happen as this is going,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna keep pointing out rap lyrics to you
Speaker 1: to be or just slang and being like that's about crack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is great. And I really love that you point
Speaker 1: this out because from a from a from a cultural standpoint,
Speaker 1: crack is like on the level of the Simpsons in
Speaker 1: terms of how it's influenced the way people talk, yes,
Speaker 1: we're rappers. Where people called it rappers athletes, they call
Speaker 1: themselves chefs because they're cooking in the kitchen, which is
Speaker 1: where you make crack, right, right. So I want to
Speaker 1: quote from the New York Times here to kind of
Speaker 1: go over the economics of this new drug as it
Speaker 1: starts to hit the market. Quote, the ten dollar sale
Speaker 1: price made crack accessible to poor people who could never
Speaker 1: have come up with two hundred or more that affluent
Speaker 1: users paid for a gram of powder. Crack produced an
Speaker 1: intense but fleeting high that pushed many users to buy
Speaker 1: again and again until they ran out of money. And
Speaker 1: that is one of the things about crack is that
Speaker 1: like it hits harder and faster as generally the case
Speaker 1: when you free base something than railing it or insufflating,
Speaker 1: to use the scientist insufflation as the scientific term for
Speaker 1: snorting something um like. So, for example, if you're taking
Speaker 1: like a powdered hallucino generous psychedelic like a two C
Speaker 1: or something um, if you eat it in a pill, right,
Speaker 1: which is the way most people take that sort of drug,
Speaker 1: it could take an hour for you to come up.
Speaker 1: If you snort it, it comes up much faster and
Speaker 1: then insuff like if you're actually free basing something. And
Speaker 1: I don't think you can free base most of those drugs,
Speaker 1: although I don't know that anyone's tried, but free basing
Speaker 1: hits you faster, like for example, d m T, which
Speaker 1: is the drug you know that all of the tech
Speaker 1: gurus talk about the way in which they tend to
Speaker 1: take it in like the ceremonies that they're kind of
Speaker 1: co opting from indigenous Latin Americans as ayahuasca. You're drinking
Speaker 1: it as a t it takes a while to come up,
Speaker 1: you vomit a lot. But you can also basically you
Speaker 1: can basically free base d MT if you just take
Speaker 1: the straight crystals out and you turn it into a
Speaker 1: crystal and you smoke it in a crack pipe and
Speaker 1: it hits right the funk away, but it's much shorter, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most of my most of the people that I do
Speaker 1: know that either got hooked and got off that you
Speaker 1: could communicate with, you know what I'm saying, who figured
Speaker 1: out a way fought their way through to get off
Speaker 1: the stuff. That's what they say. They are like, there's honestly,
Speaker 1: there is nothing like that hit it is so fast
Speaker 1: and so intense, and that's why you get hooked immediately
Speaker 1: and you'll give up everything for it. Because he's like
Speaker 1: they like the Homies would explain to me. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm glad, I'm off it now, but I'm telling you
Speaker 1: that high, that first high. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like you never really reached that other high, that
Speaker 1: high again, but that first high. They're like, you're there's
Speaker 1: there are no words for it. That's why it's so
Speaker 1: I mean you Also, I do want to focus on
Speaker 1: the economics here because another thing is that not only
Speaker 1: is the high so intense, but you achieve a it's achievable.
Speaker 1: So you're looking at if you've got if you're someone
Speaker 1: who uses cocaine, and you're looking at, well, it's gonna
Speaker 1: a night of coke is going to be two hundred bucks, right,
Speaker 1: We're probably not going to do that. Some people do
Speaker 1: get that addicted, but for most people it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so I will occasionally buy two hundred bucks in cocaine
Speaker 1: for a night to party cracks tin bucks a hit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna gets cheaper that, And that's how it is.
Speaker 1: That's how cheap it is at the start, it gets
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot cheaper. So that's something you're
Speaker 1: having a bad day, ship's rough, you're feeling bad, you know,
Speaker 1: any time for pocket dollars you can fucking call again, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: any Obviously this becomes a problem. Um. So obviously this
Speaker 1: of course leads to overdoses. Another problem is that it
Speaker 1: is actually kind of hard, unless you're being really ridiculous
Speaker 1: with cocaine, to overdose just by snorting it. With actual
Speaker 1: like quality cocaine, it's harder to do that than it
Speaker 1: is smoking free base, because you can burn a shipload
Speaker 1: of crack really fast, right, and it's difficult for you
Speaker 1: to tell what you're getting, and the cooking like, you know,
Speaker 1: the strength can vary and stuff, So people start accidentally
Speaker 1: consuming a lot more of the drug than they've been
Speaker 1: used to. Obviously. The other issue is that smoking freebase
Speaker 1: is so much harsher on the body than just inhaling powder.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not good for you obviously to sport cocaine,
Speaker 1: and there's issues like deviated septum and stuff that health
Speaker 1: issues you get from that, But you're not ruining your
Speaker 1: lungs when you're smoking. When you're when you're inhaling cocaine, right,
Speaker 1: it's not good for you, but you're not destroying your
Speaker 1: lungs in addition to fucking with your heart. Crack is
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all the worst parts of cigarettes and
Speaker 1: all of the worst parts of cocaine super charge. It
Speaker 1: ages you. Yeah, they're yeah like that that used to
Speaker 1: be like for for me, one of the biggest like
Speaker 1: deterrence one. N it wasn't none of him commercials, It
Speaker 1: wasn't a song. It was the site. Uh, someone you
Speaker 1: went to cool with that now looks like your grandparents
Speaker 1: and it and it was just and the fact that
Speaker 1: like and just that nothing else mattered, Like how are
Speaker 1: you You're just sitting like if you ever hopefully Robert,
Speaker 1: you've never walked into a crack house. Now. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true, but hopefully maybe it's some maybe
Speaker 1: somewhere in Prague knowing your ass. But like, uh, out here,
Speaker 1: like the site, it's it is probably the most heartbreaking
Speaker 1: site you can imagine because you're just like, I know these,
Speaker 1: I know y'all, like you, how did you become this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I think the point that we built to here
Speaker 1: is that crack is indeed a hell of address. Yes,
Speaker 1: And obviously people get better very quickly get better at
Speaker 1: making and I think you know, there's no proving where
Speaker 1: it came from. Oakland is a pretty good guess in
Speaker 1: terms of the first people to figure that the ship
Speaker 1: out that that that that makes would make total sense
Speaker 1: to me. Obviously, the Bay areas where innovation comes in,
Speaker 1: right resistance, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, um. But you know
Speaker 1: who else is constantly innovating? The sponsors of this podcast, well, yes,
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies A K. John Dealers, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and in a much Also, the thing I don't want
Speaker 1: to be doing here is like demonizing and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about this, is demonizing crack because it is addictive.
Speaker 1: It is a drug that has serious physical consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing about crack cocaine that is worse than painkillers,
Speaker 1: than like than the ox is. Right, there's no a Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when we get to any sentences, there's a big difference. Yes,
Speaker 1: we can talk about why that's so problematic. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about that now. But first here's the crack
Speaker 1: of products for you. Ah, we're back. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of misinformation in moral panic, and it is tough
Speaker 1: to kind of seriously talk about how fucking gnarly crack
Speaker 1: is for a lot of people, um and also not
Speaker 1: go to the moral panic shift that you get about it,
Speaker 1: which is which is what we're about to talk about now.
Speaker 1: Um So, I want to talk before we start talking
Speaker 1: about the crack epidemic and the moral panic it causes.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the struggles that Black American
Speaker 1: families were going through as the nineteen seventies gave away
Speaker 1: to the swing in eighties. So from the post World
Speaker 1: War One era to the nineteen sixties, Black Americans migrated
Speaker 1: from rural parts of the United States to cities across
Speaker 1: the United States and unprecedented numbers. This is probably the
Speaker 1: most significant demographic shift that has ever occurred in the
Speaker 1: history of the United States. A huge fucking thing that happens.
Speaker 1: It's the Great Migration, and my family is one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, and yeah. Um So, because there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of bullshit restrictions on where and which are,
Speaker 1: many of which are legally enforced, but a lot of
Speaker 1: which were just sort of like guys will show up
Speaker 1: outside of your house and funk with you and your
Speaker 1: family if you do this on where you can live
Speaker 1: as a black person in this period, a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who are doing this great migration are forced
Speaker 1: into crowded neighborhoods with underfunded serve obviously prop like elephant
Speaker 1: of the room, you know, all this, Like I'm not
Speaker 1: explaining let's see right right, this is a thing to
Speaker 1: go over because it's Yeah, it's history that for certain
Speaker 1: I didn't encounter in school and in anything more than
Speaker 1: the Vegas terms. Yeah, I don't want to feel like
Speaker 1: I'm not explaining your do you know? Do you know
Speaker 1: that this happened to you? Yes? I do know. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: are again to add some color to this, like you'll
Speaker 1: probably get to this also too. But like my family,
Speaker 1: you know, my father's side, how we got to California
Speaker 1: was was through Texas, and that was and and traditionally
Speaker 1: betwe in Texas and Oklahoma. Most families from there probably
Speaker 1: got there, uh because of the chance to become a cowboy,
Speaker 1: you know, where you could work for yourself, and that
Speaker 1: was you know, almost all of food on your neck.
Speaker 1: Yea of American cowboys were actually free slaves, you know.
Speaker 1: And then and then from there we all went to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego because of these these
Speaker 1: housing projects, like the Watts Towers that that these housing
Speaker 1: vouchers that brought specifically Jason Petty's family to California, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Yeah, And that's like that's what
Speaker 1: happens to most too, to a huge chunk of people,
Speaker 1: and they get forced into these neighborhoods like Watts, right,
Speaker 1: and and there's other neighborhoods and their parts of the unit.
Speaker 1: Because this is this is happening a lot in southern California.
Speaker 1: This is also happening just to Shipload and the play
Speaker 1: SIT's primarily happening to is like the Eastern seas and
Speaker 1: chunks of the chunks of the urban Midwest, right, Great
Speaker 1: Lakes regions, stuff, Minneapolis. You know, this is when all
Speaker 1: of this is happening. And across the board, these black
Speaker 1: families are being forced into not just these crowded neighborhoods
Speaker 1: with underfunded services, but low paid, insecure industrial jobs. Often
Speaker 1: they're being brought in to deal with because unionized white
Speaker 1: workers are too expensive rights, so they're being brought in
Speaker 1: as as strike breakers and stuff. And this is and
Speaker 1: then as soon as that happens, right, you have so
Speaker 1: you have that being done by these capitalists, and then
Speaker 1: we get nafta. Right, so suddenly what jobs they had
Speaker 1: start to fall out from under right, um as manufacturing
Speaker 1: and ship moves across the border. Um. It's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that a ton of these of the particularly the
Speaker 1: black men working these industrial jobs, are doing so in
Speaker 1: dangerous like being exposed like deadly chemicals, like in horrific
Speaker 1: ways that would have been that were illegal, but it happened,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. So while all this is going on,
Speaker 1: white families are considering their you know, flight to suburban
Speaker 1: areas and at an that takes off to um and
Speaker 1: you know, these suburban houses that cost about as much
Speaker 1: as three good lunches due today, they start moving into
Speaker 1: an accumulating wealth. They go up hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars in value by the time the owners reach retirement age. Now,
Speaker 1: when the civil rights movement wins its major victories, obviously
Speaker 1: a lot had gotten better for black families. But this
Speaker 1: has what one journal of social welfare paper paper i
Speaker 1: read called a quote perverse, unintended impact on the inner city.
Speaker 1: And I want to quote from that. Now, successful African
Speaker 1: Americans move their families to newly integrated communities, leaving an
Speaker 1: even higher concentration of poverty and the predominantly African American
Speaker 1: inner city. Based on an extensive literature review, Small and
Speaker 1: Newman two thousand one identified the increasing concentration of poverty
Speaker 1: during the nineteen seventies and into the nineteen eighties, particularly
Speaker 1: among African Americans, as primarily the result of three phenomena
Speaker 1: black middle class flight, continued residential discrimination, especially against less
Speaker 1: wealthy African Americans, and the departure of low skilled jobs
Speaker 1: from the Northeast and Midwest cities. And again, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why this is so devastating is when the
Speaker 1: black families that make money leave these inner city neighborhoods
Speaker 1: because of the way the tax system is set up
Speaker 1: in the United States, all of the income they had
Speaker 1: that was going to schools in the inner cities leaves, right.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of it. So the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: are a challenging decade for many people in the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: the economic stagna and this is across the board, right,
Speaker 1: this is why Jimmy Carter loses reelection. The economy ships,
Speaker 1: the fucking bed, there's gas lines, everything's fucked up. But obviously,
Speaker 1: where everyone is suffering, nobody suffers worse than Black people
Speaker 1: in the inner cities, that is the most hard the
Speaker 1: hardest hit region of the country. As a more globalized
Speaker 1: economy ships factory jobs off to foreign countries, advancing technology
Speaker 1: meant that what good working class jobs remained required computer
Speaker 1: literacy and other training that folks you'd grown up in
Speaker 1: economically disadvantaged schools didn't have access to write. Um. Everything
Speaker 1: just builds upon itself, So poverty and long term unemployment
Speaker 1: are associated with a variety of other negative things overcrowded housing, PTSD,
Speaker 1: team pregnancy, school dropout, violence, crime, and drug and alcohol abuse.
Speaker 1: As poverty worsens in the inner cities, all these things
Speaker 1: grow more common for black families. For a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: Black kids since emancipation have been more likely than white
Speaker 1: kids to grow up in a one parent household. The
Speaker 1: rate of two parent households was stable among black families
Speaker 1: from emancipation up to the sixties. It was around seventy right,
Speaker 1: so about seventy Black kids grow up in two parent households.
Speaker 1: For white kids it's ninety percent, so it's lower for
Speaker 1: black families in up to the nineteen sixties, but still
Speaker 1: the vast majority of kids, right are growing up in
Speaker 1: two parent households. Once you hit the seventies, that or
Speaker 1: the sixth of the late sixties, really that number starts
Speaker 1: to drop like a fucking stone. By the mid nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: only a third of Black Aerican children lived in two
Speaker 1: parent households. Yeah like that that. I was unaware of
Speaker 1: how fucking sharp that drop it. But there's a there's,
Speaker 1: there's there's depending on how hotep you are, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of answers to that, right, But I do think
Speaker 1: that this this moment is so it's so pivotal and
Speaker 1: so underreported um in the sense that it's like so
Speaker 1: much of our culture now is came out of this moment.
Speaker 1: So this is this inner city as you're talking about,
Speaker 1: especially along the Eastern seaboard. This is the Bronx, the movie,
Speaker 1: the movie Warriors, Right, it's this, It's this moment. It's
Speaker 1: this overcrowding, underfunding, this city that you know, being a
Speaker 1: city of rubble, and that there was you know, broken
Speaker 1: down buildings everywhere. Because if you're a slum lord, it's
Speaker 1: cheaper to just destroy the building and get the insurance
Speaker 1: then try to you know, fix it or or or
Speaker 1: you know, be a responsible landlord. Just burn it down
Speaker 1: and just let the rubble happen. UH A big power
Speaker 1: outage in in UH in New York, which is what
Speaker 1: which actually happened, which is what the movie Warriors takes
Speaker 1: place in. But it's ultimately it is this moment that
Speaker 1: d J cool herk from from from Jamaica moves over,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and plugs his turntable into
Speaker 1: a power line and does the first park jam, which
Speaker 1: creates hip hop. You know what I'm saying. It was
Speaker 1: out of this time. This is what creates all this
Speaker 1: ship yo saying. It was this moment, and it was,
Speaker 1: but it's important to understand. It's like, oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was cool. They were throwing parties in the park. Well
Speaker 1: they were living in rubble. Y understand I'm saying, because
Speaker 1: we were forced to with with no music programs in
Speaker 1: our schools. You know, I'm saying nothing, There was nothing
Speaker 1: provided that there's no as you talk about the rubble,
Speaker 1: it's not you. And I want to really hit on
Speaker 1: this because this ties directly back into crack. It's not
Speaker 1: just you know, shady landlords. It's not just that things
Speaker 1: are underfunded. It's that we talk about this center Robert
Speaker 1: Moses episodes, Black neighborhoods are bulldozed in a bunch literally
Speaker 1: bulldozed in a bunch of countries, sometimes with like the
Speaker 1: military essentially helping to do it in order to make
Speaker 1: way for ship like overpass um that effectively than walls
Speaker 1: those areas off from the rest of the cities. And
Speaker 1: what's important here, why I'm going over this, is that
Speaker 1: this is a thirty ish year you know, obviously it
Speaker 1: goes back further than that. But this specific process um,
Speaker 1: all of these things, these these massive drops and wealth, um,
Speaker 1: this this collapse of of you know, the rate of
Speaker 1: two parent households in the black community, all of these
Speaker 1: things are the result of thirty forty year long trends
Speaker 1: right where things happen very steadily over that period. They
Speaker 1: hit their height right as crack becomes a thing. And
Speaker 1: so all of them get blamed on crack, right because
Speaker 1: it's easy to say that, well is community. All these
Speaker 1: black people got hooked on crack, and that's why everything
Speaker 1: fell apart. Ship was falling apart due to specific policy
Speaker 1: decisions for decades, and it hit its height during the crack,
Speaker 1: and that that's critical to know, otherwise you're gonna wind
Speaker 1: up blaming crack for everything. It's not to blame for everything, yes, um,
Speaker 1: it's it just is not. Um. Obviously, it sure doesn't help,
Speaker 1: you know, like it does not reversity of these trends.
Speaker 1: But that that's like if it's like somebody has a
Speaker 1: heart attack while they're like during a fucking run, and
Speaker 1: then you hit him in the head when they finish it,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you know they were having problems
Speaker 1: before you hit him on the head. Yes, exactly. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's a bad way to that's a stupid
Speaker 1: way to describe, but I don't know. Again somewhere, so yeah,
Speaker 1: during we're gonna be talking about crack today, obviously, and
Speaker 1: it plays a role in this. But again, this is
Speaker 1: this is going on for a long time. And I
Speaker 1: want to quote again from that paper I read from earlier.
Speaker 1: So policy may have inadvertently contributed to the decline in marriage.
Speaker 1: During the nineteen sixties, many states denied a f DC
Speaker 1: payments aid to families with dependent children. The single mothers
Speaker 1: suspected of living with a man. These types of eligibility
Speaker 1: requirements were struck down by the Supreme Court in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. However, even under the revised welfare policy, poor
Speaker 1: couples had an incentive to cohabit instead of mary in
Speaker 1: order to maintain welfare eligibility. And there's this is one
Speaker 1: of the thing because one of the things that Crack
Speaker 1: gets blamed for is the destruction of the of the
Speaker 1: black family, all of these black men who abandoned their families. Right,
Speaker 1: this is the this is the right wing lion on
Speaker 1: what happens. And no, in the nineteen sixties, twenty years
Speaker 1: before we've got Crack on the street. US states are
Speaker 1: denying aid to families to single mothers who are suspected
Speaker 1: of living with a man. And what usually happens before
Speaker 1: marriage is you cohabitate, right, Um, so suddenly you're penalized
Speaker 1: for that if you're not already married. See that's what
Speaker 1: by like, depending on how hots up you are, because
Speaker 1: that's in a lot of like the black like a
Speaker 1: lot of the black act of his circles is like
Speaker 1: that was a process of demasculating and devaluing the black
Speaker 1: man even further by being like, uh, well, if y'all
Speaker 1: need help, you can't handle daddy in the house, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it's like, well, dang. And
Speaker 1: then what they talked about among our community is like
Speaker 1: what it might have done to our psyche. Not I
Speaker 1: don't think this is very fair, but their argument is
Speaker 1: what has done in our psyche to look at our
Speaker 1: women and be like, you chose to check over me,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: that's a very that's a very man no sphere way
Speaker 1: to look at it. But that being said, the idea
Speaker 1: that like it do kind of feel like the government
Speaker 1: pitted us against each other Joe saying, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that that move right there, A strong case can be
Speaker 1: made it does a lot more damage than crass. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a really good documentary if people want to know
Speaker 1: more about this and like the kind of the human
Speaker 1: side of this, called the Pruitt I Go myth prove it.
Speaker 1: I Go was a government housing development in St. Louis
Speaker 1: Um during this kind of period of time, I think
Speaker 1: fifties sixties, and that documentary does a good job of
Speaker 1: explaining how the way in which benefits were handled, um
Speaker 1: led to the dissolution of a lot of families, and
Speaker 1: like kind of incentivized that. It's a very dark story,
Speaker 1: but that documentary I found, I felt did a really
Speaker 1: good job of it. Um So, obviously, the cause of
Speaker 1: all of these problems is complicated and goes on for
Speaker 1: a while. But where the credit comes, as far as
Speaker 1: the media is concerned and as far as US politicians
Speaker 1: are concerned, all of this is the fault of crack cocaine,
Speaker 1: which starts to enter US inner city communities in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, primarily in southern California, although where it would
Speaker 1: take off the most and do the most damage is
Speaker 1: the huge dense cities of the Northeast, places like fucking Baltimore. Right.
Speaker 1: Um So, crack is immediately big business. A lot of
Speaker 1: it gets sold to people who live who live in
Speaker 1: this communities, but and this is often ignored, much, if
Speaker 1: not most, of the money comes from people who lived
Speaker 1: elsewhere outside of the inner city, often in more affluent areas,
Speaker 1: who would drive into inner city communities to buy crack.
Speaker 1: And what this actually is means there's a graph going
Speaker 1: around Twitter right now that shows where money moves within
Speaker 1: kind of a graph of an urban area, and it
Speaker 1: all comes from the inner city out to the suburbs, right,
Speaker 1: because where are the people who live who own the
Speaker 1: buildings that poor people in the inner city live out
Speaker 1: in the fucking suburbs, right. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that crack represents is money coming from affluent suburbs and
Speaker 1: entering the inner city. Right. Nothing else is doing There's
Speaker 1: no way, like really not other meaningful ways money is
Speaker 1: coming from outside into the inner city. So that's part
Speaker 1: of why this is a big deal. We've talked about
Speaker 1: how negative the impact is on people, but one of
Speaker 1: the things this means is that there's fucking money coming now. Um.
Speaker 1: So of course the fortunes to be made meant that
Speaker 1: a lot of money was on the table for people
Speaker 1: who were willing to be more violent than other people
Speaker 1: who wanted that money. So you do get a lot
Speaker 1: of as there always is when cash is on the
Speaker 1: table in those quantities, murders over matters of profit and
Speaker 1: to keep their operations safe from the police. Um. There
Speaker 1: are of course significant social costs due to the use
Speaker 1: of the drugs. There's people who neglect their kids and
Speaker 1: mistreat their partners and spend money that are needed for
Speaker 1: other things. But narcotics um and the static statistics on
Speaker 1: this are pretty bleak, and I don't want to stray
Speaker 1: away from those either, So I'm gonna quote from an
Speaker 1: analysis in Chicago Booth University. Quote the rise and crack
Speaker 1: use from nineteen eighty four and nineteen eighty nine is
Speaker 1: associated with a doubling of the number of murdered black
Speaker 1: males aged fourteen to seventeen, a thirty percent to increase
Speaker 1: for those aged eighteen to twenty four, and a ten
Speaker 1: percent increase for those twenty five and over. Thus, crack
Speaker 1: accounts for much of the observed variation in homicide rates
Speaker 1: over this time period. In addition, the proportion of black
Speaker 1: children in foster care more than doubled, Fetal death rates
Speaker 1: and weapons arrests of racks of blacks rose by more
Speaker 1: than and black babies low birth weights increased by five percent. Now,
Speaker 1: this is really bad. But what what's happening in the
Speaker 1: media as this massive murder search happens is crack is
Speaker 1: being associated as a drug that makes people murder, right,
Speaker 1: the drug that makes people lose their mind. That is
Speaker 1: not what It's not it's it's the money. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: normal economics. That happens everywhere else. It's really like what
Speaker 1: you're explaining, I think again, it's like if you just
Speaker 1: under just an understanding of economics in general, Like what
Speaker 1: we're doing is this is an influx of venture capital.
Speaker 1: You know why, Like what fund did. It's like you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to the bank and let them white boys
Speaker 1: tell you know. You know what I'm saying, You're gonna
Speaker 1: keep you have to keep, you know, dressing up and
Speaker 1: kind of shucking and jiving for these people to come
Speaker 1: invest in your things. Or it's like you go get
Speaker 1: it out the mud, you go get it, go get
Speaker 1: it on your own corner. You invest in your own
Speaker 1: So the thought was like, I mean, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: literally there. It's the narrative of every jay Z album, right,
Speaker 1: is like I invested in myself. How I did it
Speaker 1: is I sold crack, got out the game and invested
Speaker 1: in us. You know what I'm saying, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: nipsey hustle. It's like, so like you said, like you
Speaker 1: can have this media narrative of like, you know, all
Speaker 1: this is terrible. You did it on the backs of
Speaker 1: each other, which might be true, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But that being said, it's like, where else is there
Speaker 1: any other influx of capital that like that is self
Speaker 1: generated and that I don't owe. And it's like where
Speaker 1: I mean where you where you think where you think
Speaker 1: we got that from? We got it from the mafia,
Speaker 1: Like you you learn from the mafia. That's what they did,
Speaker 1: Joe said. So it's like, oh, well, that's okay, that's
Speaker 1: how you get it that way. You don't ask nobody else.
Speaker 1: You keep it in the family, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it's it's, uh, this is I mean again, the
Speaker 1: point that we're making here is that crack there are
Speaker 1: specific things and and as we'll talk about like babies
Speaker 1: with low birth wings that's a that's a part of that.
Speaker 1: There are specific problems that are just due to the
Speaker 1: inherent like characteristics of crack. But the massive increase in
Speaker 1: murders and the proportion of kids who go into foster
Speaker 1: care and large part because they've lost parents. Um, that
Speaker 1: is do the thing that has entered the community that
Speaker 1: has caused that violence is fucking cash, right, That's what
Speaker 1: when we're the Crack epidemic is a fucking yeah, cash epidemic.
Speaker 1: It's a gold rush, right, yeah, exactly. Um, so this
Speaker 1: is all sucked up, but obviously one of probably even debatably,
Speaker 1: the thing that winds up being most toxic from all
Speaker 1: of this is the moral panic that follows article. And
Speaker 1: this is where the moral panic over crack starts. There
Speaker 1: is a nineteen article in the New England Journal of
Speaker 1: Medicine which goes viral among the media of the time,
Speaker 1: which is just starting to kind of transition into the
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycles that we've got now right,
Speaker 1: we're in the early stages of that with TV media.
Speaker 1: The author of this article is a guy named Dr
Speaker 1: Ira chasten Off, and he claimed, based on a couple
Speaker 1: of cases, that children of mothers who used crack were smaller, sicker,
Speaker 1: and less social than other infants. Now, to his credit,
Speaker 1: chat Off is like, hey, we only have a few
Speaker 1: people in the study. This is very small, It is imperfect.
Speaker 1: This is I'm doing this because I think there might
Speaker 1: be a problem in this small batch study means that
Speaker 1: we should do a larger study to determine if there
Speaker 1: is a serious population wide problem, right, which is how
Speaker 1: you do science. I don't think he's doing anything wrong here.
Speaker 1: But the problem and this is again and early we
Speaker 1: start seeing this stuff. We we we've all lived through
Speaker 1: this ship the last couple of years. Right with these
Speaker 1: you get these little studies about oh iver, mecton or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's this and then suddenly that gets blown up to
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys people taking fucking fish medicine or whatever,
Speaker 1: and there's people dying and stuff. Um, this is one
Speaker 1: of the first times that happens because nobody listens to
Speaker 1: chast and Off being like, so, this is a really
Speaker 1: tiny study and we need to do more research before
Speaker 1: we draw any conclusions. They lose their fucking babies. And
Speaker 1: by the the people losing their minds are the goddamn
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, the legacy media, and I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the fucking New York Times here. As a medical writer,
Speaker 1: Harriet Washington wrote of this period in her book Medical Apartheid.
Speaker 1: Dr Chasnov's provisional research was swallowed whole, then regurgitated in
Speaker 1: a racialized form by newspaper, magazine and even medical accounts.
Speaker 1: Americans were told on the nightly news that crack exposure
Speaker 1: in the womb destroyed the unique brain functions that distinguished
Speaker 1: human beings from animals, an observation that no one had
Speaker 1: connected to the chemically identical powdered form of the drug
Speaker 1: that affluent whites were shoveling up their noses. The legal
Speaker 1: scholar Dorothy Roberts argues in her Reproductive history, Killing the
Speaker 1: Black Body, that by for focusing on maternal use of
Speaker 1: a drug associated with black people, the press promoted the
Speaker 1: notion that the monstrous crack smoking mother was typical of
Speaker 1: black women. Yeah, and uh, this is where the real
Speaker 1: herding starts. This is what actually, this is crack, gnarly drug.
Speaker 1: Lot of people get hurt because chemically what crack does.
Speaker 1: The money that comes in brings a lot of murder
Speaker 1: with it. The thing that's most devastating is right here.
Speaker 1: It comes as a result of this fucking moral path.
Speaker 1: The crack ain't the bastard of the story. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's curious. Um, yeah, it's it's adjacent to the bastard.
Speaker 1: And you know what's adjacent to behind the bastards? Politics,
Speaker 1: the wildhood politics deeply intertwined, especially this week, but also
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. So check
Speaker 1: this out and purchase things we have returned crack giveaway,
Speaker 1: all right, little Dave's pill reference. Yeah, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: of course. Um so um. I want to continue that
Speaker 1: quote from the New York Times about kind of how
Speaker 1: how this all works. Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts argues in
Speaker 1: her history Killing the Black Body that all this focus
Speaker 1: on the specific danger to black babies helped push a
Speaker 1: notion of the monstrous crack smoking weather in the media.
Speaker 1: Washington Post columnists Charles Croudhammer, famous for having never once
Speaker 1: been right, wrote a popular column in which he alleged
Speaker 1: that black women were spawning a bio underclass of impaired
Speaker 1: children whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth. Crowdhammer wrote,
Speaker 1: the dead babies maybe the lucky ones. Oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy still gets paid to right. Shit. Fucking Charles
Speaker 1: Crowdhammer again never been right in his entire life? Is it?
Speaker 1: Let me stupid? Um? Yeah? I I just again when
Speaker 1: you are when you write the words bio underclass, Yeah,
Speaker 1: come off, you should wonder Am I doing a phrenology?
Speaker 1: Have I just have I just started? Have I reinvented
Speaker 1: race science as a moral panic? Yeah? Baby, doesn't? Am
Speaker 1: I doing the thing that men in wigs did a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, like, Um, yes you are Charles Crowd,
Speaker 1: yes man, so yeah, um I yeah. Anyway, Um, all
Speaker 1: this concern over unborn babies and crack fed nicely into
Speaker 1: the Christian extremist movement that had gotten Reagan elected again.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this in our episodes on Focus on
Speaker 1: the Family, on Philish Slaflely. Um, this all feeds into
Speaker 1: each other. Right, this is all happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: You've got the religious right is a thing and they
Speaker 1: have just now because they started out. The religious right
Speaker 1: gets initially involved because they're angry that schools have been integrated.
Speaker 1: Right that Bob Jones University has been forced to take
Speaker 1: in black people because it gets federal funding. Um, you
Speaker 1: can't segregate your schools. But that's not popular. So they
Speaker 1: turned to abortion as like the real thing to hit. Um.
Speaker 1: And right as they're really getting the anti abortion movement
Speaker 1: churning up, there's all this concern overr unborn babies and crack,
Speaker 1: which which really jels great. Um, And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the Times again here. News organizations embraced far fetched
Speaker 1: ideas like the one advanced by doctors who believed they
Speaker 1: could discern babies who had been exposed in the womb
Speaker 1: by the tone of their cries. In nineteen ninety, Time
Speaker 1: magazine argued that the case for limiting the rights of
Speaker 1: women and elevating the rights of fetuses was gaining strength
Speaker 1: based on the fact that maternity wards around the country
Speaker 1: were ringing quote with the high pitched cat cries of
Speaker 1: crack babies who may face lifelong handicaps as a result
Speaker 1: of their mother's drug use. Man, there's so much sinister,
Speaker 1: Like I'm mourn like the amount of this we internalized
Speaker 1: and kind of like weaponized against each other, and just
Speaker 1: hearing it now so many years later, it was like
Speaker 1: you motherfucker, you know what I'm saying, And and the
Speaker 1: reality of like, yeah, dog, like yo, this you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing crag. Why are you pregnant? Fam you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, and like and and just but just
Speaker 1: all of that sort of together, it's just it makes
Speaker 1: it even more sinister to be like, you know, we
Speaker 1: even actually, like even among our own community, peddled somebody,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and that that that kind
Speaker 1: of hurts also, you know, yeah, yeah, um and this, so, so,
Speaker 1: this and and this New York Times article I'm quoting
Speaker 1: from is a modern one where they are kind of
Speaker 1: taking themselves in the past to task for what they did.
Speaker 1: And the New York Times is a huge It's dope.
Speaker 1: It's also like, this isn't the only time that happens
Speaker 1: in New York Times. It seems like you guys, actually
Speaker 1: often because of these fucking opinion columnist assholes that you
Speaker 1: bring on start arguing for like terrible ship that has
Speaker 1: nightmarished consequences on the world, and then twenty years later
Speaker 1: the good journals will be like, oh, turns out we
Speaker 1: had a huge fault, like like we we were largely responsible,
Speaker 1: but this nightmare. The Times amplifies what gets called the
Speaker 1: damn generation theory. Their editorial page argues in nine nine
Speaker 1: that it's going to cost more than seven million dollars
Speaker 1: to prepare twenty thousand children in the state of Florida
Speaker 1: for school because of like how damaged they were from cracked.
Speaker 1: There's zero evidence of this. That's just a lie. That's
Speaker 1: just fucking nonsense. The former executive editor of The New
Speaker 1: York Times, a guy named Abe Rosenthal, writes a column
Speaker 1: titled The Poisoned Babies, where he asks authorities to suspend
Speaker 1: parental rights for women who are addicted to crack. Um, now,
Speaker 1: there's evidence as to what happens when you do that,
Speaker 1: and it causes women who are addicted to crack and
Speaker 1: pregnant not to seek medical treatment that allows them to
Speaker 1: provide adequate care for their babies, which is what does
Speaker 1: the harm more than the crack. It is not look
Speaker 1: controversial ground here. Obviously, not good to smoke crack while
Speaker 1: you are pregnant, not good to drink while you're pregnant.
Speaker 1: There's a number of things you ought not do while
Speaker 1: you're pregnant. Also, human beings for thousands of years and
Speaker 1: many cultures drank alcohol regularly with babies, and and and
Speaker 1: those babies came out and we're fine and learned things right.
Speaker 1: Um not, it's not good. There are health consequences associated
Speaker 1: to smoking crack in the womb. The d data suggests
Speaker 1: the real harm comes from driving these women away from
Speaker 1: treatment and adequate medical care, which is what causes problems
Speaker 1: for the baby more than anything. Yeah, yeah again, I
Speaker 1: mean not good to smoke crack with the baby. Worst
Speaker 1: to do what we did. I mean, it's the same,
Speaker 1: like it's such a just a like a parallel for
Speaker 1: even immigration issues. Like if I know, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying that you know of a very minor, completely
Speaker 1: treatable thing is if I would just go to the clinic,
Speaker 1: you know, go to the the county, you know, a hospital,
Speaker 1: it'll be fine. But if there are ice agents at there,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go, you know I'm saying. And even
Speaker 1: when even when the even during the whole like sort
Speaker 1: of crackdown you know under President Trump about federal you know,
Speaker 1: that mandatory reporting to like immigration from the police, why
Speaker 1: the police was like, I'm not doing that, and they're like,
Speaker 1: and it's not like I'm patting the police on the back,
Speaker 1: but I'm just just being logical here. And they were
Speaker 1: being logical. They're like, well, then no one's gonna report
Speaker 1: anything because why would I do. So then it's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell I'm not gonna report nothing because
Speaker 1: if I do, you might deport me or think I
Speaker 1: should be deported, you know what I'm saying. So it's
Speaker 1: like that that that uh policy exacerbates the problem. Is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, is like and in and in so
Speaker 1: many other areas of culture, it's the same thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna shoot, I'm not gonna do that. I'm
Speaker 1: not telling y'all nothing, because if you do, that's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: and that and then that avoidance exacerbates the problem. I
Speaker 1: said that, right, But yeah, yeah, and that's that's where
Speaker 1: the issue comes from. It. In nineteen nine, the New
Speaker 1: York Times is coverage peaked in a front page story
Speaker 1: that warned of an onslaught that fall of the quote
Speaker 1: first big wave of children exposed to crack in the womb.
Speaker 1: The journalist who wrote that article now acknowledges it as
Speaker 1: both alarmist and unsubstantiated, which is again nice. But one
Speaker 1: of the things this does is that police, uh, police
Speaker 1: unions and whatnot and political figures start flipping out about
Speaker 1: crack babies like they're like like it's like it's an
Speaker 1: alien life form coming to the planet Earth to do
Speaker 1: us harm, and we have to ready our fucking guns
Speaker 1: to fight the invaders. Right. That is how they talk
Speaker 1: about this, And as the paper of record, it was
Speaker 1: the Times job to lead credence to these claims, so
Speaker 1: that police and political figures can how including Joseph Biden,
Speaker 1: by the way, can howl about super predators and justify
Speaker 1: harsh new mandatory minimum sentences to stop the raging danger
Speaker 1: of drug crime. As the panic reached its peak, Congress
Speaker 1: passed a bill that included the hundred to one rule.
Speaker 1: This made it mandatory to assign a ten year sentence
Speaker 1: to anyone caught with fifty grams of crack, which is
Speaker 1: about as much crack in terms of weight as you
Speaker 1: would get in a fun sized bag of chips. For comparison,
Speaker 1: someone caught with cocaine would need a full suitcase worth
Speaker 1: of high grade cocaine to qualify for the same penalty.
Speaker 1: So this is what quote unquote destroyed a generation to
Speaker 1: the extent that that actually happened. This is what does
Speaker 1: it And I'm going to read a quote from an
Speaker 1: AP right up here. An Associated Press review of federal
Speaker 1: and state incarceration data shows that between nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: and two thousand nineteen, the US prison population jumped from
Speaker 1: two hundred forty five nine to one point four three
Speaker 1: million Americans. Among them, about one in five people were
Speaker 1: incarcerated with a drug offense listed as their most serious crime.
Speaker 1: The racial disparities reveal the war is uneven toll. Following
Speaker 1: the passage of stiffer penalties for crack, cocaine, and other drugs,
Speaker 1: the black and car sor ration rate in America exploded
Speaker 1: from about six hundred per one hundred thousand people in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy to eighteen hundred and eight thousand and two
Speaker 1: thousand to eight hundred and eight thousand, sorry the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred and eight and two thousand. In the same time span,
Speaker 1: the rate for the Latino population grew from two hundred
Speaker 1: and eight per hundred thousand people to six hundred and fifteen. Well,
Speaker 1: the white incarceration rate grew from one hundred and three
Speaker 1: people per hundred thousand to two hundred and forty two.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're looking at number one, the rate at
Speaker 1: the start of this of this process, the rate of
Speaker 1: incarceration for blacks in America is six times what it
Speaker 1: is for Americans, and then it triples. Yeah, it's so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, like for the listeners sake, like let's let
Speaker 1: me go back to the hundred to one ratio in
Speaker 1: in that Like, so, what we're saying is one ounce
Speaker 1: of crack gets the same amount of jail time as
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds of cocaine. Like, so one ounce of
Speaker 1: crack same amount of jail time as a hundred So
Speaker 1: if you ask, so, if you so, just, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, guys, put your thinking caps on. You've got
Speaker 1: a one ounce of crack versus a hundred ounces, Okay,
Speaker 1: which one of y'all you think is gonna distribute the stuff?
Speaker 1: Who you thinks the sales person? Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying versus just the user? Like I you're telling
Speaker 1: me we get the same jail time? Do you know
Speaker 1: much money you have to have to have a hundred
Speaker 1: ounces of cocaine? Like yeah, So just like like hear
Speaker 1: how sinister and purposeful? This is like we're not making
Speaker 1: this ship up like this is it. It's not a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: These are laws. Part of the reason why because this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that's happening here is we've
Speaker 1: talked about in our Bill Cooper episodes, is that a
Speaker 1: lot of the black community and this some of this
Speaker 1: happens through hip hop, is embracing a set of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that more. But part of why
Speaker 1: they're doing it, because we talk there's some stuff in there.
Speaker 1: There's some especially the Bill Cooper stuff that gets adopted
Speaker 1: by hip hop that's not at all accurate. But part
Speaker 1: of why people would believe in conspiracies is that you
Speaker 1: could not seek to damage a community more than they
Speaker 1: then happens here, right, Like this, it's surgically targeted to
Speaker 1: hurt black communities, Black inner city communities. Like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like somebody dropped a bomb. Yeah. And when these
Speaker 1: laws are yeah, and you're saying, like, am I taking crazy?
Speaker 1: Feels I feel like we're being targeted, Like no, you're not.
Speaker 1: You're just not listen, you're five five, You just you
Speaker 1: don't have any fathers in your home, you know what?
Speaker 1: You just you're just like no. I feel like, well, no,
Speaker 1: you guys are just violent. Look, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what's happening. You guys die more than us, isn't. You're
Speaker 1: in a jail more like yeah, but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: tell you family, like it just don't feel to say.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's like, well, there's got to be
Speaker 1: something going on here. Yeah. And it's worth noting too
Speaker 1: that this surge and arrests that we've just talked about,
Speaker 1: there is no increase in addiction treatment resources and these
Speaker 1: communities that follows the surgeon arrests. Zero I found an
Speaker 1: article in the Chicago Booth Review that analyzed a recent
Speaker 1: study measuring the impact of crack cocaine by University of
Speaker 1: Chicago professor Stephen Levitt and a bunch of other smart
Speaker 1: college guys and attempted to determine what actual harms could
Speaker 1: be laid at the feet of crack as opposed to
Speaker 1: things like the legal climate around it. They concluded, quote,
Speaker 1: the destructive effects of crack cocaine were because of the
Speaker 1: prohibition itself rather than the usage. If crack were legal,
Speaker 1: the authors argue, there would not have been as much violence.
Speaker 1: Levitt himself added, all the evidence suggests that the violence
Speaker 1: is closely tied to the fact that the suppliers of
Speaker 1: crack the gangs were killing each other because they could
Speaker 1: make huge profits. Suppliers were competing. It seems that the
Speaker 1: consumption effects of crack weren't that bad in comparison to
Speaker 1: the one and therefore, while the effective crack is not negligible,
Speaker 1: it is not as large as some of the doomsayers
Speaker 1: of claim damn it is not. The problem was not crack.
Speaker 1: If people if if all drugs had been legal, right,
Speaker 1: if we've never had a prohibition culture. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one an entrepreneur, some Mark Zuckerberg type right in
Speaker 1: Oakland had been like, I've invent to crack and you
Speaker 1: know has his Apple type announcement for crack cocaine. There's
Speaker 1: some lives that will be negatively effective, right, some some
Speaker 1: families will be harmed it. It's not good. Crack is
Speaker 1: Again I'm not a prohibitionist, but it's a gnarly drug.
Speaker 1: It's not good for you to do. But what you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have is any of this ship. You would have
Speaker 1: some specific people that have problems with it, and some
Speaker 1: like specific areas probably where it's more common than others,
Speaker 1: and there would be some gnarly ship as a result
Speaker 1: of that, But you don't have neighborhoods destroy I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that again. The laura around here is that
Speaker 1: like crack, there's there's there's the cribs before crack, and
Speaker 1: there's the crib after, you know, and the pre Like
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the in the when we
Speaker 1: first met in the Black Panther episode of Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like they're just the children. PRIs for the children of
Speaker 1: the of the panthers, you know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 1: knuckling up, you know, fist fights, rolf rolf housing protecting
Speaker 1: their turf. It crack has brought the guns. Yeah and
Speaker 1: uh and yeah. So like you saying that like is
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's a big that that's that's so important
Speaker 1: to to understand that nuance and it's I have to
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize here like we had in this
Speaker 1: might be a good way to explain it. A bunch
Speaker 1: of because of the mix of this suddenly, this social
Speaker 1: justice movement inspired by the murder of George Floyd is
Speaker 1: is everywhere as huge. There's protests. There's also a lot
Speaker 1: of need as a result of the pandemic as a
Speaker 1: result of issues relating from the protests, and you get
Speaker 1: a bunch of different community organization in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different states raising huge amounts of money through crowdfunding, right,
Speaker 1: and there's a shiploaded drama that comes from that and
Speaker 1: a drop we're talking drama because a hundred grand came
Speaker 1: in suddenly, and so people who have never seen that
Speaker 1: much money in their lives had a plan for it. Originally,
Speaker 1: and then ship gets gnarly between people, because that's what
Speaker 1: happens when you introduce a bunch of money suddenly, right
Speaker 1: with crack, you're talking about suddenly groups like the Crips
Speaker 1: and the Bloods, who were very different organizations prior to
Speaker 1: crack looking at million dollars that you can put down
Speaker 1: in a few yes, right, like you can make that
Speaker 1: money fucking quimmediately. Yeah, of course, of course people get murdered, right, Um, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's no other way for that to have gone. Now,
Speaker 1: what's most interesting about the crack epidemic to me is
Speaker 1: what stopped it. After nine the link between crack and
Speaker 1: adverse social outcomes for Black Americans disappears statistically. The only
Speaker 1: exception is the homicide rate for black men aged eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty four, which remains is elevated because now a
Speaker 1: bunch of different groups, the Crypts and the Bloods and
Speaker 1: other groups like that, have gotten used to selling drugs
Speaker 1: for money and making that a very gnarly business, right,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, people keep murdering each other. Um, But
Speaker 1: the other stuff we've talked about, including like infant birth
Speaker 1: weight and stuff that goes away crack use in terms
Speaker 1: of overall quantity remained stable, so the number of people
Speaker 1: the amount of crack consumed does not decline after but
Speaker 1: the negative effects due to it on a societal basis
Speaker 1: among the black community stop. And what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: because this is because the there's no expansion in the
Speaker 1: number of people smoking crack, what researchers find is that
Speaker 1: people who had been smoking crack don't stop right, they
Speaker 1: continue to smoke um, but new users stop doing the drug.
Speaker 1: So the people who are already addicted stay addicted because
Speaker 1: it is crack cocaine and it's very addicted addictive. But
Speaker 1: after new people don't really start in insignificant population amounts.
Speaker 1: New people are not coming into the ranks of people
Speaker 1: using this drug. The reason that the overall amount consumed
Speaker 1: remains stable is that there's a breakthrough in crack manufacturing,
Speaker 1: which makes the price plummet, so users are able to
Speaker 1: afford more, and thus the total amount consumed is stable,
Speaker 1: but the amount of new people who are doing crack
Speaker 1: stops expanding. Levitt points out that the expansion of crack
Speaker 1: in the black community is halted not due to arrests
Speaker 1: or to fearmongering, but from social learning, Yes, what happens
Speaker 1: is the first generation of people who got addicted. It's bad.
Speaker 1: It's really bad for them. And yeah they're younger siblings,
Speaker 1: their cousins, their kids see this and are like, wow,
Speaker 1: it seems like I shouldn't do crack. I am because
Speaker 1: that's what I was explaining before. I am the product
Speaker 1: of that where I was like, oh, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we should do that. And like I said,
Speaker 1: like hip hop got together and was like what songs
Speaker 1: like self destruction and like making sure we made using
Speaker 1: hip hop. We I wasn't. I was five years old,
Speaker 1: but hip hop made using crack not cool in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, you know what I mean. And that's yeah, um,
Speaker 1: that's that's what happens, right, And so you get you know,
Speaker 1: the suddenly the you know, the crack baby panic goes
Speaker 1: away because it was never really real. Um, and because
Speaker 1: the age of crack users goes steadily up. Right, the
Speaker 1: same amount of people are smoking, but they're they're not
Speaker 1: having kids anymore because they're older. As profitability drops on
Speaker 1: a per head basis, violent crime around crack fell as well.
Speaker 1: It simply was not worth killing for the dollar amount
Speaker 1: of crack that people were likely to have on them, Right,
Speaker 1: the same amount is worth ten dollars instead of two
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. Well, maybe it's not worth throwing down here,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And so in spite of everything the
Speaker 1: government had actually done, the problem got better in part
Speaker 1: because crack got cheaper and more available. Right. That is
Speaker 1: for the people who are like, if all of this
Speaker 1: stuff did and legal from the start, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had a problem. That's strong evidence, right then, like crack
Speaker 1: gets cheaper and the crack epidemic gets less bad. That's
Speaker 1: not the only thing. Again, a lot of this, as
Speaker 1: you said, is cultural. It's it's the it's the community
Speaker 1: taking agency. It's people talking to each other, it's people
Speaker 1: making wise decisions in their own self interest, and it's
Speaker 1: people trying to talk to their fellows to get them
Speaker 1: to stay away from this stuff that's pretty bad for you. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things. Everything gets better in
Speaker 1: spite of the government, which if Ronald Reagan was a
Speaker 1: guy who actually meant anything that he said, right, Because
Speaker 1: he's the guy who's like, I'm the scariest words in
Speaker 1: the English language, or I'm from the government, and I'm
Speaker 1: there to help. If you're actually believe in anything as
Speaker 1: a conservative, this is a perfect example of things. Right. Oh,
Speaker 1: the government just made this worse. Yeah, exactly, Like here's
Speaker 1: your proof. Yeah. Actually, the free and the free market
Speaker 1: did kind of solve this one credit where it's dude,
Speaker 1: this is a um. So. The crack epidemic is well
Speaker 1: past sight by, but it remained a common subject in
Speaker 1: the news and part of the repeated attempts by guys
Speaker 1: like Joseph Robinett Biden to expand the prison industrial complex.
Speaker 1: Black inner city communities were well in recovery by this point,
Speaker 1: but cracked was a fat crack. Sorry, was a fact
Speaker 1: of life now, as were the tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: young black men serving decades of time for possession. And
Speaker 1: it was into this climate in the August of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six that A and again ninety is right. When
Speaker 1: the crack Evanica is cooling off, things are starting to
Speaker 1: get better. The black community is starting to breathe a
Speaker 1: little bit right. Um August of nineteen ninety six, a
Speaker 1: young journalist named Gary Webb publishes a massive three part
Speaker 1: investigation under the title Dark Alliance, The story behind the
Speaker 1: crack explosion. Now his employer is the San Jose Mercury,
Speaker 1: which is a scrappy new upstart paper. They had only
Speaker 1: a fraction of the budget of the l A Times,
Speaker 1: which is like the fucking New York Times for southern California. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a big It is a national level outlet, even
Speaker 1: though it's called the l A Times. Um. But obviously
Speaker 1: you know, they've got only a little bit of the
Speaker 1: l A Times this budget, and they've got none of
Speaker 1: the cache. But what they do have is a working
Speaker 1: understanding of this thing that's probably going to be a
Speaker 1: big deal in the future called the Internet. Right, San
Speaker 1: Jose Mercury figures out that the Internet is where journalism
Speaker 1: can go viral, and there maybe you could argue the
Speaker 1: very first outlet whoever figures this out in a meaningful way,
Speaker 1: Matt Drudge, is kind of right around the same time
Speaker 1: and gets a lot of this. He's a piece of ship,
Speaker 1: but he has kind of along those lines. Um. But
Speaker 1: the San Jose Mercury publishes this whole investigation Dark Alliance
Speaker 1: simultaneously online and in print, which is again kind of
Speaker 1: the first time this has been done for a big investigation.
Speaker 1: This right, up from the Columbia Journalism Reviews, Peter Cornblue
Speaker 1: summarizes what happens. The long three part series covered the
Speaker 1: lives and connections of three career criminals. Freeway Ricky Ross
Speaker 1: perhaps l A is most renowned crack dealer in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, Oscar Danilo Blanden rays a right wing Nicaraguan
Speaker 1: X pay treat described by one US Assistant district attorney
Speaker 1: as the biggest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States.
Speaker 1: And Juan Norvin Norvin in some documents Menenzez Cantarero, a
Speaker 1: friend of the fallen dictator Anastasia Samosa, who allegedly brought
Speaker 1: Blandon into the drug business to support the contrast and
Speaker 1: supplied him for an uncertain amount of time with significant
Speaker 1: quantities of cocaine. The first installment of the series, headlined
Speaker 1: Crack Plagues Roots are in Nicaraguan War, opened with two
Speaker 1: dramatic statements and this is quoting from the original article.
Speaker 1: Now for the better part of a decade of San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay Area drug ring so sold tons of cocaine
Speaker 1: to the crips and blood street gangs of Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and funneled millions and drug profits to a Latin American
Speaker 1: guerilla army run by the Central Intelligence Agency. The second paragraph,
Speaker 1: which captured even more public attention, read, this drug network
Speaker 1: opened the first pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartels and the
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as
Speaker 1: the crack capital of the world. There it is so.
Speaker 1: If you have ever heard, either in a conversation or
Speaker 1: most recently in a prominent TV show The Boys, the
Speaker 1: claim that the CIA introduced crack to the inner cities,
Speaker 1: this is the origin point. This is one percent where
Speaker 1: that comes from. You made it. It all comes out
Speaker 1: of this article, right, because this article is the first
Speaker 1: time that you have someone saying in a very condensed,
Speaker 1: clear form, the CIA brought crack to the inner city
Speaker 1: by in order to fund the contrast. Right, that is
Speaker 1: that is the way this is. Now, that's actually not
Speaker 1: what the article says, because the CIA is not bringing
Speaker 1: crack anywhere. What the CIA is doing is allowing Nicaragua
Speaker 1: drug dealers to bring cocaine into the United States so
Speaker 1: that they can sell it to fund to right wing
Speaker 1: paramilitary in Nicaragua. That cocaine is then being turned into crack,
Speaker 1: because that's happening at the same time. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the claims Web made in his article are a bit
Speaker 1: different from the version of the story that spreads kind
Speaker 1: of viral. What he provides as evidence to support the
Speaker 1: assertion that quote a cocaine for weapons trade supported US
Speaker 1: policy and undermined Black America. Now, while the article did
Speaker 1: not show, the articles did not show any direct stated
Speaker 1: intention of the CIA to spark a crack epidemic, it
Speaker 1: did lay out how the agency supported cocaine smugglers in
Speaker 1: order to fund the contrast, We're gonna talk that in
Speaker 1: a minute. But the third article doesn't touch on the
Speaker 1: CIA at all. It covers what we've just talked about
Speaker 1: in terms of sentencing discrepancies between black and white people
Speaker 1: for cocaine trafficking and how that harms the community. Webb
Speaker 1: pointed out that Ross, who was black, received a life
Speaker 1: sentence without parole. Blandon, a Nicaraguan man, had smuggled cocaine,
Speaker 1: and whereas Ross had sold crack, and Blandon serves just
Speaker 1: two years and then gets a bunch of money from
Speaker 1: the FEDS to be an informant. Um. So the primary gotcha.
Speaker 1: The story had was that it connected the two right
Speaker 1: wing dealer not Nicaraguan's, to the f d in freedom
Speaker 1: fighters and showed that they somewhat inexplicably had escaped a
Speaker 1: prosecution for a weird number of crimes. And this is
Speaker 1: the point at which I think we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: bring things to a close for the day, because we've
Speaker 1: got we'll be talking about in part two, Nicaragua, the contras,
Speaker 1: all of this, how the actual crack and coke, well,
Speaker 1: the cocaine tread because again, this is if you want
Speaker 1: to it's one of those things where, like the the
Speaker 1: inaccurate version of the story is the CIA brought crack
Speaker 1: to the inner cities. The act perfectly accurate version is
Speaker 1: the CIA allowed uh cocaine to be trafficked in mass
Speaker 1: into southern California, which was then turned into crack and
Speaker 1: that's what caused the crack epidemic. And then the other
Speaker 1: accurate for all and then the stuff we talked about
Speaker 1: in my episodes. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where if you don't understand it, you might just say
Speaker 1: the CIA smuggled crack into the inner city. If you
Speaker 1: really understand it, the summary is still the CIA brought
Speaker 1: crack in the inter city. It's just a little more
Speaker 1: detailed that. Yeah, there's a few more steps in between,
Speaker 1: but the CIA did this. Yeah, yeah, the CIA is
Speaker 1: a bit well. But also, I mean, and here's the thing.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I do think is frustrating,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna we're about to talk in part two
Speaker 1: all about the CIA and some other groups, is yeah,
Speaker 1: the CIA has got a lot of blame for this.
Speaker 1: But um, where I'm standing not more than the New
Speaker 1: York Times, Right, That's that's where I'm fucking standing here
Speaker 1: and not and not more than Congress when the people
Speaker 1: passing these laws. Right, Um, that's where I'm fucking standing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's what it looks like to make oh, y'all multiple bastards. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I don't love it, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the crack epidemic. In brief, Um, prop you've got
Speaker 1: anything to plug here, maybe hood politics, the show that
Speaker 1: we're doing, yeah, this on partnership with this way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is definitely like a you know, a
Speaker 1: little a newbie thing where we're doing like, you know,
Speaker 1: a collaboration on this where uh, this story takes place
Speaker 1: in the context of the stories that we're talking about
Speaker 1: on the