Crack cocaine

From RationalWiki

Crack cocaine is a form of pre-processed freebase cocaine, in which the cocaine has been cooked with chemicals including baking soda. Since it has been rendered insoluble, it is smoked rather than snorted.

Crack cocaine is generally considered a poor person's drug; it is fairly inexpensive compared to powdered cocaine and first rose to popularity in the inner cities of the United States in the mid-1980s. Though a dose of crack cocaine has roughly the same potency as the equivalent of powdered cocaine, in the US at least penalties for crack dealing and possession are substantially higher than those for powder cocaine, worsening already disproportionate representation of black and Hispanic minorities in the US prison population. Crack has also been blamed for an even further decline of the already poor and economically depressed inner cities, due to gang activity allied with organized crime both inside the US and from Latin America. Some community activists have gone so far as to concoct conspiracy theories blaming the United States Government, especially the CIA, for introducing crack to the inner city populations in a backdoor attempt to reintroduce a Jim Crow-like society.

The phenomenon of "crack babies", children born in poverty to mothers with cocaine addictions, was feared to be a major public health problem in the 1980s. While many -- perhaps even most -- such children had far fewer developmental problems than were feared, they remain a symbol of the potential hazards of drug abuse and poverty.