Introduction, Chemistry, How It Works, Physiological Effects, Health Risk, Crack Epidemic, Crack on Black Crime, Crack Killed the 80s and 90s, History, Crack in America, References
Crack cocaine has significantly shaped history, and especially the 1980’s and 1990’s.
A study found in The Review of Economics and Statistics, the authors found that by using information provided by 27 different metropolitan areas, that the arrival of crack cocaine led to substantial crime increases in late 1980s and early 1990s.
The number of reported offenses for recorded criminal categories which are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft and auto theft. For each of the seven categories of criminal offenses significant increases were shown to have occurred after the arrival of crack cocaine to those areas.
As you can see from looking at the percentage of change, the rise in crime proved to be overwhelming in these urban areas, “from 1987 through12989, the firearm homicide rate amongst black males age 15 to 19 years of age increased 71 percent to 85.3 deaths per 100,000 populations,” (Fingerhut, 1992) at the same time when teenage fire-arm death were mostly concentrated in metropolitan areas. Many scholars argue that the alarming number of homicides was triggered through crack related violence. “Teenaged dealers started carrying guns to school but no such alliance[s] w[ere] initiated to control the crack epidemic that precipitated the violence”. (Watkins et al, 1998)
Crack proved to be “an unparallel destructive force, undermining safety, stability and health in inner cities.”(Watkins et al. 43) In 1988, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited Crack use, coupled with the practice of bartering sexual services in exchange for the drug, as a factor in the increase of STD’s (Goldsmith, 1988)
The discovery of crack cocaine is directly responsible for the deterioration of inner cities during the 1980s and 1990s. A studies show, at the same in time in which crack cocaine became noticed in different American cities, devastating proportions of crime, HIV/AIDS, and minority incarcerations followed. In the years following the fall of communism, the ending if the Vietnam war, and domestically, the civil rights movements, and increasing upward mobility amongst minorities, crack cocaine stood as an unmovable road block in the betterment of American people. As cocaine was actively used drug in the United States for over a century before crack was introduced, the less expensive and overly available smoke able form took the inner city by storm.