What happened to crack?

[Fountain79]

Has anybody noticed Crack does not get the same press-time that it used to? Now it is barely mentioned except with the occasional reference to Whitney Houston. Perhaps this is because I live in Missouri where meth has become a much larger problem. Has the problem of crack been reduced to the point that it isn't as big of concern or have we merely grown used to it and therefore it does not get the same press coverage?

[LoKnLoD]

1. Crack is so 1990's...

I think Meth is more of an issue now, it's cheaper than cocaine and doesn't have to be smuggled into the US.

[psychopomp]

27. Crack is still an issue if you live where people use it

People are still smoking crack, but I think the OP answered the question already. The media has moved on, not the problem. Probably because the stereotype of the ghetto crack-fueled raging black man or the welfare-check-cashing black crack mother has been so ingrained in the minds of the white public that it has become a cliche. The media worked this characterization of poor black people so long that most probably take it for granted and have lost interest.

[junkiebrewster]

40. actually....

80% of the meth in America is smuggled in from Mexico. Bathtub labs do not produce enough of the drug to be very profitable.

[meganmonkey]

2. Combination of the 2, probably. Meth is huge everywhere now

so it gets a lot of press. But I think crack is still a problem.

And thanks to our glorious leaders, it seesms to me they are cracking down more on potheads and other undesirables rather than the actual drugs that people hurt themselves with, and hurt other people for...

:shrug:

[Tripper11]

3. It turned into METH.....

...not literally, but Meth is the new fast acting destruction drug of choice now.
All kinds of stores are scrambling to get all various cold meds off their shelves because it's the main ingredient in an apparently simple process to get your ass seriously messed up.
Crack is still there, believe me, I work in a newsroom and listen to scanners all day and hear cops called to people smoking crack all the time.
But currently, meth is the drug du jour

[Fountain79]

5. From What I keep hearing

Missouri is one of the larger producers of Meth. WE'RE NUMBER #1! :sarcasm:

[Cult]

51. I hear that about El Cajon as well

Right by where I live. During my stint in jail for a DUI, there were so, so many speed freaks in there....It was terrifying. People were making a jail meth out of Sudafed and other random items they scrounged....God I hate speed freaks.

[ret5hd]

4. As soon as it became evident that the problem was remaining predominately

confined to Blacks, the media and gov't decided they needed a bigger Bugaboo to keep the white middle class afraid.

[Skink]

6. All the crack babies are crack teenagers now.

[ret5hd]

10. i've read some pretty good studies...

(i am sorry, i do not have a link...it was a few years ago. i will google and report later)

that claim that the "crack baby" syndrome was all bogus...no statistical difference developmentally between them and their peers.

Now, fetal alcohol syndrome is a completely different matter, well defined and studied. In fact, the latest study on fetal alcohol syndrome consists of finding out what happens when you put an afflicted person in high office...such as president.

[ryan_cats]

26. Great point

I'm related to a neo-natal (is that the right term?) who says that Fetal alcohol syndrome is the single worse thing there is. Far worse than crack. I found that hard to believe but she knows her stuff.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

59. Neonatologist. Both can be very very bad. I've seen crack babies

where the majority of their brain was just missing... because the cocaine causes blood vessels to constrict during critical development, depending on the stage, and the artery involved, terrible results like this can occur, at least as bad as most fetal alcohol babies. But those are bad too.

[readmoreoften]

38. it's anecdotal, but...

I know a few former 'crack babies' who range from 7-15 and they're all really bright. Well, one was a 'coke baby'. Her mother was shooting cocaine. (Like there's much of a difference.)

[Tripper11]

7. Sadly, your statement is dead on.

Meth users from what I have seen, have predominently been white, most likley from middle to upper class families.
Hence, the huge media blitz to stop a bad problem.

[MountainLaurel]

36. You've got it

I once worked on a federal task force on methamphetamine in the mid-90s. It was pretty obvious that much of the concern stemmed from the fact that this drug was mainly used by middle-class people in the "Heartland." In one of the meetings, one of the folks from NIDA was asked why, if the indicators regarding meth are now raising so much consternation from the government, why were the same data ignored 10 years before when they showed that crack was becoming a huge problem. The NIDA guy stammered some response about not working for the agency back then.

[LiberalArkie]

8. The poor can not afford crack anymore.

That is why the cheaper meth is everywhere. The areas where you see that meth is the primary drug, you will also see a lot of poor people.

[Dez]

12. Meth was created

in Drug War times. If there was no drug war, people wouldn't DO crap like meth, they'd buy legal cocaine, and maybe Coca-Cola will once again have Coca in it! Wouldn't that be a hoot!

America will once again be a drug-friendly country.. and people could grow their own medicine, wihtout fear of arrest, or seizure. Those will be good times, when the time finally comes. We just have to let our politicians we are sick and tired of this war on drug users.

[pitohui]

15. meth is not crap

if speed was legal, it would not be crap or garbage and ppl would certainly take it, as jfk did, as many world leaders did

the only reason today's meth is bad is because the good precursors that allow even dumb-asses to make good clean speed has been removed from the legal market

ppl are creative, ppl continue to study chemistry, & they end up having to develop new pathways to create their product, such as using crap like brake fluid

but you can have pharma grade meth that is NOT garbage & if it were available ppl would certainly use it

i don't know how far back you think the Drug War goes, but i understand Nixon declared the War on Drugs...methamphetamine was invented in the 1930s

your time line is wrong

just making stuff up on the spot is prob. not the way to convince our leaders we know what we're talking abt

[OldLeftieLawyer]

17. Diet pills in the fifties

Doctors prescribed them for women all the time. My mother's friends all had sparkling clean houses because they friggin' CLEANED THEM DAY AND NIGHT! They were skinny, they chain-smoked cigarettes, and they were wired out of their skulls on these perfectly legal drugs that their good doctors gave them.

The fifties. Things were so nice back then, weren't they?

[SlavesandBulldozers]

20. yes, I've read that the

use of meth was pretty much ubiquitous back in the day.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

61. Met Life: Speed kills

[pitohui]

56. oh god yes, those were the days

bring back my dexies!!!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

58. Used by fighter pilots.

* edit to change flakey URL.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

60. From the sixties slogan was "Speed kills"

[MountainLaurel]

35. Actually, it predates the drug war

Meth was created by the Nazis as a tool, once its armies were being decimated, to keep soldiers functioning without sleep. It moved into the U.S. after the war and was mainly used in industries such as truck driving, where keeping workers moving awake beyond typical limits is desired. ("Fast Food Nation" discusses the use of meth in the meatpacking industry.) It wasn't until the 60s that meth was used more widespread in the general population, and then use was mainly restricted to the Southwest and to Hawaii.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Crank and Afghan heroin replaced it n/t

[leveymg]

11. Starbucks

Just as addictive, better aroma.

[Dez]

13. cannabis

"better aroma."

That's debateable ;-) :smoke:

[Zynx]

18. Marijuana smoke is nasty as hell.

I've never done drugs and never will, but I have talked to enough pot heads to know that they smell BAD after smoking pot.

[ret5hd]

30. heck, i smell bad after a hard day at work...

do ya' think there's a way we can get THAT made illegal?

[Blue_In_AK]

32. Some people LIKE that smell

...just sayin'. It's kind of like patchouli -- some people hate it, others love it. I'm in the "love it" camp, myself.

[Zynx]

37. I personally get a headache around that smell.

The same goes for cigarette smoke.

[Blue_In_AK]

48. Each person's biochemistry is different.

One man's poison is another man's nectar of the gods. Peace.

[HeeBGBz]

63. I love that smell

Both the smoked and the unsmoked.

[Bravo411]

43. I'd rather smell burnt weed than burnt coffee.

Starbucks SUCKS. They over roast their beans and make a shitload of money off of people who don't know how a good cup of coffee is suppose tastes.

[pitohui]

14. it's still around just as meth has always been around

good lord, meth was invented in the 30s, you know, i remember it quite well from the 70s

we have to have one special drug to hate on at any given time, that's all

if i was still into the stimulants, i would still prefer meth, because it lasts longer than crack, but to each her own


addiction is sad but most ppl don't get addicted of course so the focus of the hysteria has to shift around every few yrs as ppl figure out all the shouting is not helping anything & just causing the addicts to have a more difficult time getting help

[Dez]

16. The Drug War persecutes

drug users. That's the goal of it, to lock up every single drug user. It is evil. It's everyone's responsibility to lobby against it.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

19. How come

we're always declaring "war" on something, and we never seem to win?

War on poverty.

War on drugs.

War on terror.

Oh, wait. We're winning that last one, right?

Maybe if we just declared "peace," and quit criminalizing shit that's bad only because it's illegal, made it all legal and regulated, we'd be in much better shape.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

22. war is the quickest, easiest way

to reign in freedom. And the sheep willingly give freedom up, bleating new slogans all the way.

I know you know that, btw. Just sayin.

[stlsaxman]

23. But how else would we be able to throw massive amounts of money

into the Pri$on Industries! If prison were only for violent crimes and corporate thievery, we would have three times the prisons built than we currently need...

"Fill them cells, people!"

Besides, we need a place to house the non-productive poor...

[raccoon]

28. And to disenfranchise as many of the underclass as possible. nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

73. Hitler was a speed freak.

His doctor shot him full of the stuff. http://amphetamines.com/adolf-hitler.html

[RandomKoolzip]

21. Meth is more a problem in less urban areas.

The media has given up on poor urban areas completely; it's not just them ignoring the Crack issue, but them ignoring the AIDS issue, the homelessness issue, the lack of healthcare issue, joblessness, etc.

Back in the 80's and 90's I used to see reports on this stuff almost weekly on the nightly news and it seemed like there was a consensus that there was a problem. Now that the MSM has been taken over by conservatives, these issues get less and less airtime and newspaper space, and it's not a coincidence.

Katrina helped flash a temporary spotlight on the problems, but the powers that be will be damned to allow that to happen again.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

24. excellent post

and i remember the same thing in the 80/90's. there did seem to be some semblence of media attention on poverty - and I'm not claiming that it was all pure, certainly much was exploitational.

[Toots]

25. Well Danial Ortega was overthrown and the Contra war ended

After that the CIA just didn't bring in as much cocaine. What they did bring in was kept pure and distributed to the elites like Bush*. Crack cocaine is pure garbage, a real poor mans free base. Just coke cut with baking soda like 6 to 1. We should be starting a covert war against Venesuela any time now so Cheap drugs should be back on the market soon. How else do they fund their dirty little wars?

[nonconformist]

29. I was on a jury on wednesday - trafficking crack cocaine

I was a little surprised that the substance was crack, frankly. I know we have issues with meth, cocaine (of the powder variety), weed (IMO, weed is not an "issue") and the most high-profile problem around here... oxycontin. So I was surprised to hear that crack is making a "comeback" of sorts.

[pitohui]

53. a come back?

crack never went away except to the short attention span of the media

i don't think it will ever go away, an addict can substitute crack for meth or vice versa but there will always be a call for illegal stimulants that do what they do

[nonconformist]

72. Yes, in MY area, a comeback.

It's been pushed aside by other things since the late 80's. :eyes:

[AGiordino]

31. Around Here (Central Texas)

It moved up into the white middle class as an addiction ergo you don't hear about it that much anymore because it is affecting the people in the mainstream not the people whom the mainstream can look down upon as "unfortunate" and feel superior.

[catmandu57]

33. Even meth is getting passe now

There is always a new and scarier drug around the corner, something that will grab our attention and sell sell sell. Reefer madness, glue sniffing, bennies, goofballs, lsd, tranxs, cocaine, crack, meth.
What is coming over the horizon?

[U4ikLefty]

34. Have you seen the "low-rider" pants...a lot of around crack lately!!!

;)

[Nikia]

39. I've seen a couple of crack stories lately

Most are local and have to do with local drug arrests.

[Lochloosa]

41. And don't forget...there are not any "old crack heads"...you die from the

stuff...there are old herion heads...and my proof...

[Mnemosyne]

44. I was expecting Keith! lol n/t

[junkiebrewster]

47. Keef....

I don't think Mick was ever too fond of smack. Keef on the other hand...

[pitohui]

54. there are old crack heads

i could post a few pix of some friends but that would be mean

they're out there, tho

i'm thinking of one lady who is so miserable & such a trouble to everyone around her that we keep hoping she will die -- isn't that a terrible thing to say abt a friend? -- but it's true

she won't die

she just goes yr after yr, decade after decade, and she does NOT die

hey, they promised us these damn crackheads would die

not fair, not fair

<if you're not even sure you're being sarcastic, what's the smiley for that>

you are right abt heroin tho, look how old williams burroughs got to

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Survey Says: "The CIA found other sources of income" n/t

[MisterP]

45. the DEA actually said they'd focus almost all on pot and neglect

cocaine and meth

[TroubleMan]

46. Well considering the origin of crack lies in the Iran/Contra scandal and

now the media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the repugs....they're not going to bring up crack, because it reflects poorly on Reagan and bush. This media wants to prop up bush. Bringing up crack reminds people of the shenanigans of the old neocons, that they're trying to get people to forget.

Crack is an oppressive drug that can control a population and keep them wallowing in poverty. This administration likes that kind of shit, so they'll focus on porn and pot (which are relatively harmless vices). Where the repugs go...the media follows.

[Cult]

49. My uncle smoked it all.

Actually, the big thing where I live is Meth. God, I hate meth. I hate tweekers as well.

[Gregorian]

50. Ahem. This just in.

"If they are not launching themselves at you in drug-fuelled desperation, their bloodshot eyes are searching for their next fix, pink paws scrabbling in the ground. "

"Squirrels in south London could have become addicted to crack cocaine..."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1587694,00.html

[pitohui]

55. god bless the brits

i love how they drop in the weird animal & bird tall tales into the news & never blink an eye

that british humor

remember the assassin dolphins released by katrina?

it's sick but it's funny in such a weird way you can't even be mad because everyone's in on the joke

well, everyone except the 673 DUers who posted the assassin dolphin story straight-faced!

[Gregorian]

67. Humor requires intelligence.

I say that because I can appreciate humor, but am unable to create it to my satisfaction. I mean, I'm stupid. I pride myself in having a very open mind. Dark humor is fine with me. But the dolphin thing, I find pretty upsetting. The squirrels, on the other hand... It's there own damned fault. That's it! Noone forced them to take the crack. Haha.
I'll remember from now on to not take things so seriously. With exception to the president. :)

[JVS]

52. Crack has become socially acceptable.

[bridgit]

57. bwahaha, it's crackle-icious...

x(

[Taxloss]

62. It is a horrible, horrible problem in Britain.

As it happens I am literally right now putting the finishing touches to a 3000-word article about hard drug use among London's homeless people.

On edit: And squirrels.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

64. OK,

either you're putting the finishing touches and some squirrels on a 3000-word article about hard drug use among London's homeless, or you're putting the finishing touches on a 3000-word article about hard drug use among London's homeless and squirrels.

In either instance, I would love to know more, please.

[Taxloss]

65. I plan to staple a few squirrels to the finished article.

It adds that touch of gravitas.

Seriously, though, squirrels do not appear in the article. I was referring to this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1587694,00.html

[Maestro]

66. Here is one of those squirrels protecting the stash

[Taxloss]

68. Sadly, this story had an all-too-familiar ending.

[Maestro]

70. Bwhahahahaha!

:rofl:

[OldLeftieLawyer]

71. "... freebasing fiends ..."

That's hilarious.

Shades of alligators in the NYC subway.

I always make sure to attach a small rodent to mss I send to my agent. I understand Hemingway did it, too.

Great minds, and all that.

Thanks............. <wink>

[kineneb]

69. never much of an issue in rural areas

meth has been the hard drug of choice for years in rural CA. The Hells Angels were cooking up the stuff in the San Joaquin Valley in the 60s and 70s. It is a problem in most rural counties now.