Crack
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Crystal Clear
Crack is a fast-acting, highly addictive version of cocaine, made by cooking the powdered form of the drug. Because it can be made and sold inexpensively and produces a potent high, crack quickly became popular after its introduction in the mid-1980s. Inhaling smoke from a crack pipe enables the cocaine to be absorbed into the bloodstream as rapidly as it would be if injected. However, the resulting high only lasts for five to 10 minutes, compared to as long as 30 minutes for snorting cocaine. That means that crack smokers have smoke repeatedly to remain high.
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Crafting Crack
Mista, a drug dealer, makes crack cocaine. The basic chemical process involves mixing powder containing cocaine hydrochloride with ammonium hydroxide and then using heat and ethyl ether to extract the cocaine, which is then allowed to form crystals that can be smoked. This can be done by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mix of water and ammonia or baking soda, and then boiling it until a solid substance forms. It’s then removed, dried, and broken into “rocks” that are sold to users. The release of carbon dioxide from the baking soda makes a crackling sound, from which crack gets its name.
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Crack Baggies
Mista puts crack cocaine into baggies for sale. While crack has a much higher purity than the powdered form of the drug, it still contains impurities, and also the residue of any baking soda that has not been strained out. According to a federal study, in the Chicago metropolitan area where Mista and other dealers operate, two thirds of police departments say that crack and powdered cocaine are easily available in their jurisdictions, and nearly half say the trade in those drugs is a major cause of violent crime.
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Vrae Valley
Peru recently has overtaken Columbia as the world’s biggest producer of cocaine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The Vrae Valley, a roughly 50-square-mile area located in south-central Peru formed by the Apurimac and Ene rivers, is that nation’s top producer of cocoa leaf, the crop that is refined to produce cocaine. A remaining remnant of the Maoist rebel group Shining Path reportedly still operates in the region, protecting cocaine traffickers who buy the cocoa against Peruvian government forces. Terrorists on the ground recently ambushed and shot down a Peruvian military helicopter in the Vrae region, killing the pilot and an army officer, and injuring other crew members.
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Playing a Dangerous Game
The crack trade often makes use of seemingly innocuous everyday items, as well as specialized paraphernalia. In this photo, crack crystals are placed upon an ordinary playing card, which is used to separate a portion of the drug. According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, about 6.2 million Americans have used crack at least once in their lifetimes, and about 400,000 use it at least once a month. In addition to the usual risks of cocaine abuse, such as heart attacks and seizures, crack users risk lung damage, and can become paranoid or violent as well.
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Lighting Up
Powdered cocaine cannot be smoked in a pipe, because it disintegrates when heated and loses its effects. Crack crystals can be smoked, which is a more efficient delivery system for the drug. In addition, a crack crystal can be anywhere from 75 to 90 percent pure cocaine, a much higher purity than most powdered cocaine. Because of its lower cost, crack cocaine became a drug of choice in impoverished inner cities across the nation after its introduction in the mid-1980s. A crack high, while intense, only lasts briefly, which encourages users to smoke more crack and to use increasingly high doses.
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Lifelong User
Jeff, a 40-year-old crack addict, smokes a crack pipe in his Chicago home. He has been addicted to crack for 25 years. In the early 1990s, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that roughly one third of cocaine users were smoking the drug. Most crack smokers were white or African-American males in large metropolitan areas between the ages of 18 and 34. Most were unemployed and had a high school diploma or less. Crack users were most often found in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast regions, with comparably fewer users in the South.
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Hitting the Crack Pipe
In this close-up, Jeff, a 40-yar-old addict from Chicago, takes a hit from his crack pipe. In addition to using a specially-fashioned crack pipe, users employ a variety of methods to vaporize the drug so that it can be inhaled. It can be mixed with tobacco in a cigarette, smoked in a regular pipe or one with a metal screen to hold the tobacco and the crack. It can even by heated with a propane torch and inhaled. Before a flood of cocaine into the U.S. in the early 1980s resulted in lower prices and the introduction of crack smoking made for more intense highs, most inner-city addicts preferred heroin, which was less expensive and more potent effects than powdered cocaine.
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Heavy Duty Protection
This close-up shows an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, holding his assault rifle. DEA agents carry weapons such as the LWRCI M6A2, a military-style carbine that is also used by NATO forces, which can carry a 30-round magazine. DEA agents venture into drug-producing regions in other countries to combat trafficking, and often must face heavily-armed gangs and militants who protect them for pay. In places such as Peru, they often must make risky flights into remote areas with rough terrain. In 1994, for example, a twin-engine plane on a reconnaissance flight in Peru’s northeastern jungle crashed, killing five DEA agents who were aboard. They were among a contingent of 10 agents I the country who were working with Peruvian officials to combat cocaine trafficking.
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Fueling His Addiction
In this picture, Gian Carlos fires a match to fuel his addiction to Paco, a potent side-product of cocaine, made from the chemical-laden dregs of the manufacturing process. Paco is cheaper, more addictive and even more harmful than crack, because although it contains relatively little cocaine, it is filled with an abundance of harmful chemicals and impurities such as ground glass and dust. Users cram Paco into homemade pipes fashioned from hollow TV antennas, metal tubes, or aluminum foil, and use cigarette ash or steel wool as a filter. The heat from the pipes often burns the fingers and mouths of regular users, who are said to barely notice because of their obsession with getting a cheap high.
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Drug Scale
Crack gets dumped out onto a scale to be weighed out. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, in the early 2000s the going price in the Chicago area for crack was about $700 to $900 per ounce, and $50 to $100 per gram. A single dose containing about a tenth of a gram of cocaine, called a “rock,” went for just $10, but it provided just a single brief high.
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Double Drug Addict
Alexis, 28, shoots up in a hotel room. She is a 'poly drug' user, meaning she is addicted to both heroin and crack. She is a prostitute to pay for her drug addiction. A study of 149 women crack users in an impoverished inner-city Atlanta neighborhood found that they often had experimented with other drugs prior to become primarily addicted to crack. About half of the women in the study had not completed high school, either because of pregnancy, drug use, or parental pressure to find work and contribute to their family’s income.
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Dirty Pipe
This photo shows a close-up of a crack pipe. Users improvise pipes from a variety of items, including glass tubes and even broken car antennas. When crack is smoked, it ends the bloodstream quickly, providing a powerful rush. The experience is so intense that even some experienced cocaine users find it too harsh and unpleasant, and many of those who’ve tried crack once never use it again. Others only use it occasionally. But some take to the sensation and eventually become addicted.
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Cracked Up
Crack being broken up and weighed on a scale. An ounce of crack can be cut up into about 280 individual rocks of crack, each about a tenth of a gram in weight, which sell for $10 apiece. According to a U.S. Justice Department document, crack cocaine sales on Chicago’s West Side spawned a sprawling local industry in the 1990s, with street gangs controlling the trafficking. The typical street seller was a low-level gang member between 15 and 20 years old, who could be easily replaced if arrested. Other young gang members worked as runners, either on bicycle or on foot, supplying sellers from a nearby apartment. Still other members were employed as lookouts, keeping watch for police or rival gangs.
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Crack Pack
Mista, a dealer, holds a packet of crack. Depending on the demand, he can earn between $3,000 to $10,000, he says. Crack in some ways is the fast food of addictive drugs. It can be manufactured quickly and cheaply, and sold in small $10 doses that even an impoverished inner-city addict can afford with a little panhandling or petty theft. Unlike other more expensive drugs, where customers have to establish a connection to a dealer, crack often is sold in open-air, high volume markets where sellers and buyers don’t know each other and only interact briefly. Those factors have made the crack trade extremely profitable.
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Crack Cocaine Crystals
A close-up of a pre-light crack pipe. Crack is the street name for the form of cocaine that has been processed to make a rock crystal, which, when heated, produces vapors that are smoked. There are a reported 266,000 crack users in Chicago, a city whose African-American community suffered mightily from the ravages of the crack epidemic that began in the mid-1980s. Between 1984 and 1994, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and killings of black men aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During the same period, Chicago’s black community also suffered an increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, and the number of children in foster care.
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Crack By the Numbers
A bag of crack, as sold, is weighed on a scale. According to a U.S. Justice Department document, crack cocaine exacted a heavy toll in death and suffering in Chicago as its use expanded during the 1990s. Deaths related to crack and powdered cocaine abuse in Chicago doubled between 1991 and 1998, and amounted to nearly half of all drug-related deaths, compared with about 30 percent nationwide. Additionally, infants exposed in utero to cocaine accounted for 57 percent of all babies who tested positive for drugs in Illinois. The cost of medical treatment for each of those infants was about $13,000—10 times what care cost for a drug-free infant and mother.
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Career Crack Addict
Jeff has been a crack addict for 25 years. He's seen here hitting a crack pipe. The first hit on that pipe took him to cloud nine. He describes that as both the best and worst day of his life. To crack addicts, life sometimes can be reduced to days spent either smoking crack or trying to obtain money to buy another dose. Another former addict, Fred Moore, recalled in a recent newspaper article that after he began using crack in the early 1990s, “I learned that there was an entire culture built on substance abuse. Stealing, prostitution, things that were way beyond my middle-class experience. There was a whole different way of communication.”
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Addiction in Real Life
Alexis swore she would never become a prostitute when she first started using drugs, but as addiction took hold she failed to hold down a regular job. Crack use, both by itself and in combination with other drugs, raises the risk that users will become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to University of San Francisco public health researchers who’ve studied the connection. The makeshift pipes used to smoke crack can cause cuts and burns on the lips, which raise the risk of becoming infected with the virus or transmitting it during sexual activity. In addition, addicts are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior.
