Crack Addiction—Its Plague of Violence
CRACK, so named because of the sound it makes when heated during processing or smoking, is a highly addictive, extremely potent form of cocaine. One hospital psychopharmacologist called it “the most addictive drug known to man right now. It is almost instantaneous addiction.” One police official called it “the worst drug ever. There is no such thing as a recreational crack cocaine user.”
Since crack cocaine is smoked rather than injected intravenously or snorted, users who once feared the threat of AIDS from contaminated needles have found the “advantages” of crack to be threefold—it is “safer,” the effects more intense, the smoke faster acting. “It goes straight to the head. It’s immediate speed,” said a former addict. “It feels like the top of your head is going to blow off.” The high lasts only from 5 to 12 minutes but is almost always followed by a devastating crash that may leave the users irritable, depressed, nervous, or extremely paranoid and with a compulsive craving for more crack. “The major danger of crack,” explains Dr. Arnold Washton, director of the Addiction Treatment Center at Regent Hospital in New York, “is that within a few days to a few weeks it can take control of your brain—and your life.”
Crack addiction is spreading like a plague in many parts of the world. Particularly in the United States, far more than in Canada, England, and comparable European countries, crack has penetrated virtually every strata of society—the rich, the poor, the successful, the gainfully employed. Because of its availability and easy access and the euphoric effects, the demand for it is great and becoming greater with each passing day. New recruits, potential addicts, are sought out on street corners, in schools, and in the workplace. Women are likely candidates and in some levels of society far outnumber men as users. Young children—preteens—looking for quick thrills, who cannot say no to drugs, become easy prey to crack pushers—often their own brothers or other family members or best friends.
Addiction Brings Violence
“Crack can unleash a vicious streak of violence in the abuser unlike almost any other substance,” reported The Wall Street Journal of August 1, 1989. “In suburban Boston [U.S.A.] recently, a young mother who was strung out on crack flung her young baby against a wall so hard the child died of a broken neck,” the paper said. The mother was described as coming from “a respectable middle class family.”
Because of the violent behavioral effects that crack can have on users, sociologists and pediatrician researchers are convinced that the drug is contributing to a sharp rise in child abuse. An explosive confrontation can develop when a mother under crack’s control is left to deal with an ill-humored, crying child. “It’s not too good to have a child in front of you,” said one researcher, “when you’re irritable or depressed and you have a drive for cocaine. What are you going to do with that baby? Certainly not what you’re supposed to do.”
Unfortunately, the results have often been fatal. It is not uncommon to read or hear of young crack addicts killing their parents or guardian grandparents because they refused to give them money to purchase crack or because these addicts were caught smoking it. New York City police have attributed a rash of brutal crimes to young addicts virtually deranged by crack.
The greatest and most brutal scene of violence, however, unfolds on the city streets. Since the money to be made selling crack is staggering because of the ever-growing demand, dealers feel that killing for it is worthwhile. Armed to the teeth with the latest state-of-the-art weapons—machine guns, military assault rifles, silencers, and bulletproof vests—they patrol their territories in quest of other young entrepreneurs to make an example of those who would steal their clientele or who do not turn in all the money from a day’s take. Dealers are prepared and ready to settle business differences with violent bloodshed. “If someone is shot in the leg or stabbed in the hand,” said an emergency-room nursing director, “it was a warning to a kid who kept some money or drugs from a dealer he worked for. If a kid is shot in the head or chest, they meant to get this one.”
“The murders now are much more vicious,” said a New York City sociologist. “It’s not enough to kill. You degrade the body. He’s dead already with two bullets, so you shoot him with six. You decapitate him, or something else.” “There are a million kids out there who have no skills other than fighting,” said one veteran law officer. “They are not afraid of the police or jail or of dying,” nor are they concerned with the safety and lives of innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire of shoot-outs. Time magazine reports that of the 387 gang-related homicides in Los Angeles County in one year, half were innocent bystanders.
Gold Chains, Expensive Cars
Because of the violence associated with crack addiction, the young crack dealers cannot see their lives continuing. Indeed, they are dying young. “I’m going to live the good life before I go” has become their philosophy. Many are doing just that. “Every day you can go to a high school and see new Mercedes and Jeeps and Cadillacs and Volvos,” said one Detroit narcotics officer. “These cars belong to the kids, not the parents.” Children too young to drive hire others to drive for them. Others take their chances and drive without a driver’s license. They are able to pay cash for their cars. If they have an accident, they simply abandon the cars and run away.
“Students wear outfits on any given day that may be worth $2,000,” said one teacher. “You see a lot of young people in fur coats and the thick gold chains,” she said. “Gold, in fact, is a widespread obsession with inner-city youngsters,” reported Time magazine of May 9, 1988. “Heavy gold cables that cost up to $20,000 are all the rage.” Distributors pay their fledgling entrepreneurs well. Nine- and ten-year-olds, for example, can make $100 a day warning dealers of police presence. The next step up the ladder is the runner, one who delivers the drug from the lab to the dealer, a job that can pay him more than $300 a day. Both lookouts and runners aspire to reach the pinnacle well within their grasp—dealer. Can you imagine a teenager, with possibly very little education, commanding earnings up to a whopping $3,000 a day? Indeed, the stakes are high but the future is short-lived.
All too often the evils of selling crack by the young are double-edged. On the one cutting side, they are peddling death-dealing drugs that can ruin the lives of the users as well as contribute to violence, often becoming the victims themselves. On the other side of the blade, in many cases, parents encourage their children to deal in crack. Frequently, the young dealer is the sole breadwinner of the family, using a large portion of the profits to support a struggling family. When parents refuse to correct the situation and instead look the other way, they become sharers in abetting a criminal course.
What is devastatingly worse is when the love for crack transcends a mother’s love for her children, even the unborn child she is carrying. Consider the plight of the unborn in the next article.
[Box/Picture on page 5]
“Crack Is a Whole New Ball Game”
Since crack was developed to appeal to the young and the poor, it’s initial cost may seem relatively cheap. Pushers sell pellet-size chunks in tiny plastic vials for as little as five to ten dollars. The brief but intense highs, however, demand almost constant repetition. “Crack is a whole new ball game,” said an executive director of a Florida drug-information center. “It’s an extremely compulsive drug, much more so than regular cocaine. The rush is so intense and the crash so powerful that it keeps users—even first-time users—focused on nothing but their next hit.”