Crack and crime in the USA
Crack and crime in the USA
In the early 1980s, massive oversupply of cocaine to the USA from the Caribbean through the port of Miami led to a fall in price of up to 80%, something dealers were not prepared to put up with. This led to the decision by dealers to convert this powder cocaine, which they often held huge quantities of as it would not sell, into smokeable crack, which could be sold more cheaply to more people. Per unit it was even cheaper than cocaine to produce, and by 1984, the year crack took off in a big way in large cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles it was selling for $2.50 a hit.
Crime
The “crack epidemic”, as it is known, lasted roughly ten years, from 1984 to around 1994. In this time, the murder rate for black males aged between 14 and 24 roughly doubled. According to research by Sudhir Venkatesh, an American sociologist, a crack dealer working for four years had a roughly 25% chance of being murdered on the job, either by addicts desperate for a fix, or by rival gangs keen to prevent others gaining a foothold in a lucrative market within the inner cities. During this time it was also likely the same crack dealer had been arrested six times, and earned an average wage of $3.30 an hour.
The sharp uptick in these crime levels was largely because crack was a problem for the inner cities. Poverty and unemployment led many to purchase crack ahead of other varieties of high, but its addictive and cheap nature meant habits formed and the money had to come from somewhere – so thefts, robberies and muggings increased, along with the violence associated with gang activities in a booming market. In the USA, the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, 60% of the people sent to prison or jail in 1996 were on drugs charges.
Aftermath
The crack epidemic never really “ended”; usage continues to this day, but a lot of users have moved onto cheaper highs like crystal meth and other designer drugs. The crack market is no longer booming, and crime by addicts and gangs is no longer as much of a problem. Many say that the epidemic was grossly blown out of proportion by the media in a moral panic; and also that crack, which tended to be a problem for low-income, inner-city black people, was treated in a fundamentally racist manner by the white-controlled American media. However, from the mid 1990s, crime levels in America began to fall again for a variety of reasons discussed at length elsewhere.
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