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.

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.

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.