0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from

0:04

House Stuff Works dot com.

0:11

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:13

and Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant,

0:16

Jerry's over there, and uh,

0:18

this is stuff you should know. Jerry

0:20

just waved like she's waving at

0:23

the audience of this anger. She's

0:25

waving to the world. It's a little weird. She

0:28

may be on something. Uh,

0:30

Josh, you know what's whack? Uh?

0:35

The Zach Attack from

0:37

Saved by the Bell. I don't even know what it is.

0:39

You don't know what's Saved by the Bell is what's wrong with No?

0:41

I know that I know what that show is, but I've never

0:44

heard of the Zach Attack. It's just Zach

0:46

being Zach. Gotcha?

0:48

That is whack? Yeah, well, never mind. I thought

0:50

Crack was whack, but the Zach Attack is truly

0:52

wack. No, I disagree. I was gonna say,

0:55

no, it's not right, because that's

0:57

actually a pretty good show. But okay,

1:00

Crack his whack. This we're like imminent

1:02

up in here. We're what we're like

1:04

eminem up in here. Yeah,

1:07

I guess, so refer

1:09

to Hip Hop episode now. No,

1:13

I'm just saying people that they're confused about

1:15

why we sound so stilted and square. Just

1:18

go listen to hip hop and that explains everything.

1:20

People like that one. Surprisingly, Yeah,

1:22

it's a good one. Man. We got a good email from

1:24

me or a Facebook post from a graffiti artist.

1:27

Yeah, yeah, good stuff. I

1:29

can't remember his tag, but it was like really nice. But

1:32

he was complimenting us or he was just saying hey. No,

1:34

he's like, hey, I'm a graffiti artist and here's my

1:36

my work. And uh, I was very

1:38

impressed. And he is not on crack,

1:42

no, because he's not whack right

1:44

exactly, So Chuck, I have a

1:46

little, uh, a little intro. Great,

1:50

just if you'll bear with me. And

1:54

the year was okay,

1:56

I was fourteen. Okay, what is

1:59

it when you p

2:02

b g very early on

2:05

UM cocaine,

2:08

which is a drug that had been sweeping the nation

2:11

for about ten years by then. Yeah,

2:14

uh was up to a hundred and fifty

2:16

dollars a graham.

2:20

That's thanks to the demand um

2:23

and the available income of

2:25

its well healed yuppie users who

2:27

are willing to spend that kind of money

2:29

on it. It's very much an

2:32

expensive, white, upwardly

2:35

mobile person's drug. Cocaine

2:38

run. Yeah,

2:42

and there were at the time articles

2:45

that kind of said, cocaine's

2:47

probably not that addictive. We shouldn't

2:49

worry that much about cocaine. It's not

2:51

a very big deal. It

2:54

was mostly, like I said, a white drug. That

2:57

same year, a new

3:00

drug hit the scene. It

3:02

was cheap, five to ten bucks

3:04

pop. It gave

3:06

you a very quick, very

3:09

intense high, short lived, and

3:12

it swept through lower

3:14

income African American

3:17

areas of the United

3:19

States, and all of a sudden we

3:21

had a problem, an epidemic.

3:23

Yes, because it was cocaine

3:26

in a different form. Yeah, the country

3:28

went crazy for it. And not only was it cocaine

3:30

in a different form, it was cocaine being used

3:32

by a different demographic that,

3:35

as we'll see, America has always

3:37

been threatened by and always

3:39

made legislation to damp

3:42

and drug use among Yeah,

3:44

it's pretty interesting when you dig into this stuff. And

3:46

so when

3:49

people started to get worried, Nancy

3:51

Reagan became concerned.

3:54

And when Nancy Reagan became concerned,

3:56

as as usual, she started to lie.

4:00

And we will we will get into what

4:03

allegedly might have happened and why

4:05

crack might have been introduced in this country

4:08

because some people think it was the U. S. Government

4:10

straight up c I A. Yeah,

4:13

that's a really um good point. So

4:15

what you're referring to is UM

4:18

Garry Webb's Dark Alliance article.

4:21

Yeah, series of articles in our book

4:24

from I believe. Garry

4:27

Webb was an investigative journalist for the San

4:29

Jose Mercury News, and

4:31

Um, they had a front page story where

4:34

he basically figured out the connection

4:36

between the CIA and the

4:38

crack epidemic that started

4:40

in I think in Los Angeles

4:43

south central. It was a dude named Freeway

4:46

Ricky Ross, who's still around I think, yeah.

4:48

Um, And he was the largest

4:52

cocaine distributor UH

4:54

African American cocaine distributor in

4:56

l A. He was big time, and

4:58

all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he

5:01

had a new product called crack and

5:04

it became very popular, very quickly.

5:07

UM, and Gary Webb in trace

5:09

the origin of this epidemic

5:12

back to through Ricky Ross, back

5:15

to some Nicaraguan freedom

5:17

fighting guerrillas that were

5:20

backed and trained and possibly

5:23

commanded by the CIA. We're

5:26

getting into this, so we just go ahead and dive

5:29

in. Yeah,

5:31

do you want to? Yeah? Why not? Um?

5:34

All right, here's the deal. In Nicaragua, Central

5:36

American country. UM, in the

5:38

nineteen thirties, man named

5:40

Anastasio uh Samosa

5:43

took power, and then about forty years

5:45

later, in nineteen seventy nine, the people revolted,

5:48

um overthrew him,

5:51

and they were called the Sandinistas.

5:54

Yes, so you know the whole Contra

5:56

Sandinista war in Nicaragua that raged

5:59

in the seventies and eighties, that's what we're talking

6:01

about. And the Sandinista's um,

6:04

we're a communist and that didn't fly

6:06

so well with the US, who would long

6:09

cherished Nicaragua for their farmland and

6:12

like to have a toe in their pond, so to speak.

6:15

And so communists and there didn't fly. And so

6:17

they said, you know what, I think maybe we should

6:19

fund the contrast maybe give them a little

6:21

bit of financial assistance. Yeah, And the contrasts

6:24

weren't just one group. They were it was like an umbrella

6:26

term for any democratic

6:29

or um

6:31

an anti communist group that

6:33

was trying to paramilitarily

6:35

overthrow the socialist leadership

6:38

in Nicaragua. That's right. So we decided

6:40

to help fund their civil war.

6:43

And UM, the problem was that there wasn't

6:45

a lot of dough like that we

6:47

could say, like, hey, let's use

6:49

this money to do this. Because it was a secret

6:51

war. There was no congressional approval.

6:53

It was a proxy war with the Soviet Union

6:56

at the time. So some allege

6:59

that this is when um, the Reagan administration

7:01

and the CIA got together to literally

7:04

introduce cocaine

7:06

dealers in cocaine H

7:10

two South Central and crack cocaine

7:13

to spread throughout the ghettos, to raise money

7:15

and use that money to fund the contrast. Right,

7:18

So here's the thing, like that was never

7:21

proven and Gary Webb never ever

7:23

said he did not He didn't say

7:25

that the government directly

7:27

introduced it on purpose or

7:29

with the aim of creating an epidemic

7:32

in the ghetto. He found connections between

7:34

the CIA and drug lords, specifically

7:38

Ricky Ross on one end, and

7:40

then the CIA backed impossibly

7:43

commanded UM, the

7:47

Nicaraguan Democratic Force,

7:50

the this contra force. UM,

7:54

it's so their their business. Their

7:57

group was funded entirely

7:59

from cocaine sales

8:02

in trafficking, and they all

8:04

went to this guy, Ricky Ross.

8:07

And there's no way that the CIA didn't

8:09

know about this. Yeah,

8:11

and there were at the time,

8:14

well we'll get back to web in a second. But UM, in

8:16

the eighties, there was you know, when

8:18

the whole Iron Contra thing broke out, there was the Carry

8:20

Committee who did some investigating.

8:23

The Carry Committee report, UH

8:25

from John Cary. Obviously, UM

8:28

found that quote the Contra drug

8:30

links included payments to drug

8:33

traffickers by the U. S. State Department funds

8:35

authorized by the Congress for humanitarian

8:38

assistance to the contrash.

8:40

And then later on there was an internal CIA investigation

8:43

in the nineties where they

8:45

found that there is no evidence that

8:48

UM, the CIA actually brought

8:50

drugs into the United States. UM.

8:53

However, and these these royal quotes. However,

8:56

during the Contra era, the CIA worked with

8:58

a variety of people to support the Contract

9:00

program, and let me be frank, there

9:03

are instances where the CIA did not

9:05

in an expeditious or consistent fashion

9:08

cut off relationships with individuals

9:10

supporting the contract program who are alleged

9:13

to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.

9:15

So basically, the internal investigation

9:18

said, well, there

9:20

might have been some people, we were dealing with it, we're doing

9:22

this, and as it turns out, we didn't

9:25

really do much about it. Right, So,

9:28

as far as you can go without hyperbole, and it's

9:30

still pretty shocking. Sure, the

9:33

CIA backed, trained,

9:35

and possibly commanded UM

9:38

at least one guerrilla group, the

9:41

Nicaraguan Democratic Force and

9:44

the Nicaraguan Democratic Force the

9:46

f d n UM

9:49

sold cocaine to Freeway

9:52

Ricky Ross. Freeway Ricky

9:54

Ross is where the crack epidemic originated.

9:57

And so just to finish up with web though Um,

10:00

after he wrote this Dark Alliance series, he was

10:03

shunned by mainstream

10:05

press in the United States. Sadly,

10:08

all three of the major newspapers.

10:11

Um, you know, the l A Times, New York Times, and

10:13

I guess was that Washington Post

10:15

came out and it was not only

10:17

shun they like tried

10:20

to discredit him. Oh yeah, they wrote articles

10:22

they put um seventeen reporters

10:24

in twenty words to a

10:26

three day rebuttal of Dark Alliance. That was

10:28

the the l A Times. Yeah. Rather than pick

10:30

up the story, they tried to demolish

10:34

it. And Webb New York Times

10:36

um suggested he was a reckless reporter

10:39

prone to getting his facts wrong. He already had

10:41

wanted pull a surprise at this point, I

10:43

think for something else, and

10:46

Um the Mercury News defended

10:48

it for a little while and then backed off

10:50

and apologized. He ended up quitting

10:53

and committed

10:56

a very weird suicide

10:58

in which he shot himself in the head twice.

11:02

Uh, who knows. Obviously, if

11:04

you get on the internet, there are tons of outlets

11:07

that say, well, obviously it's not a suicide. It was

11:09

a murder. Um

11:11

so who knows about that? Other other

11:14

people have said no, it does look

11:16

kinky, but the first shot wasn't fatal and

11:19

he was able to do it twice. Who

11:21

knows. Draw your own conclusions. It's some raw

11:24

nerve right there. But he claimed that there were people

11:26

like, you know, he saw

11:29

what he thought were c i A. People like

11:31

climbing up his fire escape and stuff the previous

11:34

days. And who knows.

11:36

All I'm saying is they're making a movie about it with Jeremy

11:38

Renner this summer. Oh is that right? Great?

11:41

Good? I'm glad he I

11:43

ran across him when I wrote an article on America's

11:46

Army. Jeremy Renner. Yeah,

11:49

he wrote an expose a America's army. Is this

11:51

Uh it's a video game and

11:54

it's basically like a training game for

11:56

the army where you can

11:58

play this free game. Um,

12:01

but you sign up to be contacted.

12:03

If you're any good at it, the Army contacts

12:05

you. And he did this. It's like

12:07

a recruiting tool through video games. But the

12:10

Army categorically denied that's what it was.

12:12

But that's obviously what it was. And Gary

12:14

Gary Webb, one of the last expose

12:17

as was on that, and you know, we

12:19

should mention that today all three

12:21

of those major news outlets all say, boy,

12:24

we kind of got that one wrong. Yeah,

12:26

um, we shouldn't have done that. Maybe

12:29

we shouldn't have driven Gary Webb to his possible

12:31

suicide. Um.

12:33

So, so Gary Webb did all this

12:36

investigation, did all this leg We're canning connect

12:38

to the dots pretty well, but

12:40

there's still this maddening question of tantalizing

12:43

question, who invented

12:45

crack? It came out of nowhere?

12:48

And so to kind of answer that, which we can't,

12:51

Um, you have to look at how

12:53

crack is made, and look at how crack

12:55

is made. You have to go back a lot further than the nineties.

12:58

You have to go back to the eight and eighties and actually

13:00

a little further before then, when cocaine

13:03

first was introduced to the United

13:05

States after it was isolated.

13:08

The alkaloid was isolated from

13:10

the coca plant in the mid nineteenth century.

13:12

Yeah, and that's when it was isolated in I

13:15

mean for centuries. People in

13:17

South America were wise to the

13:19

fact that if you chew on this plant, it'll

13:21

give you some go juice. You didn't

13:23

work more, yea, and people still chew

13:26

the heck out of it. Yeah, so it was it was

13:28

no secret to the South Americans. But like you said,

13:30

it was the mid eighteen eighties when it

13:32

was actually isolated and UM

13:36

became a narcotic, an

13:39

abused narcotic drug. Right. But first

13:41

UM you could buy it all over the place. You could

13:44

order it through catalogs. UM you

13:46

can, doctors could

13:48

prescribe it. Sigmund Freud was

13:51

an ardent prescriber of it

13:53

um and it was a very

13:56

popular drug found

13:59

in tonic cocacola for

14:01

real, that's not a myth. Um

14:04

and cocaine was. Everybody

14:07

loved it for a while, ye until

14:10

well not until they still loved it and

14:12

still do today, I imagine. But

14:15

in nineteen fourteen it was made illegal with

14:17

the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act and

14:20

UM right, which do you remember I said earlier

14:22

that like everything like this,

14:24

crack has a real history of um.

14:28

It shows the history of racism in

14:30

regards to drug laws. So

14:32

the Harrison Narcotic Act Um

14:35

outlawed opiates and cocaine

14:38

for the first time in the United States, and

14:40

it was based on concerns like

14:43

Chinaman were luring

14:45

white women there were to their to their

14:48

dens of iniquity in open Chinatown

14:51

through opium and Uh,

14:54

Southern blacks were

14:57

sniffing cocaine and it

14:59

gave them super him and strength, and they were raping

15:01

white women as a result. So those those

15:03

two things were past, and we have federal

15:05

legislation from as a result

15:08

of those kind of fears. And if you kind

15:10

of if you keep that in the back of your mind and

15:12

then pay attention to the drug policy that comes

15:14

out later on from crack, you'll it's

15:18

been going on since then and it continues

15:20

to today. Are you saying a pattern emerges, a

15:22

pattern emerges? So,

15:24

UH, cocaine is um. Cocaine

15:27

powder is you have to actually manufacture

15:29

it. You don't find a cocoa

15:31

plant and like not shake it and shake it and white

15:34

powder falls out. It makes like a tinkling

15:36

sound of the way. Uh. It is

15:38

made by dissolving the paste, the cocoa paste

15:41

um in a mixture of hydrochloric acid

15:43

and water. Then you had some potassium salt

15:46

separate out the bad junk, maybe

15:48

had a little ammonia, and then the

15:51

powder is separated out and you've got cocaine

15:53

powder cocaine and from there you can

15:55

sniff it. You can add a little water to it

15:57

and inject it. Yeah, or you can

16:00

something called free base. Yeah. I

16:02

never quite understood what free base was. I thought it was.

16:04

I thought free basing was a thing. It

16:07

is, yeah, but free base is also

16:09

and it's a noun aniverb Okay, so

16:11

you free base, free

16:13

base. Oh you

16:16

see, I've been doing it wrong. You verb the down

16:19

So he've been doing this

16:22

stuff doesn't work. I don't know what everybody's

16:24

so excited about. Um.

16:26

So with free base,

16:28

you take cocaine and you add

16:31

something highly flammable, say

16:33

ether um,

16:35

and you after

16:38

you dissolved the the cocaine in

16:40

an ammonia, you add ether to it. Then

16:43

you smoke it. But you're smoking something

16:45

that has like a highly flammable

16:47

solution involved. To Richard,

16:49

Parker. Yes, in night when he was

16:51

filming Busting Loose, he caught

16:53

himself on fire because he was he was

16:55

smoking free Base. He was smoking

16:58

free Base and drinking one if

17:00

do you want proof rome one night

17:02

and I think he was doing

17:05

it in his garage to which so it was

17:07

unventilated and he caught fire.

17:09

Yeah, but you know what, there's also reports that he set

17:12

himself on fire on purpose, that he

17:14

poured the stuff all over his head and lit a match.

17:16

Oh, we went a little little self immolation.

17:19

Um, I think that may

17:21

be the right story. Now. I just saw a documentary

17:23

on him, and I think that's what they say. I'm

17:26

so glad you just corrected me mid podcasts.

17:29

Do you have any emails you prevent? Well? I

17:31

mean that was the long stories that he free based,

17:33

and I think he even came out later and

17:35

said like, yeah, I was free basing, but I

17:38

also purposely set myself on fire in

17:40

the ravages of a free basing binge.

17:42

Okay, so free basing it

17:45

was a thing, at least as

17:47

early, but it was

17:49

it was difficult to do multi

17:52

step process and you needed something like

17:54

ether. Ether is not the easiest thing to get your hands

17:56

on and dangerous obviously, sure

17:59

um. But there was a way to smoke

18:02

cocaine, and free base was

18:04

the way to do it, but that never really got

18:06

a big foothold in any

18:08

demographic in the country. It was just kind of

18:10

a thing that some people like Richard Pryor

18:13

did right looking for a more intense high. I guess

18:15

then all of a sudden, mysteriously,

18:18

out of nowhere, there is crack cocaine.

18:20

Yeah, crack is also manufactured UM,

18:23

but it doesn't require something like either or

18:25

anything flammable. UM.

18:27

You dissolve it in a mixture of water and

18:30

either baking soda, sodium bicarbonate

18:33

UM, or ammonia, and

18:35

you boil it up, separate it out into the solid,

18:38

cool it down, and then break

18:40

it up and you've got your little white,

18:42

ish or tan crack rocks. And

18:45

if you buy it on the street, supposedly

18:47

they range in size from point one to point

18:49

five grams UM

18:51

and they contain the d

18:54

e A says between seventy five

18:56

and pure cocaine. So

18:58

it's quite a rush for you, sure um,

19:03

because it's so easy to make

19:05

crack from cocaine UM.

19:08

Like nobody imports cracked across the

19:10

border into the US. It's all coke that comes

19:13

into the US, and then Wesley

19:16

Snipes converts it into

19:18

crack uh and a factory

19:20

operated and run by naked people

19:22

because he doesn't trust them. What was that

19:24

new Jack City? Oh man,

19:28

I was like played, Yeah,

19:33

I forgot all about Jack City. That was great. And

19:36

they call it crack because it makes a crackling sound.

19:38

That's the baking soda when you

19:40

put the fire on it, and speaking you put

19:42

the fire on it. That's how you do it. Um,

19:44

you have a little I mean, there's different kinds of pipes,

19:46

but the most often crack pipe you

19:49

will see is the little straight shooter, a

19:51

little glass tube. Yep.

19:53

I find him on my dog walks in my neighborhood.

19:57

Yeah, crack is still around.

19:59

It's not like it when anywhere. Um

20:02

he thought, Oh they got that problem all

20:04

under control. Lickt uh.

20:06

So you you you know, you have the crack in one end and then

20:09

a filter of some kind like a steel wool or something

20:11

in the other. You heat it up with

20:13

your lighter, yeah, under

20:15

like on the outside of the glass tube or you can

20:17

I guess hit it with the flame. But I think if you light

20:20

it under the glass tube, that's

20:22

generally the way to do it. I think it vaporizes

20:24

it, that's right, and you smoke it and

20:26

um pretty much immediately, Uh,

20:30

you're gonna feel the effects. It's it's an immediate

20:32

rush that lasts only about ten or fifteen

20:34

minutes. And that's something that I didn't used to know. I

20:37

learned it a few years ago, but I had

20:39

no idea. I thought a crack high

20:41

was like, you know, a couple of hours

20:43

or something. No, I think it's one of the shortest ties

20:46

on the market, which is I guess why

20:48

it's so addictive and dangerous

20:51

rampant because you come down and you're like,

20:53

I'd like to do that again, exactly because it's

20:56

a short high, but it's also an extremely intense

20:59

high to so um.

21:01

Yeah, the the the it's

21:03

addictiveness or potential for addictiveness

21:05

is really high. Yeah. And so I

21:07

know this article summarized very nicely

21:10

for you exactly

21:12

how it reacts with the brain. And

21:14

so why don't you go ahead and just lay it on people?

21:17

Alright? It has to do a dopamine, as we know, Yeah,

21:19

dopamine. It's like your pleasure center

21:21

it's it's the the basis

21:23

of the reward system that we have, which

21:25

is how we learn to eat and how we learn

21:28

to have sex, to reproduce. Like

21:30

we we feel good when we do certain things,

21:32

we want to do it again, and the basis of that

21:34

is dopamine. So in the brain, the

21:37

way it functions normally is UH

21:39

neuron will release dopamine and

21:42

it will travel to a neighboring neuron,

21:44

causing it to fire and release a

21:47

pleasurable sensation. And then

21:50

that dopamine UH molecule

21:52

travels back to the original neuron

21:55

via a transporter and is reabsorbed.

21:57

So it does it's little thing and then goes back

22:00

home, and it's good. Right, there's

22:02

a certain finite amount

22:04

of pleasure humans are designed to

22:07

experience naturally because that when

22:09

we say reabsorbed, we said it said that a lot. I don't

22:11

think people understand that means basically,

22:14

it turns that off again. Right, It does

22:16

its thing, and it's done. It doesn't do

22:18

his thing and do its thing and do its thing and do its thing. It

22:20

does its thing once and goes back to the original

22:22

neuron exactly sits on the couch in

22:25

this little neuron waits to be released

22:27

again. Let me know when you have sex again or eat

22:29

something to some pizza. UM.

22:32

So with with

22:34

crack or other drugs that UM

22:36

target the dopamine system,

22:39

UM, they interrupt the process.

22:41

Crack specifically interrupts the process of

22:44

reuptake or reabsorption. So

22:47

you're you're smoking the crack, right,

22:50

and it triggers this dopamine release

22:53

flood. But crack

22:56

attaches to the transporter which

22:58

keeps the the dopamine

23:00

from being reabsorbed, which means

23:02

it's just floating around in the synapse, the

23:05

area between two neurons, like

23:07

hitting that one neuron again and again and

23:09

again, and it does it all

23:11

throughout the brain or all

23:13

throughout the ventral tegmental

23:16

area, and you have

23:18

this long or well not long, but you

23:20

have this very intense pleasurable sensation.

23:22

Right. So basically the re uptake, they just shut

23:24

that down. So you're out there on your own and then

23:27

floating around. Yes, your brain is

23:29

a big pleasure center. And then after

23:31

I guess five to fifteen minutes, like the crack

23:34

wears off in the dopamine is

23:36

taken up once more. That's right, and the

23:38

high is over and your are left going

23:41

I want to do that again, exactly. I

23:45

guess we should talk about some of the effects

23:47

of crack use. Um.

23:50

Obviously, just like with cocaine any kind

23:52

of stimulant like that or in phetamine, you're

23:54

gonna be at risk for heart attack. Yeah,

23:57

sometimes on the spot. And because you smoke

23:59

it too, like it has real, um,

24:02

real potential for problems with your respiratory

24:04

system and your cardio pulmonary system in general.

24:07

Yeah, stroke is also a risk. Um.

24:10

It's gonna make you very

24:12

energize at first. You might although your

24:14

senses may be heightened temporarily,

24:17

your heart rate is gonna shoot through the roof, your

24:20

pupils are gonna dilate, your temperature is gonna

24:22

rise. Um, you're

24:24

gonna be pretty anxious or irritable

24:26

as you start to come down, and

24:29

then you could be really aggressive

24:31

and you could, you know, be more prone

24:33

to start a fight with a cop, feel

24:36

like you have superhuman strength, or say some

24:39

crazy stuff to a passer by on the sidewalk

24:41

because you have and you have a went to a gunk on the

24:43

corners of your mouth. That's true.

24:45

Uh, if you have it with alcohol, that's

24:48

not a good combination, because that produces a

24:50

chemical called uh coca ethylene.

24:52

Yeah, lifts up like this is a thing.

24:55

It's like toxic, is I'll get

24:57

out. Well, it's the crack

24:59

or cocaine and alcohol, um

25:02

produce a third drug,

25:05

basically a hybrid drug that's

25:07

more than the sum of its parts. And

25:10

um, it creates a longer

25:12

lasting intense or high from

25:14

crack. Um. But it's

25:16

also really toxic to the liver,

25:19

really bad for you. Yeah, as

25:21

if alcohol itself wasn't. Yeah, And it's

25:23

not like you have to do anything to it or

25:25

to to get this thing. Like you just drink and

25:27

smoke crack and your body does

25:29

the rest. Your your metabolism

25:32

breaks the stuff down and creates this coca

25:34

ethylene and it's like alcohol

25:36

on cocaine.

25:38

Right. So,

25:40

as we said, it's super addictive. Um.

25:43

And of course all this stuff whenever

25:46

you hear about drugs being addictive, it's all dependent

25:49

on the person. Of course. One person might

25:51

smoke crack and never want

25:53

to do it again. One person might be hooked immediately.

25:56

Uh. It all depends on your your susceptibility

25:59

to addiction, which varies greatly

26:01

for sure. Um. I remember

26:03

learning when I was a kid that you smoke crack

26:06

once and you're addictive for life. Yeah.

26:08

I heard that about heroin too. Um. Yeah,

26:11

the but there is a

26:13

very high potential for abuse with crack

26:15

because it's long life. It's short,

26:18

short term, short high, but

26:20

an intense high. Yeah. And we don't want to

26:22

say, like crack it's not addictive,

26:25

but we don't want to spread the misinformation,

26:29

Yeah, which was really big in the eighties in the

26:32

in the Nancy Reagan War on Drug

26:34

era, Like a lot of misinformation was put out

26:36

there just to scare people. Um.

26:39

Yeah. So um, we're

26:42

talking about it being addictive. It's

26:44

addictive and because of the effect that

26:46

it has on dopamine, but it's

26:49

also deletrious to your health because

26:52

of the effect that it has on your dopamine reward

26:54

system. Well yeah, because

26:57

uh, and I know we've covered this in other drugs.

26:59

If you do enough drugs like this, um,

27:02

it rewires your brain to the point where

27:04

it just isn't working the same any longer. Your

27:07

brain has like something some sort of

27:10

sensor in there that's like, Okay, there's way

27:12

too much dopamine going on. This person should

27:14

not be feeling this much pleasure. So I'm

27:17

going to just stop producing as much dopamine

27:19

naturally don't need it. I'm going to destroy

27:21

the dopamine that's floating around in the synapsism,

27:24

going to reduce the level so that

27:26

when you now, when

27:28

you stop smoking crack, the the

27:30

letdown is way worse because

27:33

you don't have as much natural dopamine as

27:35

you did before you started smoking crack. And

27:38

um, so you're craving.

27:40

Your desire for crack to get

27:43

back up is much more intense,

27:45

much higher. Yeah, and here's the thing

27:47

with crack, which is a little weird. Um

27:50

many times you

27:52

need to smoke more and more of it because

27:54

of what you were just talking about, because

27:56

you need to get that high. But

27:58

sometimes it'll act so you make you more sensitive

28:01

to it, and you will get super

28:03

high off crack, even as an addict,

28:05

super quick, and you could

28:08

super die instantly.

28:11

Um, which I'm not sure if

28:13

they've reconciled how it can do both of

28:15

those things depending on who you are. Well,

28:17

I think it's the same thing. It's like, you know, some people

28:20

get addicted to it immediately and other people

28:23

take longer. Yeah, but I'm just talking

28:25

about how it affects you. But I guess it's the same with alcohol,

28:27

because some hardcore alcoholics

28:30

take a long time to get drunk and some get drunk like

28:32

really quickly. Yeah, so it gets this the same deal.

28:34

I guess I'd probably have to do with metabolism,

28:37

pantons metabolism, right, I guess

28:39

so. So. Um,

28:42

once you, once you are fully addicted, if

28:44

you stop smoking crack, which

28:47

by the way, I think I speak

28:49

for Chuck too, and I say we highly recommend

28:51

it if you smoke crack, to stop smoking

28:53

crack. Yeah, and if you haven't started yet,

28:56

then just keep that up. Yes, do not start

28:58

smoking crack, no reason to um

29:00

if you have are if it's if you

29:03

listen to this podcast after you became addicted

29:05

to crack. Um. If you withdraw

29:08

from crack, you're going to experience a

29:10

pretty big calm down in general, severe

29:13

depression, anxiety, cravings.

29:16

You're gonna be not fun to be around. You're

29:18

gonna be really irritable and anxious, um

29:21

and exhausted yet like agitated

29:25

all at the same time. Yeah. The good news is

29:27

that your brain will

29:29

eventually restructure itself

29:31

to return its dopamine

29:33

levels back to normal or somewhere near normal.

29:36

UM, So you won't be depressed or

29:38

withdrawn or anxious or irritated,

29:41

irritable for the rest of your life.

29:43

It's just while you're undergoing withdrawals.

29:46

That's what it's going to be like. And it won't be pretty.

29:48

It won't be pretty now. And there's no UM

29:51

medication designed to specifically

29:54

treat crack UM. And most

29:56

therapies are pretty

29:59

standard rehab

30:01

therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy,

30:04

which teaches you how to UM,

30:07

how to basically go through life resisting

30:09

the temptation of smoking crack,

30:11

how to disassociate

30:14

maybe UM triggers

30:17

like places you go just from

30:19

that lifestyle. Yeah, just to thecouple

30:22

your mentality from being

30:24

addicted. It's just standard

30:26

rehab treatment pretty much. And

30:28

we covered that like extensively in addiction.

30:31

And there's another type of treatment that I hadn't

30:33

heard of, UM called contingency

30:35

management. Had you heard of that? No? I hadn't.

30:37

Actually, it's apparently fairly popular

30:40

for crack treatment. Well what is it? Well,

30:42

basically it's UM you are rewarded

30:46

for not smoking crack, which I'm sure

30:48

goes over really well with Republicans.

30:50

Where's my reward exactly.

30:53

I haven't smoked crack ever, Well, you haven't been addicted.

30:55

You have to be addicted. So

30:57

um, the you're

31:00

given like a voucher or something, you make

31:02

it like thirty days you get a free movie ticket

31:04

or something, or like you're giving stuff to

31:06

um. Yeah, Incent not

31:09

doing crack, and I'm sure stuff that is

31:11

healthy, good for you distracts you from

31:13

thinking about crack. That kind of thing. I

31:16

hadn't heard of that before this article. Give

31:19

someone a movie ticket. You

31:21

know you did good

31:23

today by not smoking crack. Here's a movie ticket.

31:27

I always like the street terms. We should go over those real

31:29

quick, because street

31:31

terms, I think you're probably just made up by

31:33

the media. Yeah, you know, I

31:35

always feel like they probably just call it crack or

31:38

rock, right, or they call it bassa

31:40

or French fries or real tops

31:44

or glow glow. That's

31:46

like, um, wasn't that the drug? And

31:49

strangers with candy? Was Jerry

31:51

like rubbed on her gums and they call it like glow?

31:54

Probably that great um rock

31:56

san that's my favorite, hot

31:58

cakes, c d s. Where

32:00

is that candy? Sugar yam,

32:03

jelly beans. I guess they kind of makes sense. Jelly

32:06

beans and French fries makes sense. French

32:08

fries does, yeah, because I mean doesn't

32:10

it look kind of like little pieces of French

32:12

fries? Um,

32:14

Yeah, it's it's more. It makes more

32:16

sense than bostha. Well

32:18

that's or real tops

32:21

or here's one. There's no

32:23

way that anyone in the history of humanity

32:25

has ever called crack this

32:29

electric kool aid. Yea, they

32:31

got the wrong drug there, Yeah, that would be acid

32:33

from the famous book, Like, what is

32:36

that? I don't know. I think those are newspaper

32:38

writers who've never been on the streets. The

32:41

kids today are on the electric kool aid.

32:44

Uh. So. One thing that we talked about

32:46

about crack is the

32:49

weird sentencing um

32:52

laws dating back to nineteen

32:54

fourteen and up

32:57

until two thousand and ten, when

32:59

we past the Fair Sentencing Act. If you

33:01

were caught with one gram of crack cocaine,

33:04

you would get as much time as someone caught

33:06

with one hundred grams of cocaine

33:09

powder. Yes, and let's go back over this.

33:11

In a graham of cocaine

33:14

powdered cocaine cost a hundred dollars,

33:16

a hundred and fifty dollars, and it was

33:18

extraordinarily favored predominantly

33:20

by white people. Crack

33:22

comes along five to ten

33:25

bucks, cheap, intense, high um,

33:28

and it becomes favored

33:30

by African Americans statistically

33:32

speaking. Yeah, so some

33:35

might allege that the US government actually

33:37

had a hand in introducing crack to

33:39

the ghettos and then made

33:43

stiffer sentencing once people were addicted

33:45

to crack to put And I'm not

33:47

saying crack users are like awesome

33:50

people and people should do this, but it's

33:52

a non violent crime, and they were being

33:54

put in prison for the same amount

33:56

of time as white counterparts who may be raped

33:58

and murdered people hundred

34:00

to one ratio. To get caught with

34:02

a hundred times the powdered cocaine, to

34:06

get the same sentence as somebody

34:08

caught with a hundredth of

34:10

that amount of crack, they

34:14

were all well hold on. When there was one other thing too, There

34:16

were mandatory minimum sentences that were extraordinarily

34:18

harsh. Just getting caught with a little

34:20

bit of crack on you, any amount of crack, I believe

34:23

you got five years automatically, five

34:26

years that was the mandatory minimum for possession.

34:28

Five years in prison for nothing

34:30

else, Like you could just be walking down

34:33

the street and get caught with crack and

34:35

never have committed another crime in your entire

34:37

life, and you would get five

34:39

years in prison for that. And

34:41

that was from the Anti Drug Abuse Act,

34:44

of which screams

34:47

Nancy Reagan. Um.

34:49

And it was that was

34:51

a big deal. It was the law of the land until two thousand.

34:54

Yeah, and uh, finally Congress past the

34:56

Fair Sentencing Act, which reverted the ratio

34:59

to one to eight teen instead of uh

35:02

one to a hundred by weight, and

35:04

I got rid of that mandatory minimum.

35:06

And now Attorney General Eric

35:09

Holder is actually trying to

35:11

get some retroactivity in these sentences

35:14

and not trying to they are actually releasing

35:16

some people from prison. Um.

35:19

I remember we talked about that in the Presidential Partner

35:21

episode. That was something that a lot

35:23

of people were calling for, was blanket pardoned

35:26

non violent crack users

35:28

who had been busted under this these

35:31

mandatory minimums. Here's an idea rehab

35:33

somebody. But even still there's

35:35

still a skew in

35:37

the ratio between crack

35:40

and cocaine. Um.

35:42

Uh, probably arrest, no,

35:45

not not just that, the the

35:47

sentences, I guess, Yeah, it's still an eighteen

35:49

to one ratio. It used to be a hundred to one, but

35:51

it's still eighteen to one, and people are like, why

35:53

not just make it one to want? It's both it's cocaine

35:56

and it's cocaine exactly, Like, what's the problem

35:58

here. So, yeah, there's been a long history

36:00

of Um, I guess racism,

36:03

just put plane and simple. There's really no other way

36:05

to put it. Racism among

36:08

drug laws. Yeah, and since

36:10

they introduced the retroactivity releases,

36:13

they've reduced seventy sentences

36:16

for an average of twenty nine months per inmate

36:19

and saved American

36:21

taxpayers five and thirty

36:23

million dollars in the process. Um.

36:26

Other people will say, you're letting

36:29

drug offenders out on the streets. Why

36:31

are we doing this? And um,

36:34

so there are two sides. Obviously, opinion

36:36

lies that that story. We'd

36:38

be remiss if we didn't point out that people are upset

36:40

about it in some circles. Oh sure, it's not

36:42

like it's a it's a great idea, categorically

36:45

yeah, Um yeah, there's problems

36:48

with it for sure. Uh.

36:50

Can we talk about crack babies? Yeah? That was

36:52

another thing that came out of the eighties was the

36:55

so called crack baby. Like, there was a

36:57

huge part of this

36:59

crack epide. Mick wasn't just addiction. It

37:01

was babies being born addicted to

37:03

crack. And thanks to a

37:05

paper from by a guy

37:07

named Dr Ira Chasnoff, the

37:10

crack baby fear

37:13

started sweeping the nation. I

37:15

mean huge, man. There's a New York

37:17

Times video that you can

37:19

go watch, like ten minutes long called retro Reports.

37:23

Is that what it was called. Yeah, it was really good

37:25

and it basically kind of brought

37:27

and I remember now, you know, back in the eighties, Peter

37:30

Jennings on the nightly news saying that you know,

37:32

babies are and it's not Peter Jennings, of course, it's

37:34

whoever wrote the story. It was Peter Jennings Dan.

37:36

Rather it was People

37:38

Time Newsweek. It

37:41

basically saying these babies are being born addicted

37:43

to drugs. It will ultimately cost crack

37:46

babies will cost the United States five billion dollars.

37:48

Yeah, they were saying it was going to be a lost generation,

37:51

a nation of kids who are you

37:54

can't rehab. They're going to be the babies

37:57

or aloof They shake, they avoid eye contact,

37:59

they've void in contact with their own mothers,

38:01

which proves that they're going to be anti social

38:04

deviance when they grow up. And this

38:06

is not like we're not rewriting

38:08

history, man, it was like hardcore stuff that they were

38:10

saying it was gonna be uh

38:12

they were One quote was, um,

38:15

they will not be able to hold uh

38:17

to form to hold a job, or form meaningful relationships.

38:20

Right, So they were expected to completely overwhelm

38:22

the education system, maybe not even have an

38:24

IQ of fifty yeah,

38:26

and then completely overwhelmed social services.

38:29

So basically there was this this whole um

38:32

generation of kids that were expected to be totally

38:35

messed up because their mothers had smoke crack

38:37

while they were pregnant, and so

38:39

women were having their kids taken away from them.

38:42

Some women were arrested, and

38:44

um, the the guy, the

38:46

doctor who wrote the original paper, Dr

38:48

Ira chasin Off like started

38:51

to very quickly back off of the original

38:53

statements, which he is still today. Like

38:55

he admits like he was pretty mouthy and

38:58

not very savvy, pretty meat, a

39:00

naive, I guess you could put it. And he

39:02

said he would give these long winded statements

39:04

and then the press would just pick out like

39:06

the juiciest part and like this

39:08

guy single handedly created

39:11

the crack baby myth because

39:14

it never panned out in any way,

39:16

shape or form. And what they were saying was

39:18

like the twitchy babies that you're seeing

39:20

on TV when they're talking about the

39:23

the symptoms of being a cracked baby,

39:25

that's premature babies. Like you take any premature

39:27

baby who's premature for any reason, and

39:30

they're going to display these symptoms

39:32

that are supposedly associated with crack babies.

39:35

Yeah, they did. The US government sponsored

39:37

a twenty five year study of crack babies,

39:40

not a two year study or a five year study.

39:42

Twenty five years. They followed these babies up

39:45

into adulthood. Uh is now

39:47

over the funding ran out, and they

39:49

found that um

39:51

by age four, the average i Q of

39:54

cocaine exposed children was UH

39:57

seventy nine. The average i Q for the non expos

39:59

children was ade UM. When

40:01

it came to readiness at age six, about

40:05

in each group scored in the abnormal

40:07

range. Basically all of the findings

40:10

said, it's the

40:12

same as these other kids. But here's the

40:14

deal. They weren't doing the study against

40:17

crack baby babies and white suburban

40:19

kids. They were doing it against a like model,

40:21

which was other you know, poor

40:24

black kids basically that were not crack babies,

40:26

and they said they are all below average.

40:29

So the deal is is it's

40:31

poverty. Right, it's not crack cocaine.

40:34

They're scoring the same as non non crack

40:37

babies, and they're all scoring lower

40:39

because of poverty and and basically

40:42

bad postnatal care through

40:45

adulthood. Right, like you, you might not

40:47

have any problems physiologically

40:51

or not as not or

40:53

cognitively from being exposed

40:55

to crack in the womb, but if your mom's still

40:57

smoking crack after you're born, you're probably not

41:00

to get the best care from your

41:02

parents as possible.

41:05

Um. And they did find in that same study that

41:07

children that were being raised in like a supporting,

41:09

encouraging house, even in

41:12

um poverty stricken conditions, uh

41:14

tended to excel. So

41:17

um it is it's pop. It was poverty they

41:19

found out, and um postnatal

41:21

care like you said, and being born premature. But

41:24

yes, but the correct baby thing never happened.

41:26

It was another example of hysterics.

41:28

So right about now, I want to say,

41:32

if if it sounds like Chuck and I are being

41:34

cavalier, have been cavalier with the

41:37

idea of crack. Uh we're

41:39

not We're not being cavalier with crack or

41:41

addiction. That's nothing to take lightly.

41:44

But I think what's created

41:46

a bit of freneticness

41:49

or passion maybe in this one

41:51

is just this idea that we're able to look

41:53

back now thirty years on and

41:56

say, wow, like America was

41:58

genuinely hysteric coal and

42:03

it's it's something to be amazed by

42:05

and a little disconcerted with.

42:07

Two. Yeah, of course you should

42:09

not take cocaine or smoke crack when you're pregnant.

42:12

No doctor on earth is going to say that's a good thing.

42:15

But the crack baby was a myth. And the

42:17

one Emory professor that was in that New York Times

42:19

researcher in the New York Times video

42:22

came out and said, you know what, alcohol

42:24

does much more physical damage

42:27

and is much more widespread as

42:29

an abuse drug

42:31

during pregnancy than crack or

42:33

cocaine ever is. But

42:36

they're not lacking ladies up that

42:39

are pregnant for drinking. And the reason

42:41

they were doing it back then, it's because they were poor

42:43

black women. Right. Um, we should

42:45

say the crack epidemic. Also,

42:48

while the sentences were

42:50

stiffer, the the

42:53

amount you got caught with was a hundred

42:55

times smaller to get the same The

42:57

same rap is getting

42:59

caught with powdered cocaine. There

43:02

was something that came out of this crack epidemic

43:04

that was a real threat, and that

43:06

was the rise of the modern

43:09

um inter city gang, at

43:12

least as far as we know it. Like crips and bloods

43:14

and folks and all those guys, they

43:17

they came out of this era.

43:20

They were able to buy the

43:22

guns that they bought and fight the

43:24

turf force that they fought because

43:27

they had this incredibly addictive

43:30

drug that they could sell and control

43:32

pretty easily in their

43:34

hands all of a sudden. So

43:37

where that came from, who knows, but you

43:39

can all you can. The

43:41

big problem with the crack

43:43

epidemic that you can trace directly

43:45

back to it is the rise of the modern

43:48

gang drug gang.

43:51

So in summary, crack

43:53

whack, Yeah, crack babies,

43:57

crack sentencing laws, Why

44:00

back whack Gary

44:02

webb Um whacked

44:05

whack very

44:07

nice? I got nothing else perfect.

44:10

Well, since I said something perfect, I

44:13

am going to tell you to go ahead

44:15

and research crack more on

44:17

our website how stuff works dot

44:19

Com. One of our websites these days. Um,

44:22

you can type crack into the search bar and I'll

44:24

bring up this article. And since I

44:26

said search bar, it's time for a message

44:29

break, chuckers,

44:35

how about you take us out with some listener mail. All

44:39

right, this is from Rebecca and it is about

44:41

PTSD and UH

44:44

police chases. UM.

44:47

I've been a fan of you guys since the inception. I've

44:49

listened to every episode. I always wanted to write

44:51

in until now, I didn't have a reason.

44:53

Listening to the Police Chase podcast made me want to share

44:55

my story. Years ago, I was a victim of a

44:58

police chase. Some teenagers had

45:00

stolen a car and were pursued by the cops. I'm

45:02

not sure what caused them to pursue at high speeds,

45:05

but they did. The chase resulted in the

45:07

kids t boning my car when I was stopped

45:09

at a red light. The kids tried to take an

45:11

incredibly sharp turn. Essentially you

45:13

turn onto another road and they're going way too fast.

45:16

Um. The chase escalated to an on foot

45:18

chase. UM,

45:21

and it actually did end and arrests. I

45:23

ended up having to be cut out of the car with the jaws

45:25

of life only suffered

45:27

minor head injuries despite my car being totaled.

45:30

As a result of the incident, I began having anxiety

45:32

and PTSD symptoms that

45:34

were triggered by police irons and intense stress.

45:38

I had to receive treatment similar to some of what

45:40

you discussed in the PTSD

45:42

episode all as well. Now I

45:44

didn't take too long, UM with

45:47

therapy to overcome everything. I just wanted to share

45:49

the downside of police chases. I don't

45:51

think that incident required a high speed chase,

45:53

and the result could have been much moss worse.

45:56

I really wish that police would stop to think before they pursued

45:59

for minor crimes UH and

46:01

would get fined even or have some

46:03

sort of penalty for causing accidents within US

46:05

at five standards. And that is Rebecca.

46:08

Thanks Rebecca, I appreciate you sharing that.

46:10

Sorry that happened to you. I'm glad you're doing better. UM.

46:13

If you want to share a personal experience

46:16

from something that we have talked

46:18

about in this episode or another

46:20

one, you can tweet

46:22

to us. That's y SK podcast, Facebook

46:25

dot com, slash Stuff You Should Know Stuff

46:27

podcast at Discovery dot com, and

46:29

then check out our website. It's Stuff

46:31

you should know dot com

46:38

for more on this and thousands of other topics.

46:40

Is it how stuff works dot com?

46:49

Like a good neighbor, state farm is there

46:51

with eighteen thousand agents across the country

46:53

who are ready to help you. Seven three.

46:57

That's getting to a better state.