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How Crack Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and uh, this is stuff you should know. Jerry just
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: waved like she's waving at the audience of this anger.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: She's waving to the world. It's a little weird. She
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: may be on something. Uh, Josh, you know what's whack? Uh?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The Zach Attack from Saved by the Bell. I don't
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: even know what it is. You don't know what's Saved
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: by the Bell is what's wrong with No? I know
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: that I know what that show is, but I've never
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: heard of the Zach Attack. It's just Zach being Zach. Gotcha?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: That is whack? Yeah, well, never mind. I thought Crack
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: was whack, but the Zach Attack is truly wack. No,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I disagree. I was gonna say, no, it's not right,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: because that's actually a pretty good show. But okay, Crack
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: his whack. This we're like imminent up in here. We're
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: what we're like eminem up in here. Yeah, I guess,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: so refer to Hip Hop episode now. No, I'm just
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: saying people that they're confused about why we sound so
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: stilted and square. Just go listen to hip hop and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: that explains everything. People like that one. Surprisingly, Yeah, it's
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: a good one. Man. We got a good email from
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: me or a Facebook post from a graffiti artist. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: good stuff. I can't remember his tag, but it was
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: like really nice. But he was complimenting us or he
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: was just saying hey. No, he's like, hey, I'm a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: graffiti artist and here's my my work. And uh, I
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: was very impressed. And he is not on crack, no,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: because he's not whack right exactly, So Chuck, I have
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a little, uh, a little intro. Great, just if you'll
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: bear with me. And the year was okay, I was fourteen. Okay,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: what is it when you p b g very early
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: on UM cocaine, which is a drug that had been
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: sweeping the nation for about ten years by then. Yeah,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: uh was up to a hundred and fifty dollars a graham.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: That's thanks to the demand um and the available income
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: of its well healed yuppie users who are willing to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: spend that kind of money on it. It's very much
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: an expensive, white, upwardly mobile person's drug. Cocaine run. Yeah,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and there were at the time articles that kind of said,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: cocaine's probably not that addictive. We shouldn't worry that much
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: about cocaine. It's not a very big deal. It was mostly,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: like I said, a white drug. That same year, a
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: new drug hit the scene. It was cheap, five to
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: ten bucks pop. It gave you a very quick, very
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: intense high, short lived, and it swept through lower income
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: African American areas of the United States, and all of
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a sudden we had a problem, an epidemic. Yes, because
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: it was cocaine in a different form. Yeah, the country
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: went crazy for it. And not only was it cocaine
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in a different form, it was cocaine being used by
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a different demographic that, as we'll see, America has always
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: been threatened by and always made legislation to damp and
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: drug use among Yeah, it's pretty interesting when you dig
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: into this stuff. And so when people started to get worried,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan became concerned. And when Nancy Reagan became concerned,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: as as usual, she started to lie. And we will
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we will get into what allegedly might have happened and
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: why crack might have been introduced in this country because
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: some people think it was the U. S. Government straight
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: up c I A. Yeah, that's a really um good point.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: So what you're referring to is UM Garry Webb's Dark
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Alliance article. Yeah, series of articles in our book from
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I believe. Garry Webb was an investigative journalist for the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: San Jose Mercury News, and Um, they had a front
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: page story where he basically figured out the connection between
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the CIA and the crack epidemic that started in I
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: think in Los Angeles south central. It was a dude
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: named Freeway Ricky Ross, who's still around I think, yeah. Um,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And he was the largest cocaine distributor UH African American
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: cocaine distributor in l A. He was big time, and
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he had a
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: new product called crack and it became very popular, very quickly. UM,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and Gary Webb in trace the origin of this epidemic
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: back to through Ricky Ross, back to some Nicaraguan freedom
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: fighting guerrillas that were backed and trained and possibly commanded
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: by the CIA. We're getting into this, so we just
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: go ahead and dive in. Yeah, do you want to? Yeah?
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Why not? Um? All right, here's the deal. In Nicaragua,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Central American country. UM, in the nineteen thirties, man named
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Anastasio uh Samosa took power, and then about forty years later,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, the people revolted, um overthrew him,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and they were called the Sandinistas. Yes, so you know
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the whole Contra Sandinista war in Nicaragua that raged in
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, that's what we're talking about. And
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the Sandinista's um, we're a communist and that didn't fly
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: so well with the US, who would long cherished Nicaragua
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: for their farmland and like to have a toe in
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: their pond, so to speak. And so communists and there
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: didn't fly. And so they said, you know what, I
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: think maybe we should fund the contrast maybe give them
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit of financial assistance. Yeah, And the contrasts
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: weren't just one group. They were it was like an
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: umbrella term for any democratic or um an anti communist
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: group that was trying to paramilitarily overthrow the socialist leadership
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: in Nicaragua. That's right. So we decided to help fund
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: their civil war. And UM, the problem was that there
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of dough like that we could say, like, hey,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: let's use this money to do this. Because it was
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a secret war. There was no congressional approval. It was
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: a proxy war with the Soviet Union at the time.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So some allege that this is when um, the Reagan
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: administration and the CIA got together to literally introduce cocaine
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: dealers in cocaine H two South Central and crack cocaine
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: to spread throughout the ghettos, to raise money and use
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: that money to fund the contrast. Right, So here's the thing,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: like that was never proven and Gary Webb never ever
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: said he did not He didn't say that the government
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: directly introduced it on purpose or with the aim of
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: creating an epidemic in the ghetto. He found connections between
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the CIA and drug lords, specifically Ricky Ross on one end,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and then the CIA backed impossibly commanded UM, the Nicaraguan
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Democratic Force, the this contra force. UM, it's so their
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: their business. Their group was funded entirely from cocaine sales
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: in trafficking, and they all went to this guy, Ricky Ross.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And there's no way that the CIA didn't know about this. Yeah,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and there were at the time, well we'll get back
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: to web in a second. But UM, in the eighties,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: there was you know, when the whole Iron Contra thing
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: broke out, there was the Carry Committee who did some investigating.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: The Carry Committee report, UH from John Cary. Obviously, UM
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: found that quote the Contra drug links included payments to
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: drug traffickers by the U. S. State Department funds authorized
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the contrash. And
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: then later on there was an internal CIA investigation in
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: the nineties where they found that there is no evidence
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that UM, the CIA actually brought drugs into the United States. UM. However,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and these these royal quotes. However, during the Contra era,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the CIA worked with a variety of people to support
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the Contract program, and let me be frank, there are
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: instances where the CIA did not in an expeditious or
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: consistent fashion cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contract
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: program who are alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: So basically, the internal investigation said, well, there might have
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: been some people, we were dealing with it, we're doing this,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and as it turns out, we didn't really do much
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: about it. Right, So, as far as you can go
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: without hyperbole, and it's still pretty shocking. Sure, the CIA backed, trained,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and possibly commanded UM at least one guerrilla group, the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Nicaraguan Democratic Force and the Nicaraguan Democratic Force the f
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: d n UM sold cocaine to Freeway Ricky Ross. Freeway
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Ricky Ross is where the crack epidemic originated. And so
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: just to finish up with web though Um, after he
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: wrote this Dark Alliance series, he was shunned by mainstream
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: press in the United States. Sadly, all three of the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: major newspapers. Um, you know, the l A Times, New
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: York Times, and I guess was that Washington Post came
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: out and it was not only shun they like tried
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: to discredit him. Oh yeah, they wrote articles they put
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: um seventeen reporters in twenty words to a three day
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: rebuttal of Dark Alliance. That was the the l A Times. Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Rather than pick up the story, they tried to demolish it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And Webb New York Times um suggested he was a
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: reckless reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. He already
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: had wanted pull a surprise at this point, I think
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: for something else, and Um the Mercury News defended it
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: for a little while and then backed off and apologized.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: He ended up quitting and committed a very weird suicide
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: in which he shot himself in the head twice. Uh,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: who knows. Obviously, if you get on the internet, there
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: are tons of outlets that say, well, obviously it's not
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: a suicide. It was a murder. Um so who knows
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: about that? Other other people have said no, it does
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: look kinky, but the first shot wasn't fatal and he
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: was able to do it twice. Who knows. Draw your
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: own conclusions. It's some raw nerve right there. But he
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: claimed that there were people like, you know, he saw
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: what he thought were c i A. People like climbing
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: up his fire escape and stuff the previous days. And
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: who knows. All I'm saying is they're making a movie
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: about it with Jeremy Renner this summer. Oh is that right? Great? Good?
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I'm glad he I ran across him when I wrote
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: an article on America's Army. Jeremy Renner. Yeah, he wrote
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: an expose a America's army. Is this Uh it's a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: video game and it's basically like a training game for
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the army where you can play this free game. Um,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: but you sign up to be contacted. If you're any
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: good at it, the Army contacts you. And he did this.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: It's like a recruiting tool through video games. But the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Army categorically denied that's what it was. But that's obviously
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: what it was. And Gary Gary Webb, one of the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: last expose as was on that, and you know, we
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: should mention that today all three of those major news
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: outlets all say, boy, we kind of got that one wrong. Yeah, um,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't have done that. Maybe we shouldn't have driven
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Gary Webb to his possible suicide. Um. So, so Gary
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Webb did all this investigation, did all this leg We're
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: canning connect to the dots pretty well, but there's still
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: this maddening question of tantalizing question, who invented crack? It
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: came out of nowhere? And so to kind of answer that,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: which we can't, Um, you have to look at how
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: crack is made, and look at how crack is made.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: You have to go back a lot further than the nineties.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You have to go back to the eight and eighties
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and actually a little further before then, when cocaine first
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: was introduced to the United States after it was isolated.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: The alkaloid was isolated from the coca plant in the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century. Yeah, and that's when it was isolated
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: in I mean for centuries. People in South America were
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: wise to the fact that if you chew on this plant,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: it'll give you some go juice. You didn't work more, yea,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and people still chew the heck out of it. Yeah,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: so it was it was no secret to the South Americans.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: But like you said, it was the mid eighteen eighties
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: when it was actually isolated and UM became a narcotic,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: an abused narcotic drug. Right. But first UM you could
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: buy it all over the place. You could order it
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: through catalogs. UM you can, doctors could prescribe it. Sigmund
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Freud was an ardent prescriber of it um and it
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: was a very popular drug found in tonic cocacola for real,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that's not a myth. Um and cocaine was. Everybody loved
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: it for a while, ye until well not until they
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: still loved it and still do today, I imagine. But
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen it was made illegal with the Harrison
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Narcotics Tax Act and UM right, which do you remember
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I said earlier that like everything like this, crack has
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: a real history of um. It shows the history of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: racism in regards to drug laws. So the Harrison Narcotic
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Act Um outlawed opiates and cocaine for the first time
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: in the United States, and it was based on concerns
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: like Chinaman were luring white women there were to their
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to their dens of iniquity in open Chinatown through opium
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and Uh, Southern blacks were sniffing cocaine and it gave
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: them super him and strength, and they were raping white
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: women as a result. So those those two things were past,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and we have federal legislation from as a result of
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: those kind of fears. And if you kind of if
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: you keep that in the back of your mind and
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: then pay attention to the drug policy that comes out
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: later on from crack, you'll it's been going on since
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: then and it continues to today. Are you saying a
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: pattern emerges, a pattern emerges? So, UH, cocaine is um.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Cocaine powder is you have to actually manufacture it. You
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: don't find a cocoa plant and like not shake it
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: and shake it and white powder falls out. It makes
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: like a tinkling sound of the way. Uh. It is
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: made by dissolving the paste, the cocoa paste um in
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: a mixture of hydrochloric acid and water. Then you had
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: some potassium salt separate out the bad junk, maybe had
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: a little ammonia, and then the powder is separated out
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and you've got cocaine powder cocaine and from there you
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: can sniff it. You can add a little water to
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: it and inject it. Yeah, or you can something called
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: free base. Yeah. I never quite understood what free base was.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I thought it was. I thought free basing was a thing.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It is, yeah, but free base is also and it's
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: a noun aniverb Okay, so you free base, free base.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Oh you see, I've been doing it wrong. You verb
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the down So he've been doing this stuff doesn't work.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know what everybody's so excited about. Um. So
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: with free base, you take cocaine and you add something
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: highly flammable, say ether um, and you after you dissolved
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the the cocaine in an ammonia, you add ether to it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Then you smoke it. But you're smoking something that has
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: like a highly flammable solution involved. To Richard, Parker. Yes,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: in night when he was filming Busting Loose, he caught
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: himself on fire because he was he was smoking free Base.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: He was smoking free Base and drinking one if do
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: you want proof rome one night and I think he
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: was doing it in his garage to which so it
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: was unventilated and he caught fire. Yeah, but you know what,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: there's also reports that he set himself on fire on purpose,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: that he poured the stuff all over his head and
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: lit a match. Oh, we went a little little self immolation. Um,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: I think that may be the right story. Now. I
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: just saw a documentary on him, and I think that's
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: what they say. I'm so glad you just corrected me
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: mid podcasts. Do you have any emails you prevent? Well?
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I mean that was the long stories that he free based,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and I think he even came out later and said like, yeah,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I was free basing, but I also purposely set myself
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: on fire in the ravages of a free basing binge. Okay,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: so free basing it was a thing, at least as early,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: but it was it was difficult to do multi step
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: process and you needed something like ether. Ether is not
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the easiest thing to get your hands on and dangerous obviously,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: sure um. But there was a way to smoke cocaine,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and free base was the way to do it, but
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that never really got a big foothold in any demographic
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: in the country. It was just kind of a thing
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that some people like Richard Pryor did right looking for
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a more intense high. I guess then all of a sudden, mysteriously,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere, there is crack cocaine. Yeah, crack is
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: also manufactured UM, but it doesn't require something like either
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: or anything flammable. UM. You dissolve it in a mixture
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: of water and either baking soda, sodium bicarbonate UM, or ammonia,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and you boil it up, separate it out into the solid,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: cool it down, and then break it up and you've
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: got your little white, ish or tan crack rocks. And
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: if you buy it on the street, supposedly they range
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: in size from point one to point five grams UM
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and they contain the d e A says between seventy
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: five and pure cocaine. So it's quite a rush for you,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: sure um, because it's so easy to make crack from
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: cocaine UM. Like nobody imports cracked across the border into
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the US. It's all coke that comes into the US,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and then Wesley Snipes converts it into crack uh and
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: a factory operated and run by naked people because he
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't trust them. What was that new Jack City? Oh man,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I was like played, Yeah, I forgot all about Jack City.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: That was great. And they call it crack because it
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: makes a crackling sound. That's the baking soda when you
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: put the fire on it, and speaking you put the
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: fire on it. That's how you do it. Um, you
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: have a little I mean, there's different kinds of pipes,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: but the most often crack pipe you will see is
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the little straight shooter, a little glass tube. Yep. I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: find him on my dog walks in my neighborhood. Yeah,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: crack is still around. It's not like it when anywhere.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Um he thought, Oh they got that problem all under control.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Lickt uh. So you you you know, you have the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: crack in one end and then a filter of some
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: kind like a steel wool or something in the other.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: You heat it up with your lighter, yeah, under like
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: on the outside of the glass tube or you can
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I guess hit it with the flame. But I think
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: if you light it under the glass tube, that's generally
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the way to do it. I think it vaporizes it,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: that's right, and you smoke it and um pretty much immediately, Uh,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: you're gonna feel the effects. It's it's an immediate rush
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: that lasts only about ten or fifteen minutes. And that's
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: something that I didn't used to know. I learned it
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: a few years ago, but I had no idea. I
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: thought a crack high was like, you know, a couple
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of hours or something. No, I think it's one of
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the shortest ties on the market, which is I guess
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: why it's so addictive and dangerous rampant because you come
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: down and you're like, I'd like to do that again,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: exactly because it's a short high, but it's also an
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: extremely intense high to so um. Yeah, the the the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: it's addictiveness or potential for addictiveness is really high. Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And so I know this article summarized very nicely for
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: you exactly how it reacts with the brain. And so
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: why don't you go ahead and just lay it on people? Alright?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: It has to do a dopamine, as we know, Yeah, dopamine.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It's like your pleasure center it's it's the the basis
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of the reward system that we have, which is how
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: we learn to eat and how we learn to have sex,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: to reproduce. Like we we feel good when we do
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: certain things, we want to do it again, and the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: basis of that is dopamine. So in the brain, the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: way it functions normally is UH neuron will release dopamine
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and it will travel to a neighboring neuron, causing it
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to fire and release a pleasurable sensation. And then that
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: dopamine UH molecule travels back to the original neuron via
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: a transporter and is reabsorbed. So it does it's little
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: thing and then goes back home, and it's good. Right,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: there's a certain finite amount of pleasure humans are designed
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to experience naturally because that when we say reabsorbed, we
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: said it said that a lot. I don't think people
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: understand that means basically, it turns that off again. Right,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: It does its thing, and it's done. It doesn't do
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: his thing and do its thing and do its thing
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and do its thing. It does its thing once and
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: goes back to the original neuron exactly sits on the
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: couch in this little neuron waits to be released again.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Let me know when you have sex again or eat
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: something to some pizza. UM. So with with crack or
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: other drugs that UM target the dopamine system, UM, they
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: interrupt the process. Crack specifically interrupts the process of reuptake
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: or reabsorption. So you're you're smoking the crack, right, and
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: it triggers this dopamine release flood. But crack attaches to
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: the transporter which keeps the the dopamine from being reabsorbed,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: which means it's just floating around in the synapse, the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: area between two neurons, like hitting that one neuron again
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: and again and again, and it does it all throughout
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the brain or all throughout the ventral tegmental area, and
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: you have this long or well not long, but you
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: have this very intense pleasurable sensation. Right. So basically the
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: re uptake, they just shut that down. So you're out
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: there on your own and then floating around. Yes, your
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: brain is a big pleasure center. And then after I
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: guess five to fifteen minutes, like the crack wears off
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: in the dopamine is taken up once more. That's right,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and the high is over and your are left going
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I want to do that again, exactly. I guess we
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: should talk about some of the effects of crack use. Um. Obviously,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: just like with cocaine any kind of stimulant like that
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: or in phetamine, you're gonna be at risk for heart attack. Yeah,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: sometimes on the spot. And because you smoke it too,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: like it has real, um, real potential for problems with
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: your respiratory system and your cardio pulmonary system in general. Yeah,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: stroke is also a risk. Um. It's gonna make you
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: very energize at first. You might although your senses may
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: be heightened temporarily, your heart rate is gonna shoot through
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the roof, your pupils are gonna dilate, your temperature is
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: gonna rise. Um, you're gonna be pretty anxious or irritable
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: as you start to come down, and then you could
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: be really aggressive and you could, you know, be more
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: prone to start a fight with a cop, feel like
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you have superhuman strength, or say some crazy stuff to
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: a passer by on the sidewalk because you have and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: you have a went to a gunk on the corners
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of your mouth. That's true. Uh, if you have it
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: with alcohol, that's not a good combination, because that produces
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a chemical called uh coca ethylene. Yeah, lifts up like
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: this is a thing. It's like toxic, is I'll get out. Well,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: it's the crack or cocaine and alcohol, um produce a
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: third drug, basically a hybrid drug that's more than the
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: sum of its parts. And um, it creates a longer
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: lasting intense or high from crack. Um. But it's also
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: really toxic to the liver, really bad for you. Yeah,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: as if alcohol itself wasn't. Yeah, And it's not like
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: you have to do anything to it or to to
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: get this thing. Like you just drink and smoke crack
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and your body does the rest. Your your metabolism breaks
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the stuff down and creates this coca ethylene and it's
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: like alcohol on cocaine. Right. So, as we said, it's
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: super addictive. Um. And of course all this stuff whenever
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: you hear about drugs being addictive, it's all dependent on
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: the person. Of course. One person might smoke crack and
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: never want to do it again. One person might be
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: hooked immediately. Uh. It all depends on your your susceptibility
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: to addiction, which varies greatly for sure. Um. I remember
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: learning when I was a kid that you smoke crack
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: once and you're addictive for life. Yeah. I heard that
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: about heroin too. Um. Yeah, the but there is a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: very high potential for abuse with crack because it's long life.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It's short, short term, short high, but an intense high. Yeah.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And we don't want to say, like crack it's not addictive,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: but we don't want to spread the misinformation, Yeah, which
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: was really big in the eighties in the in the
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan War on Drug era, Like a lot of
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: misinformation was put out there just to scare people. Um. Yeah.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So um, we're talking about it being addictive. It's addictive
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and because of the effect that it has on dopamine,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: but it's also deletrious to your health because of the
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: effect that it has on your dopamine reward system. Well yeah,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: because uh, and I know we've covered this in other drugs.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: If you do enough drugs like this, um, it rewires
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: your brain to the point where it just isn't working
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the same any longer. Your brain has like something some
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: sort of sensor in there that's like, Okay, there's way
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: too much dopamine going on. This person should not be
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: feeling this much pleasure. So I'm going to just stop
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: producing as much dopamine naturally don't need it. I'm going
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to destroy the dopamine that's floating around in the synapsism,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: going to reduce the level so that when you now,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: when you stop smoking crack, the the letdown is way
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: worse because you don't have as much natural dopamine as
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: you did before you started smoking crack. And um, so
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: you're craving. Your desire for crack to get back up
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: is much more intense, much higher. Yeah, and here's the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: thing with crack, which is a little weird. Um many
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: times you need to smoke more and more of it
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: because of what you were just talking about, because you
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: need to get that high. But sometimes it'll act so
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: you make you more sensitive to it, and you will
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: get super high off crack, even as an addict, super quick,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and you could super die instantly. Um, which I'm not
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: sure if they've reconciled how it can do both of
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: those things depending on who you are. Well, I think
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: it's the same thing. It's like, you know, some people
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: get addicted to it immediately and other people take longer. Yeah,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: but I'm just talking about how it affects you. But
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I guess it's the same with alcohol, because some hardcore
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: alcoholics take a long time to get drunk and some
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: get drunk like really quickly. Yeah, so it gets this
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the same deal. I guess I'd probably have to do
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: with metabolism, pantons metabolism, right, I guess so. So. Um,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: once you, once you are fully addicted, if you stop
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: smoking crack, which by the way, I think I speak
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: for Chuck too, and I say we highly recommend it
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: if you smoke crack, to stop smoking crack. Yeah, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: if you haven't started yet, then just keep that up. Yes,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: do not start smoking crack, no reason to um if
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: you have are if it's if you listen to this
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: podcast after you became addicted to crack. Um. If you
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: withdraw from crack, you're going to experience a pretty big
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: calm down in general, severe depression, anxiety, cravings. You're gonna
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: be not fun to be around. You're gonna be really
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: irritable and anxious, um and exhausted yet like agitated all
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah. The good news is that
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: your brain will eventually restructure itself to return its dopamine
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: levels back to normal or somewhere near normal. UM, So
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: you won't be depressed or withdrawn or anxious or irritated,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: irritable for the rest of your life. It's just while
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: you're undergoing withdrawals. That's what it's going to be like.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And it won't be pretty. It won't be pretty now.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: And there's no UM medication designed to specifically treat crack UM.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: And most therapies are pretty standard rehab therapy, like cognitive
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: behavioral therapy, which teaches you how to UM, how to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: basically go through life resisting the temptation of smoking crack,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: how to disassociate maybe UM triggers like places you go
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: just from that lifestyle. Yeah, just to thecouple your mentality
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: from being addicted. It's just standard rehab treatment pretty much.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And we covered that like extensively in addiction. And there's
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: another type of treatment that I hadn't heard of, UM
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: called contingency management. Had you heard of that? No? I hadn't. Actually,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: it's apparently fairly popular for crack treatment. Well what is it? Well,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: basically it's UM you are rewarded for not smoking crack,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: which I'm sure goes over really well with Republicans. Where's
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: my reward exactly. I haven't smoked crack ever, Well, you
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: haven't been addicted. You have to be addicted. So um,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the you're given like a voucher or something, you make
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: it like thirty days you get a free movie ticket
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: or something, or like you're giving stuff to um. Yeah,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Incent not doing crack, and I'm sure stuff that is healthy,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: good for you distracts you from thinking about crack. That
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. I hadn't heard of that before this article.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Give someone a movie ticket. You know you did good
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: today by not smoking crack. Here's a movie ticket. I
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: always like the street terms. We should go over those
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: real quick, because street terms, I think you're probably just
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: made up by the media. Yeah, you know, I always
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: feel like they probably just call it crack or rock, right,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: or they call it bassa or French fries or real
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: tops or glow glow. That's like, um, wasn't that the drug?
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And strangers with candy? Was Jerry like rubbed on her
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: gums and they call it like glow? Probably that great
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: um rock san that's my favorite, hot cakes, c d s.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Where is that candy? Sugar yam, jelly beans. I guess
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: they kind of makes sense. Jelly beans and French fries
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: makes sense. French fries does, yeah, because I mean doesn't
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: it look kind of like little pieces of French fries? Um, Yeah,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it's it's more. It makes more sense than bostha. Well
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: that's or real tops or here's one. There's no way
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: that anyone in the history of humanity has ever called
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: crack this electric kool aid. Yea, they got the wrong
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: drug there, Yeah, that would be acid from the famous book, Like,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: what is that? I don't know. I think those are
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: newspaper writers who've never been on the streets. The kids
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: today are on the electric kool aid. Uh. So. One
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: thing that we talked about about crack is the weird
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: sentencing um laws dating back to nineteen fourteen and up
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: until two thousand and ten, when we past the Fair
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Sentencing Act. If you were caught with one gram of
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: crack cocaine, you would get as much time as someone
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: caught with one hundred grams of cocaine powder. Yes, and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: let's go back over this. In a graham of cocaine
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: powdered cocaine cost a hundred dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and it was extraordinarily favored predominantly by white people. Crack
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: comes along five to ten bucks, cheap, intense, high um,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and it becomes favored by African Americans statistically speaking. Yeah,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: so some might allege that the US government actually had
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a hand in introducing crack to the ghettos and then
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: made stiffer sentencing once people were addicted to crack to
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: put And I'm not saying crack users are like awesome
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: people and people should do this, but it's a non
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: violent crime, and they were being put in prison for
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the same amount of time as white counterparts who may
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: be raped and murdered people hundred to one ratio. To
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: get caught with a hundred times the powdered cocaine, to
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: get the same sentence as somebody caught with a hundredth
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: of that amount of crack, they were all well hold on.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: When there was one other thing too, There were mandatory
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: minimum sentences that were extraordinarily harsh. Just getting caught with
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: a little bit of crack on you, any amount of crack,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I believe you got five years automatically, five years that
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: was the mandatory minimum for possession. Five years in prison
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: for nothing else, Like you could just be walking down
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the street and get caught with crack and never have
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: committed another crime in your entire life, and you would
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: get five years in prison for that. And that was
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: from the Anti Drug Abuse Act, of which screams Nancy Reagan. Um.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And it was that was a big deal. It was
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the law of the land until two thousand. Yeah, and uh,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: finally Congress past the Fair Sentencing Act, which reverted the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: ratio to one to eight teen instead of uh one
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: to a hundred by weight, and I got rid of
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: that mandatory minimum. And now Attorney General Eric Holder is
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: actually trying to get some retroactivity in these sentences and
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: not trying to they are actually releasing some people from prison. Um.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I remember we talked about that in the Presidential Partner episode.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: That was something that a lot of people were calling for,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: was blanket pardoned non violent crack users who had been
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: busted under this these mandatory minimums. Here's an idea rehab somebody.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: But even still there's still a skew in the ratio
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: between crack and cocaine. Um. Uh, probably arrest, no, not
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: not just that, the the sentences, I guess, Yeah, it's
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: still an eighteen to one ratio. It used to be
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: a hundred to one, but it's still eighteen to one,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: and people are like, why not just make it one
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: to want? It's both it's cocaine and it's cocaine exactly, Like,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: what's the problem here. So, yeah, there's been a long
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: history of Um, I guess racism, just put plane and simple.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: There's really no other way to put it. Racism among
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: drug laws. Yeah, and since they introduced the retroactivity releases,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: they've reduced seventy sentences for an average of twenty nine
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: months per inmate and saved American taxpayers five and thirty
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: million dollars in the process. Um. Other people will say,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you're letting drug offenders out on the streets. Why are
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: we doing this? And um, so there are two sides. Obviously,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: opinion lies that that story. We'd be remiss if we
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: didn't point out that people are upset about it in
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: some circles. Oh sure, it's not like it's a it's
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: a great idea, categorically yeah, Um yeah, there's problems with
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: it for sure. Uh. Can we talk about crack babies? Yeah?
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: That was another thing that came out of the eighties
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: was the so called crack baby. Like, there was a
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: huge part of this crack epide. Mick wasn't just addiction.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It was babies being born addicted to crack. And thanks
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: to a paper from by a guy named Dr Ira Chasnoff,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the crack baby fear started sweeping the nation. I mean huge, man.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: There's a New York Times video that you can go watch,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: like ten minutes long called retro Reports. Is that what
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: it was called. Yeah, it was really good and it
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: basically kind of brought and I remember now, you know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: back in the eighties, Peter Jennings on the nightly news
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: saying that you know, babies are and it's not Peter Jennings,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: of course, it's whoever wrote the story. It was Peter
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Jennings Dan. Rather it was People Time Newsweek. It basically
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: saying these babies are being born addicted to drugs. It
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: will ultimately cost crack babies will cost the United States
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: five billion dollars. Yeah, they were saying it was going
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: to be a lost generation, a nation of kids who
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: are you can't rehab. They're going to be the babies
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: or aloof They shake, they avoid eye contact, they've void
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: in contact with their own mothers, which proves that they're
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: going to be anti social deviance when they grow up.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And this is not like we're not rewriting history, man,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it was like hardcore stuff that they were saying it
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: was gonna be uh they were One quote was, um,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: they will not be able to hold uh to form
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: to hold a job, or form meaningful relationships. Right, So
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: they were expected to completely overwhelm the education system, maybe
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: not even have an IQ of fifty yeah, and then
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: completely overwhelmed social services. So basically there was this this
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: whole um generation of kids that were expected to be
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: totally messed up because their mothers had smoke crack while
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: they were pregnant, and so women were having their kids
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: taken away from them. Some women were arrested, and um,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the the guy, the doctor who wrote the original paper,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Dr Ira chasin Off like started to very quickly back
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: off of the original statements, which he is still today.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Like he admits like he was pretty mouthy and not
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: very savvy, pretty meat, a naive, I guess you could
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: put it. And he said he would give these long
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: winded statements and then the press would just pick out
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: like the juiciest part and like this guy single handedly
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: created the crack baby myth because it never panned out
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. And what they were
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: saying was like the twitchy babies that you're seeing on
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: TV when they're talking about the the symptoms of being
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: a cracked baby, that's premature babies. Like you take any
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: premature baby who's premature for any reason, and they're going
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: to display these symptoms that are supposedly associated with crack babies. Yeah,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: they did. The US government sponsored a twenty five year
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: study of crack babies, not a two year study or
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: a five year study. Twenty five years. They followed these
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: babies up into adulthood. Uh is now over the funding
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: ran out, and they found that um by age four,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: the average i Q of cocaine exposed children was UH
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: seventy nine. The average i Q for the non expos
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: children was ade UM. When it came to readiness at
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: age six, about in each group scored in the abnormal range.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Basically all of the findings said, it's the same as
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: these other kids. But here's the deal. They weren't doing
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: the study against crack baby babies and white suburban kids.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: They were doing it against a like model, which was
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: other you know, poor black kids basically that were not
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: crack babies, and they said they are all below average.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: So the deal is is it's poverty. Right, it's not
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: crack cocaine. They're scoring the same as non non crack babies,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: and they're all scoring lower because of poverty and and
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: basically bad postnatal care through adulthood. Right, like you, you
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: might not have any problems physiologically or not as not
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: or cognitively from being exposed to crack in the womb,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: but if your mom's still smoking crack after you're born,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: you're probably not to get the best care from your
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: parents as possible. Um. And they did find in that
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: same study that children that were being raised in like
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: a supporting, encouraging house, even in um poverty stricken conditions,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: uh tended to excel. So um it is it's pop.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: It was poverty they found out, and um postnatal care
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: like you said, and being born premature. But yes, but
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: the correct baby thing never happened. It was another example
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of hysterics. So right about now, I want to say,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: if if it sounds like Chuck and I are being cavalier,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: have been cavalier with the idea of crack. Uh we're
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: not We're not being cavalier with crack or addiction. That's
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: nothing to take lightly. But I think what's created a
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: bit of freneticness or passion maybe in this one is
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: just this idea that we're able to look back now
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: thirty years on and say, wow, like America was genuinely
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: hysteric coal and it's it's something to be amazed by
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: and a little disconcerted with. Two. Yeah, of course you
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: should not take cocaine or smoke crack when you're pregnant.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: No doctor on earth is going to say that's a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: good thing. But the crack baby was a myth. And
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: the one Emory professor that was in that New York
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Times researcher in the New York Times video came out
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: and said, you know what, alcohol does much more physical
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: damage and is much more widespread as an abuse drug
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: during pregnancy than crack or cocaine ever is. But they're
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: not lacking ladies up that are pregnant for drinking. And
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the reason they were doing it back then, it's because
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: they were poor black women. Right. Um, we should say
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: the crack epidemic. Also, while the sentences were stiffer, the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: the amount you got caught with was a hundred times
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: smaller to get the same The same rap is getting
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: caught with powdered cocaine. There was something that came out
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: of this crack epidemic that was a real threat, and
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: that was the rise of the modern um inter city gang,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: at least as far as we know it. Like crips
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and bloods and folks and all those guys, they they
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: came out of this era. They were able to buy
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: the guns that they bought and fight the turf force
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: that they fought because they had this incredibly addictive drug
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: that they could sell and control pretty easily in their
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: hands all of a sudden. So where that came from,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: who knows, but you can all you can. The big
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: problem with the crack epidemic that you can trace directly
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: back to it is the rise of the modern gang
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: drug gang. So in summary, crack whack, Yeah, crack babies,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: crack sentencing laws, Why back whack Gary webb Um whacked
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: whack very nice? I got nothing else perfect. Well, since
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I said something perfect, I am going to tell you
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: to go ahead and research crack more on our website
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. One of our websites these days. Um,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: you can type crack into the search bar and I'll
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: bring up this article. And since I said search bar,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: it's time for a message break, chuckers, how about you
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: take us out with some listener mail. All right, this
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: is from Rebecca and it is about PTSD and UH
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: police chases. UM. I've been a fan of you guys
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: since the inception. I've listened to every episode. I always
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: wanted to write in until now, I didn't have a reason.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Listening to the Police Chase podcast made me want to
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: share my story. Years ago, I was a victim of
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: a police chase. Some teenagers had stolen a car and
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: were pursued by the cops. I'm not sure what caused
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: them to pursue at high speeds, but they did. The
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: chase resulted in the kids t boning my car when
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I was stopped at a red light. The kids tried
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: to take an incredibly sharp turn. Essentially you turn onto
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: another road and they're going way too fast. Um. The
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: chase escalated to an on foot chase. UM, and it
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: actually did end and arrests. I ended up having to
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: be cut out of the car with the jaws of
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: life only suffered minor head injuries despite my car being totaled.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: As a result of the incident, I began having anxiety
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: and PTSD symptoms that were triggered by police irons and
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: intense stress. I had to receive treatment similar to some
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: of what you discussed in the PTSD episode all as well.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Now I didn't take too long, UM with therapy to
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: overcome everything. I just wanted to share the downside of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: police chases. I don't think that incident required a high
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: speed chase, and the result could have been much moss worse.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I really wish that police would stop to think before
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: they pursued for minor crimes UH and would get fined
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: even or have some sort of penalty for causing accidents
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: within US at five standards. And that is Rebecca. Thanks Rebecca,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you sharing that. Sorry that happened to you.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you're doing better. UM. If you want to
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: share a personal experience from something that we have talked
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: about in this episode or another one, you can tweet
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: to us. That's y SK podcast, Facebook dot com, slash
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and then check out our website. It's Stuff you should
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: know dot com for more on this and thousands of
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Like
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: a good neighbor, state farm is there with eighteen thousand
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: agents across the country who are ready to help you.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Seven three. That's getting to a better state.