The Real Truth About Crack
In Monday's WaPo, DeNeen L. Brown took a court hearing for Unifest crasher Tonya Bell as an opportunity to remind us of the lingering horrors of crack. Brown notes that the drug "has hung on, never really left." She quotes Ron Strong, from the Justice Department's National Drug Threat Assessment Unit, who says crack is still the primary drug concern in Washington. Instead of citing stats, she emotes: "Still, crack feels larger."
The point of Brown's impressionistic feature is hard to parse. Is she saying crack is resurging, just as bad as it ever was? It's not really clear. Either way, she doesn't turn to actual statistics to make her point. Recent national data doesn't show much change in the levels of crack use in recent years. The percentage of Americans who've used the drug in the last month tends to hover around 0.2 or 0.3 percent. Percentages for lifetime use---anyone who's tried the drug even just once---have stayed around 3.3 percent. According to crack expert Craig Reinarman, lifetime use hit about 4 percent at crack's peak in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Reinarman, who I just reached on the phone, says Brown was right to note that crack hasn't diminished nearly as much as our obsession with it---but she still draws all the wrong conclusions.
For one, her story makes the assumption that Tonya Bell drove through the crowd, laughing as she mowed people down, because of crack. But she doesn't offer any proof of that connection. It's a typical conflation of the effects of crack use with its potentially deeper causes. Few reporters have made the obvious connection that the people who use crack are often prone to frightening and irrational behavior long before they get hooked on the drug. Bell may well have plowed through the crowd in her Volvo if she'd turned to alcohol instead.
Brown pulls back from the small cause-and-effect case of Bell on crack and the Unifest tragedy to the big picture of crack and crime in D.C. She reminds us of just how much crime crack caused, citing the 479 homicides in 1991, the height of the crack surge here. She doesn't bother to note that last year the district saw far fewer homicides: 169. If crack's still here, big and strong, then where are all the bodies? Reinarman says the dip in crime has more to do with the crack market settling down. Dealers know their turf and have stopped fighting over borders. Seems to me there are other reasons as well---complicated ones about economics and gentrification.
Which leads me to the real cause-and-effect scenario. What reporters are afraid to say, and this is Reinarman's pet peeve, is that poverty and marginalization cause people to turn to serious drug abuse and addiction. So while it's tempting to blame the drug when people do desperate things, the truth usually has something to do with the fact that they were desperate in the first place.
Poverty, Reinarman says, is the underlying cause of most drug abuse in America. But that's an uncomfortable little subject most of use would rather avoid.
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7:33 pm
I'm not saying you're wrong, but should we really be so critical about an article that appears in the Style section?
10:59 pm
Maybe. But the "desperate" things someone does while high on crack or pcp are likely to be much more... dramatic... because of their impaired judgment. Take it from someone who's been there.
12:07 am
The real problem with D. Brown's story is that she managed to bemoan crack's influence while at the same time mythologize it, hype it, and romance it in the form of some very, very bad poetry. In the author's words crack is/was busy "becoming legend." I kept suspecting that Brown was surely going to drop some Maya Angelou on us.
To answer your question, Ms. Brown, if crack were a car it would be a Corolla. Cheap. Affordable. Everywhere.
And nothing Brown said hadn't been said before. Please see CP's old history of the crack cover package!
But as Angela so rightly (!) points out, the piece fails in giving the reader any statistics on whether or not crack use/sales are down in the District. If you look at Superior Court stats available on the web, they point to significant drops in misdemeanor and felony arrests in the last few years. That just has to be--though unsaid--because crack use is simply down.
Instead of having to wade through Brown's drivel, I would have loved to hear from Tonya Bell.
12:31 am
No, Jason. Not a Corolla. The point is that crack isn’t “everywhere,” and not nearly as prevalent even as the freaked out media predicted it would be in the 1990s. Very few people do it and those who do are very marginalized. It’s endemic in a certain population. Maybe it’s a Trans Am.
10:18 am
Damn. I guess I was channelling Brown with my Corolla pick. I like the Trans Am idea. But I'm going to go with the I-Roc this time. No, the I-Roc I think is more powder cocaine. You win. Crack is a Trans Am!
10:51 am
I don't think it's a Corolla or a Trans-Am--it's a Ford Taurus. It's not in mass production anymore and you never see one in fancier parts of town, but go into a less affluent neighborhood and they are everywhere.
Yes, the argument should've been backed up with something in the way of stats/actual facts. But I liked the *idea* of the piece because I think there has been this trend among young black journalists where they proclaim that the crack epidemic is dead, based on nothing more than the fact that they don't personally know anyone who does it and don't see drug activity in the areas where they live.
11:29 am
Noooooo, more like a crown vic......crakk is still here, just not the money drug of old! Crakk was the catalyst for jail, murder, prosperity and deviance in the 80's and 90's...it's old news, but still current. Crakk now has a customer base comprised of the working poor and very small mid class group whereas it used to cross all lines, but moreso concentrated in the "hood"! That's what made the drug what it's known for, crakkheads, people whose sole purpose while being a crakk head was to continue surviving as just that..a crakk head!
11:39 am
Fuck--I almost went with the Crown Vic. I should've stood by my first choice.
12:17 pm
Ford's brought back the Taurus, BTW: http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/taurus/
12:34 pm
Eso es! Tell them, tell them the truth, Angela!
Obviously, whatever Madam Bell had taken to commit her, er, irrational act turned out to be stronger than she was thus causing the woman to forget herself and act out of character as a result. That's because she is indigent and marginalized, poor thing, not to mention the devil who made her do it in the first place.
12:40 pm
Yes, the devil! The unholy one!
12:53 pm
I thought the Crown Vic would be a too obvious choice. Sarah--I had thought of the Taurus too. I suck at picking cars! Since the Taurus is apparently back in production, how about....Crack is the Ford Escort of drugs. Cheap. Small. Gets you from point A to point B. And you just don't see the Ford Escort in the Gold Coast.
1:22 pm
Cherkis, go to the circis!
1:24 pm
SaraG, on the other hand, is very impressive today. What's happenin' babe?