How Crack Works

by the Bell is what's wrong with No? I know that I know what that show is, but I've never heard of the Zach Attack. It's just Zach being Zach. Gotcha? That is whack? Yeah, well, never mind. I thought Crack was whack, but the Zach Attack is truly wack. No, I disagree. I was gonna say, no, it's not right, because that's actually a pretty good show. But okay, Crack his whack. This we're like imminent up in here. We're what we're like eminem up in here. Yeah, I guess,

so refer to Hip Hop episode now. No, I'm just saying people that they're confused about why we sound so stilted and square. Just go listen to hip hop and that explains everything. People like that one. Surprisingly, Yeah, it's a good one. Man. We got a good email from me or a Facebook post from a graffiti artist. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. I can't remember his tag, but it was like really nice. But he was complimenting us or he was just saying hey. No, he's like, hey, I'm a

graffiti artist and here's my my work. And uh, I was very impressed. And he is not on crack, no, because he's not whack right exactly, So Chuck, I have a little, uh, a little intro. Great, just if you'll bear with me. And the year was okay, I was fourteen. Okay, what is it when you p b g very early on UM cocaine, which is a drug that had been sweeping the nation for about ten years by then. Yeah, uh was up to a hundred and fifty dollars a graham.

That's thanks to the demand um and the available income of its well healed yuppie users who are willing to spend that kind of money on it. It's very much an expensive, white, upwardly mobile person's drug. Cocaine run. Yeah, and there were at the time articles that kind of said, cocaine's probably not that addictive. We shouldn't worry that much about cocaine. It's not a very big deal. It was mostly, like I said, a white drug. That same year, a

new drug hit the scene. It was cheap, five to ten bucks pop. It gave you a very quick, very intense high, short lived, and it swept through lower income African American areas of the United States, and all of a sudden we had a problem, an epidemic. Yes, because it was cocaine in a different form. Yeah, the country

went crazy for it. And not only was it cocaine in a different form, it was cocaine being used by a different demographic that, as we'll see, America has always been threatened by and always made legislation to damp and drug use among Yeah, it's pretty interesting when you dig into this stuff. And so when people started to get worried, Nancy Reagan became concerned. And when Nancy Reagan became concerned,

as as usual, she started to lie. And we will we will get into what allegedly might have happened and why crack might have been introduced in this country because some people think it was the U. S. Government straight up c I A. Yeah, that's a really um good point. So what you're referring to is UM Garry Webb's Dark Alliance article. Yeah, series of articles in our book from

I believe. Garry Webb was an investigative journalist for the San Jose Mercury News, and Um, they had a front page story where he basically figured out the connection between the CIA and the crack epidemic that started in I think in Los Angeles south central. It was a dude named Freeway Ricky Ross, who's still around I think, yeah. Um, And he was the largest cocaine distributor UH African American cocaine distributor in l A. He was big time, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he had a

new product called crack and it became very popular, very quickly. UM, and Gary Webb in trace the origin of this epidemic back to through Ricky Ross, back to some Nicaraguan freedom fighting guerrillas that were backed and trained and possibly commanded by the CIA. We're getting into this, so we just go ahead and dive in. Yeah, do you want to? Yeah? Why not? Um? All right, here's the deal. In Nicaragua,

Central American country. UM, in the nineteen thirties, man named Anastasio uh Samosa took power, and then about forty years later, in nineteen seventy nine, the people revolted, um overthrew him, and they were called the Sandinistas. Yes, so you know the whole Contra Sandinista war in Nicaragua that raged in

the seventies and eighties, that's what we're talking about. And the Sandinista's um, we're a communist and that didn't fly so well with the US, who would long cherished Nicaragua for their farmland and like to have a toe in their pond, so to speak. And so communists and there didn't fly. And so they said, you know what, I think maybe we should fund the contrast maybe give them a little bit of financial assistance. Yeah, And the contrasts

weren't just one group. They were it was like an umbrella term for any democratic or um an anti communist group that was trying to paramilitarily overthrow the socialist leadership in Nicaragua. That's right. So we decided to help fund their civil war. And UM, the problem was that there wasn't a lot of dough like that we could say, like, hey, let's use this money to do this. Because it was a secret war. There was no congressional approval. It was a proxy war with the Soviet Union at the time.

So some allege that this is when um, the Reagan administration and the CIA got together to literally introduce cocaine dealers in cocaine H two South Central and crack cocaine to spread throughout the ghettos, to raise money and use that money to fund the contrast. Right, So here's the thing, like that was never proven and Gary Webb never ever said he did not He didn't say that the government directly introduced it on purpose or with the aim of

creating an epidemic in the ghetto. He found connections between the CIA and drug lords, specifically Ricky Ross on one end, and then the CIA backed impossibly commanded UM, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the this contra force. UM, it's so their their business. Their group was funded entirely from cocaine sales in trafficking, and they all went to this guy, Ricky Ross. And there's no way that the CIA didn't know about this. Yeah, and there were at the time, well we'll get back

to web in a second. But UM, in the eighties, there was you know, when the whole Iron Contra thing broke out, there was the Carry Committee who did some investigating. The Carry Committee report, UH from John Cary. Obviously, UM found that quote the Contra drug links included payments to drug traffickers by the U. S. State Department funds authorized

by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the contrash. And then later on there was an internal CIA investigation in the nineties where they found that there is no evidence that UM, the CIA actually brought drugs into the United States. UM. However,

and these these royal quotes. However, during the Contra era, the CIA worked with a variety of people to support the Contract program, and let me be frank, there are instances where the CIA did not in an expeditious or consistent fashion cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contract program who are alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.

So basically, the internal investigation said, well, there might have been some people, we were dealing with it, we're doing this, and as it turns out, we didn't really do much about it. Right, So, as far as you can go without hyperbole, and it's still pretty shocking. Sure, the CIA backed, trained, and possibly commanded UM at least one guerrilla group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force and the Nicaraguan Democratic Force the f d n UM sold cocaine to Freeway Ricky Ross. Freeway

Ricky Ross is where the crack epidemic originated. And so just to finish up with web though Um, after he wrote this Dark Alliance series, he was shunned by mainstream press in the United States. Sadly, all three of the major newspapers. Um, you know, the l A Times, New York Times, and I guess was that Washington Post came out and it was not only shun they like tried to discredit him. Oh yeah, they wrote articles they put um seventeen reporters in twenty words to a three day

rebuttal of Dark Alliance. That was the the l A Times. Yeah. Rather than pick up the story, they tried to demolish it. And Webb New York Times um suggested he was a reckless reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. He already had wanted pull a surprise at this point, I think for something else, and Um the Mercury News defended it for a little while and then backed off and apologized. He ended up quitting and committed a very weird suicide in which he shot himself in the head twice. Uh,

who knows. Obviously, if you get on the internet, there are tons of outlets that say, well, obviously it's not a suicide. It was a murder. Um so who knows about that? Other other people have said no, it does look kinky, but the first shot wasn't fatal and he was able to do it twice. Who knows. Draw your own conclusions. It's some raw nerve right there. But he claimed that there were people like, you know, he saw what he thought were c i A. People like climbing

up his fire escape and stuff the previous days. And who knows. All I'm saying is they're making a movie about it with Jeremy Renner this summer. Oh is that right? Great? Good? I'm glad he I ran across him when I wrote an article on America's Army. Jeremy Renner. Yeah, he wrote an expose a America's army. Is this Uh it's a video game and it's basically like a training game for the army where you can play this free game. Um, but you sign up to be contacted. If you're any

good at it, the Army contacts you. And he did this. It's like a recruiting tool through video games. But the Army categorically denied that's what it was. But that's obviously what it was. And Gary Gary Webb, one of the last expose as was on that, and you know, we should mention that today all three of those major news outlets all say, boy, we kind of got that one wrong. Yeah, um, we shouldn't have done that. Maybe we shouldn't have driven

Gary Webb to his possible suicide. Um. So, so Gary Webb did all this investigation, did all this leg We're canning connect to the dots pretty well, but there's still this maddening question of tantalizing question, who invented crack? It came out of nowhere? And so to kind of answer that, which we can't, Um, you have to look at how crack is made, and look at how crack is made. You have to go back a lot further than the nineties.

You have to go back to the eight and eighties and actually a little further before then, when cocaine first was introduced to the United States after it was isolated. The alkaloid was isolated from the coca plant in the mid nineteenth century. Yeah, and that's when it was isolated in I mean for centuries. People in South America were wise to the fact that if you chew on this plant, it'll give you some go juice. You didn't work more, yea,

and people still chew the heck out of it. Yeah, so it was it was no secret to the South Americans. But like you said, it was the mid eighteen eighties when it was actually isolated and UM became a narcotic, an abused narcotic drug. Right. But first UM you could buy it all over the place. You could order it through catalogs. UM you can, doctors could prescribe it. Sigmund Freud was an ardent prescriber of it um and it was a very popular drug found in tonic cocacola for real,

that's not a myth. Um and cocaine was. Everybody loved it for a while, ye until well not until they still loved it and still do today, I imagine. But in nineteen fourteen it was made illegal with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act and UM right, which do you remember I said earlier that like everything like this, crack has a real history of um. It shows the history of

racism in regards to drug laws. So the Harrison Narcotic Act Um outlawed opiates and cocaine for the first time in the United States, and it was based on concerns like Chinaman were luring white women there were to their to their dens of iniquity in open Chinatown through opium and Uh, Southern blacks were sniffing cocaine and it gave them super him and strength, and they were raping white women as a result. So those those two things were past, and we have federal legislation from as a result of

those kind of fears. And if you kind of if you keep that in the back of your mind and then pay attention to the drug policy that comes out later on from crack, you'll it's been going on since then and it continues to today. Are you saying a pattern emerges, a pattern emerges? So, UH, cocaine is um. Cocaine powder is you have to actually manufacture it. You don't find a cocoa plant and like not shake it and shake it and white powder falls out. It makes

like a tinkling sound of the way. Uh. It is made by dissolving the paste, the cocoa paste um in a mixture of hydrochloric acid and water. Then you had some potassium salt separate out the bad junk, maybe had a little ammonia, and then the powder is separated out and you've got cocaine powder cocaine and from there you can sniff it. You can add a little water to it and inject it. Yeah, or you can something called free base. Yeah. I never quite understood what free base was.

I thought it was. I thought free basing was a thing. It is, yeah, but free base is also and it's a noun aniverb Okay, so you free base, free base. Oh you see, I've been doing it wrong. You verb the down So he've been doing this stuff doesn't work. I don't know what everybody's so excited about. Um. So with free base, you take cocaine and you add something highly flammable, say ether um, and you after you dissolved the the cocaine in an ammonia, you add ether to it.

Then you smoke it. But you're smoking something that has like a highly flammable solution involved. To Richard, Parker. Yes, in night when he was filming Busting Loose, he caught himself on fire because he was he was smoking free Base. He was smoking free Base and drinking one if do you want proof rome one night and I think he was doing it in his garage to which so it

was unventilated and he caught fire. Yeah, but you know what, there's also reports that he set himself on fire on purpose, that he poured the stuff all over his head and lit a match. Oh, we went a little little self immolation. Um, I think that may be the right story. Now. I just saw a documentary on him, and I think that's what they say. I'm so glad you just corrected me mid podcasts. Do you have any emails you prevent? Well?

I mean that was the long stories that he free based, and I think he even came out later and said like, yeah, I was free basing, but I also purposely set myself on fire in the ravages of a free basing binge. Okay, so free basing it was a thing, at least as early, but it was it was difficult to do multi step process and you needed something like ether. Ether is not the easiest thing to get your hands on and dangerous obviously,

sure um. But there was a way to smoke cocaine, and free base was the way to do it, but that never really got a big foothold in any demographic in the country. It was just kind of a thing that some people like Richard Pryor did right looking for a more intense high. I guess then all of a sudden, mysteriously, out of nowhere, there is crack cocaine. Yeah, crack is also manufactured UM, but it doesn't require something like either

or anything flammable. UM. You dissolve it in a mixture of water and either baking soda, sodium bicarbonate UM, or ammonia, and you boil it up, separate it out into the solid, cool it down, and then break it up and you've got your little white, ish or tan crack rocks. And if you buy it on the street, supposedly they range in size from point one to point five grams UM and they contain the d e A says between seventy

five and pure cocaine. So it's quite a rush for you, sure um, because it's so easy to make crack from cocaine UM. Like nobody imports cracked across the border into the US. It's all coke that comes into the US, and then Wesley Snipes converts it into crack uh and a factory operated and run by naked people because he doesn't trust them. What was that new Jack City? Oh man, I was like played, Yeah, I forgot all about Jack City. That was great. And they call it crack because it

makes a crackling sound. That's the baking soda when you put the fire on it, and speaking you put the fire on it. That's how you do it. Um, you have a little I mean, there's different kinds of pipes, but the most often crack pipe you will see is the little straight shooter, a little glass tube. Yep. I find him on my dog walks in my neighborhood. Yeah, crack is still around. It's not like it when anywhere. Um he thought, Oh they got that problem all under control.

Lickt uh. So you you you know, you have the crack in one end and then a filter of some kind like a steel wool or something in the other. You heat it up with your lighter, yeah, under like on the outside of the glass tube or you can I guess hit it with the flame. But I think if you light it under the glass tube, that's generally the way to do it. I think it vaporizes it, that's right, and you smoke it and um pretty much immediately, Uh, you're gonna feel the effects. It's it's an immediate rush

that lasts only about ten or fifteen minutes. And that's something that I didn't used to know. I learned it a few years ago, but I had no idea. I thought a crack high was like, you know, a couple of hours or something. No, I think it's one of the shortest ties on the market, which is I guess why it's so addictive and dangerous rampant because you come down and you're like, I'd like to do that again, exactly because it's a short high, but it's also an

extremely intense high to so um. Yeah, the the the it's addictiveness or potential for addictiveness is really high. Yeah. And so I know this article summarized very nicely for you exactly how it reacts with the brain. And so why don't you go ahead and just lay it on people? Alright? It has to do a dopamine, as we know, Yeah, dopamine. It's like your pleasure center it's it's the the basis of the reward system that we have, which is how we learn to eat and how we learn to have sex,

to reproduce. Like we we feel good when we do certain things, we want to do it again, and the basis of that is dopamine. So in the brain, the way it functions normally is UH neuron will release dopamine and it will travel to a neighboring neuron, causing it to fire and release a pleasurable sensation. And then that dopamine UH molecule travels back to the original neuron via a transporter and is reabsorbed. So it does it's little

thing and then goes back home, and it's good. Right, there's a certain finite amount of pleasure humans are designed to experience naturally because that when we say reabsorbed, we said it said that a lot. I don't think people understand that means basically, it turns that off again. Right, It does its thing, and it's done. It doesn't do his thing and do its thing and do its thing

and do its thing. It does its thing once and goes back to the original neuron exactly sits on the couch in this little neuron waits to be released again. Let me know when you have sex again or eat something to some pizza. UM. So with with crack or other drugs that UM target the dopamine system, UM, they interrupt the process. Crack specifically interrupts the process of reuptake or reabsorption. So you're you're smoking the crack, right, and

it triggers this dopamine release flood. But crack attaches to the transporter which keeps the the dopamine from being reabsorbed, which means it's just floating around in the synapse, the area between two neurons, like hitting that one neuron again and again and again, and it does it all throughout the brain or all throughout the ventral tegmental area, and you have this long or well not long, but you have this very intense pleasurable sensation. Right. So basically the

re uptake, they just shut that down. So you're out there on your own and then floating around. Yes, your brain is a big pleasure center. And then after I guess five to fifteen minutes, like the crack wears off in the dopamine is taken up once more. That's right, and the high is over and your are left going I want to do that again, exactly. I guess we should talk about some of the effects of crack use. Um. Obviously, just like with cocaine any kind of stimulant like that

or in phetamine, you're gonna be at risk for heart attack. Yeah, sometimes on the spot. And because you smoke it too, like it has real, um, real potential for problems with your respiratory system and your cardio pulmonary system in general. Yeah, stroke is also a risk. Um. It's gonna make you very energize at first. You might although your senses may be heightened temporarily, your heart rate is gonna shoot through the roof, your pupils are gonna dilate, your temperature is

gonna rise. Um, you're gonna be pretty anxious or irritable as you start to come down, and then you could be really aggressive and you could, you know, be more prone to start a fight with a cop, feel like you have superhuman strength, or say some crazy stuff to a passer by on the sidewalk because you have and you have a went to a gunk on the corners of your mouth. That's true. Uh, if you have it with alcohol, that's not a good combination, because that produces

a chemical called uh coca ethylene. Yeah, lifts up like this is a thing. It's like toxic, is I'll get out. Well, it's the crack or cocaine and alcohol, um produce a third drug, basically a hybrid drug that's more than the sum of its parts. And um, it creates a longer lasting intense or high from crack. Um. But it's also really toxic to the liver, really bad for you. Yeah, as if alcohol itself wasn't. Yeah, And it's not like you have to do anything to it or to to

get this thing. Like you just drink and smoke crack and your body does the rest. Your your metabolism breaks the stuff down and creates this coca ethylene and it's like alcohol on cocaine. Right. So, as we said, it's super addictive. Um. And of course all this stuff whenever you hear about drugs being addictive, it's all dependent on the person. Of course. One person might smoke crack and never want to do it again. One person might be

hooked immediately. Uh. It all depends on your your susceptibility to addiction, which varies greatly for sure. Um. I remember learning when I was a kid that you smoke crack once and you're addictive for life. Yeah. I heard that about heroin too. Um. Yeah, the but there is a very high potential for abuse with crack because it's long life. It's short, short term, short high, but an intense high. Yeah.

And we don't want to say, like crack it's not addictive, but we don't want to spread the misinformation, Yeah, which was really big in the eighties in the in the Nancy Reagan War on Drug era, Like a lot of misinformation was put out there just to scare people. Um. Yeah. So um, we're talking about it being addictive. It's addictive and because of the effect that it has on dopamine, but it's also deletrious to your health because of the

effect that it has on your dopamine reward system. Well yeah, because uh, and I know we've covered this in other drugs. If you do enough drugs like this, um, it rewires your brain to the point where it just isn't working the same any longer. Your brain has like something some sort of sensor in there that's like, Okay, there's way too much dopamine going on. This person should not be feeling this much pleasure. So I'm going to just stop

producing as much dopamine naturally don't need it. I'm going to destroy the dopamine that's floating around in the synapsism, going to reduce the level so that when you now, when you stop smoking crack, the the letdown is way worse because you don't have as much natural dopamine as you did before you started smoking crack. And um, so you're craving. Your desire for crack to get back up is much more intense, much higher. Yeah, and here's the

thing with crack, which is a little weird. Um many times you need to smoke more and more of it because of what you were just talking about, because you need to get that high. But sometimes it'll act so you make you more sensitive to it, and you will get super high off crack, even as an addict, super quick, and you could super die instantly. Um, which I'm not sure if they've reconciled how it can do both of those things depending on who you are. Well, I think

it's the same thing. It's like, you know, some people get addicted to it immediately and other people take longer. Yeah, but I'm just talking about how it affects you. But I guess it's the same with alcohol, because some hardcore alcoholics take a long time to get drunk and some get drunk like really quickly. Yeah, so it gets this the same deal. I guess I'd probably have to do

with metabolism, pantons metabolism, right, I guess so. So. Um, once you, once you are fully addicted, if you stop smoking crack, which by the way, I think I speak for Chuck too, and I say we highly recommend it if you smoke crack, to stop smoking crack. Yeah, and if you haven't started yet, then just keep that up. Yes, do not start smoking crack, no reason to um if you have are if it's if you listen to this

podcast after you became addicted to crack. Um. If you withdraw from crack, you're going to experience a pretty big calm down in general, severe depression, anxiety, cravings. You're gonna be not fun to be around. You're gonna be really irritable and anxious, um and exhausted yet like agitated all at the same time. Yeah. The good news is that your brain will eventually restructure itself to return its dopamine

levels back to normal or somewhere near normal. UM, So you won't be depressed or withdrawn or anxious or irritated, irritable for the rest of your life. It's just while you're undergoing withdrawals. That's what it's going to be like. And it won't be pretty. It won't be pretty now. And there's no UM medication designed to specifically treat crack UM.

And most therapies are pretty standard rehab therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which teaches you how to UM, how to basically go through life resisting the temptation of smoking crack, how to disassociate maybe UM triggers like places you go just from that lifestyle. Yeah, just to thecouple your mentality from being addicted. It's just standard rehab treatment pretty much. And we covered that like extensively in addiction. And there's another type of treatment that I hadn't heard of, UM

called contingency management. Had you heard of that? No? I hadn't. Actually, it's apparently fairly popular for crack treatment. Well what is it? Well, basically it's UM you are rewarded for not smoking crack, which I'm sure goes over really well with Republicans. Where's my reward exactly. I haven't smoked crack ever, Well, you haven't been addicted. You have to be addicted. So um, the you're given like a voucher or something, you make it like thirty days you get a free movie ticket

or something, or like you're giving stuff to um. Yeah, Incent not doing crack, and I'm sure stuff that is healthy, good for you distracts you from thinking about crack. That kind of thing. I hadn't heard of that before this article. Give someone a movie ticket. You know you did good today by not smoking crack. Here's a movie ticket. I always like the street terms. We should go over those real quick, because street terms, I think you're probably just

made up by the media. Yeah, you know, I always feel like they probably just call it crack or rock, right, or they call it bassa or French fries or real tops or glow glow. That's like, um, wasn't that the drug? And strangers with candy? Was Jerry like rubbed on her gums and they call it like glow? Probably that great um rock san that's my favorite, hot cakes, c d s. Where is that candy? Sugar yam, jelly beans. I guess they kind of makes sense. Jelly beans and French fries

makes sense. French fries does, yeah, because I mean doesn't it look kind of like little pieces of French fries? Um, Yeah, it's it's more. It makes more sense than bostha. Well that's or real tops or here's one. There's no way that anyone in the history of humanity has ever called crack this electric kool aid. Yea, they got the wrong drug there, Yeah, that would be acid from the famous book, Like, what is that? I don't know. I think those are

newspaper writers who've never been on the streets. The kids today are on the electric kool aid. Uh. So. One thing that we talked about about crack is the weird sentencing um laws dating back to nineteen fourteen and up until two thousand and ten, when we past the Fair Sentencing Act. If you were caught with one gram of crack cocaine, you would get as much time as someone caught with one hundred grams of cocaine powder. Yes, and

let's go back over this. In a graham of cocaine powdered cocaine cost a hundred dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars, and it was extraordinarily favored predominantly by white people. Crack comes along five to ten bucks, cheap, intense, high um,

and it becomes favored by African Americans statistically speaking. Yeah, so some might allege that the US government actually had a hand in introducing crack to the ghettos and then made stiffer sentencing once people were addicted to crack to put And I'm not saying crack users are like awesome people and people should do this, but it's a non violent crime, and they were being put in prison for the same amount of time as white counterparts who may

be raped and murdered people hundred to one ratio. To get caught with a hundred times the powdered cocaine, to get the same sentence as somebody caught with a hundredth of that amount of crack, they were all well hold on. When there was one other thing too, There were mandatory minimum sentences that were extraordinarily harsh. Just getting caught with a little bit of crack on you, any amount of crack, I believe you got five years automatically, five years that

was the mandatory minimum for possession. Five years in prison for nothing else, Like you could just be walking down the street and get caught with crack and never have committed another crime in your entire life, and you would get five years in prison for that. And that was from the Anti Drug Abuse Act, of which screams Nancy Reagan. Um. And it was that was a big deal. It was

the law of the land until two thousand. Yeah, and uh, finally Congress past the Fair Sentencing Act, which reverted the ratio to one to eight teen instead of uh one to a hundred by weight, and I got rid of that mandatory minimum. And now Attorney General Eric Holder is actually trying to get some retroactivity in these sentences and not trying to they are actually releasing some people from prison. Um. I remember we talked about that in the Presidential Partner episode.

That was something that a lot of people were calling for, was blanket pardoned non violent crack users who had been busted under this these mandatory minimums. Here's an idea rehab somebody. But even still there's still a skew in the ratio between crack and cocaine. Um. Uh, probably arrest, no, not not just that, the the sentences, I guess, Yeah, it's still an eighteen to one ratio. It used to be a hundred to one, but it's still eighteen to one, and people are like, why not just make it one

to want? It's both it's cocaine and it's cocaine exactly, Like, what's the problem here. So, yeah, there's been a long history of Um, I guess racism, just put plane and simple. There's really no other way to put it. Racism among drug laws. Yeah, and since they introduced the retroactivity releases, they've reduced seventy sentences for an average of twenty nine months per inmate and saved American taxpayers five and thirty million dollars in the process. Um. Other people will say,

you're letting drug offenders out on the streets. Why are we doing this? And um, so there are two sides. Obviously, opinion lies that that story. We'd be remiss if we didn't point out that people are upset about it in some circles. Oh sure, it's not like it's a it's a great idea, categorically yeah, Um yeah, there's problems with it for sure. Uh. Can we talk about crack babies? Yeah? That was another thing that came out of the eighties was the so called crack baby. Like, there was a

huge part of this crack epide. Mick wasn't just addiction. It was babies being born addicted to crack. And thanks to a paper from by a guy named Dr Ira Chasnoff, the crack baby fear started sweeping the nation. I mean huge, man. There's a New York Times video that you can go watch, like ten minutes long called retro Reports. Is that what

it was called. Yeah, it was really good and it basically kind of brought and I remember now, you know, back in the eighties, Peter Jennings on the nightly news saying that you know, babies are and it's not Peter Jennings, of course, it's whoever wrote the story. It was Peter Jennings Dan. Rather it was People Time Newsweek. It basically saying these babies are being born addicted to drugs. It will ultimately cost crack babies will cost the United States

five billion dollars. Yeah, they were saying it was going to be a lost generation, a nation of kids who are you can't rehab. They're going to be the babies or aloof They shake, they avoid eye contact, they've void in contact with their own mothers, which proves that they're going to be anti social deviance when they grow up.

And this is not like we're not rewriting history, man, it was like hardcore stuff that they were saying it was gonna be uh they were One quote was, um, they will not be able to hold uh to form to hold a job, or form meaningful relationships. Right, So they were expected to completely overwhelm the education system, maybe not even have an IQ of fifty yeah, and then

completely overwhelmed social services. So basically there was this this whole um generation of kids that were expected to be totally messed up because their mothers had smoke crack while they were pregnant, and so women were having their kids taken away from them. Some women were arrested, and um, the the guy, the doctor who wrote the original paper, Dr Ira chasin Off like started to very quickly back off of the original statements, which he is still today.

Like he admits like he was pretty mouthy and not very savvy, pretty meat, a naive, I guess you could put it. And he said he would give these long winded statements and then the press would just pick out like the juiciest part and like this guy single handedly created the crack baby myth because it never panned out in any way, shape or form. And what they were saying was like the twitchy babies that you're seeing on TV when they're talking about the the symptoms of being

a cracked baby, that's premature babies. Like you take any premature baby who's premature for any reason, and they're going to display these symptoms that are supposedly associated with crack babies. Yeah, they did. The US government sponsored a twenty five year study of crack babies, not a two year study or a five year study. Twenty five years. They followed these

babies up into adulthood. Uh is now over the funding ran out, and they found that um by age four, the average i Q of cocaine exposed children was UH seventy nine. The average i Q for the non expos children was ade UM. When it came to readiness at age six, about in each group scored in the abnormal range. Basically all of the findings said, it's the same as these other kids. But here's the deal. They weren't doing the study against crack baby babies and white suburban kids.

They were doing it against a like model, which was other you know, poor black kids basically that were not crack babies, and they said they are all below average. So the deal is is it's poverty. Right, it's not crack cocaine. They're scoring the same as non non crack babies, and they're all scoring lower because of poverty and and

basically bad postnatal care through adulthood. Right, like you, you might not have any problems physiologically or not as not or cognitively from being exposed to crack in the womb, but if your mom's still smoking crack after you're born, you're probably not to get the best care from your parents as possible. Um. And they did find in that same study that children that were being raised in like a supporting, encouraging house, even in um poverty stricken conditions,

uh tended to excel. So um it is it's pop. It was poverty they found out, and um postnatal care like you said, and being born premature. But yes, but the correct baby thing never happened. It was another example of hysterics. So right about now, I want to say, if if it sounds like Chuck and I are being cavalier, have been cavalier with the idea of crack. Uh we're not We're not being cavalier with crack or addiction. That's

nothing to take lightly. But I think what's created a bit of freneticness or passion maybe in this one is just this idea that we're able to look back now thirty years on and say, wow, like America was genuinely hysteric coal and it's it's something to be amazed by and a little disconcerted with. Two. Yeah, of course you should not take cocaine or smoke crack when you're pregnant. No doctor on earth is going to say that's a

good thing. But the crack baby was a myth. And the one Emory professor that was in that New York Times researcher in the New York Times video came out and said, you know what, alcohol does much more physical damage and is much more widespread as an abuse drug during pregnancy than crack or cocaine ever is. But they're not lacking ladies up that are pregnant for drinking. And the reason they were doing it back then, it's because they were poor black women. Right. Um, we should say

the crack epidemic. Also, while the sentences were stiffer, the the amount you got caught with was a hundred times smaller to get the same The same rap is getting caught with powdered cocaine. There was something that came out of this crack epidemic that was a real threat, and that was the rise of the modern um inter city gang, at least as far as we know it. Like crips and bloods and folks and all those guys, they they

came out of this era. They were able to buy the guns that they bought and fight the turf force that they fought because they had this incredibly addictive drug that they could sell and control pretty easily in their hands all of a sudden. So where that came from, who knows, but you can all you can. The big problem with the crack epidemic that you can trace directly back to it is the rise of the modern gang

drug gang. So in summary, crack whack, Yeah, crack babies, crack sentencing laws, Why back whack Gary webb Um whacked whack very nice? I got nothing else perfect. Well, since I said something perfect, I am going to tell you to go ahead and research crack more on our website how stuff works dot Com. One of our websites these days. Um, you can type crack into the search bar and I'll bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for a message break, chuckers, how about you

take us out with some listener mail. All right, this is from Rebecca and it is about PTSD and UH police chases. UM. I've been a fan of you guys since the inception. I've listened to every episode. I always wanted to write in until now, I didn't have a reason. Listening to the Police Chase podcast made me want to share my story. Years ago, I was a victim of a police chase. Some teenagers had stolen a car and were pursued by the cops. I'm not sure what caused

them to pursue at high speeds, but they did. The chase resulted in the kids t boning my car when I was stopped at a red light. The kids tried to take an incredibly sharp turn. Essentially you turn onto another road and they're going way too fast. Um. The chase escalated to an on foot chase. UM, and it actually did end and arrests. I ended up having to be cut out of the car with the jaws of life only suffered minor head injuries despite my car being totaled.

As a result of the incident, I began having anxiety and PTSD symptoms that were triggered by police irons and intense stress. I had to receive treatment similar to some of what you discussed in the PTSD episode all as well. Now I didn't take too long, UM with therapy to overcome everything. I just wanted to share the downside of police chases. I don't think that incident required a high speed chase, and the result could have been much moss worse.

I really wish that police would stop to think before they pursued for minor crimes UH and would get fined even or have some sort of penalty for causing accidents within US at five standards. And that is Rebecca. Thanks Rebecca, I appreciate you sharing that. Sorry that happened to you. I'm glad you're doing better. UM. If you want to share a personal experience from something that we have talked about in this episode or another one, you can tweet

to us. That's y SK podcast, Facebook dot com, slash Stuff You Should Know Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com, and then check out our website. It's Stuff you should know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Like a good neighbor, state farm is there with eighteen thousand agents across the country who are ready to help you. Seven three. That's getting to a better state.