Crack cocaine

Crack cocaine is a form of cocaine.

Crack cocaine, often nicknamed "'crack or "rocks"'," is believed to have been created during the early 80s and is popular in many areas because it is much cheaper than its close cousin, cocaine.

Due to the dangers of using ether to produce pure freebase cocaine, cocaine producers began to omit the step of removing the freebase cocaine precipitate from the ammonia mixture. Typically, filtration processes are also omitted. The end result of this process is that the cut, in addition to the ammonium salt (NH₄Cl), remains in the freebase cocaine after the mixture is evaporated. The “rock” that is thus formed also contains a small amount of water. Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is also preferred in preparing the freebase, for when commonly "cooked" the ratio is 50/50 to 40/60 percent cocaine/bicarbonate. This acts as a filler which extends the overall profitability of illicit sales. Crack cocaine may be reprocessed in small quantities with water (users refer to the resultant product as "cookback"). This removes the residual bicarbonate, and any adulterants or cuts that have been used in the previous handling of the cocaine and leaves a relatively pure, anhydrous cocaine base.

When the rock is heated, this water boils, making a crackling sound (hence the onomatopoeic “crack”). Baking soda is now most often used as a base rather than ammonia for reasons of lowered stench and toxicity; however, any weak base can be used to make crack cocaine. Strong bases, such as sodium hydroxide, tend to hydrolyze some of the cocaine into non-psychoactive ecgonine.

The net reaction when using sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃, common baking soda) is:

Crack is unique because unlike other forms of cocaine which tend to be extremely expensive, crack comes in small and low-priced packages. In the United States, crack cocaine is often sold in small, inexpensive dosage units frequently known as a "blast" (equivalent to one hit or a dollars worth), “nickels”, “nickel rocks”, or "bumps" (referring to the price of $5.00), and also “dimes”, “dime rocks”, or "boulders" and sometimes as “twenties”,"dubs", “solids", "slabs" and “forties.” The quantity provided by such a purchase varies depending upon many factors, such as local availability. A twenty may yield a quarter gram or half gram on average, yielding 30 minutes to an hour of effect if hits are taken every few minutes. After the $20 or $40 mark, crack and powder cocaine are sold in grams or fractions of ounces. At the intermediate level, crack cocaine is sold either by weight in ounces, referred to by terms such as "eight-ball" (one-eighth of an ounce) or "quarter" and "half" respectively. In the alternate, $20 pieces of crack cocaine are aggregated in units of "fifty pack" and "hundred pack", referring to the number of pieces. At this level, the wholesale price is approximately half the street sale price.

Appearance

The color of crack cocaine depends upon several factors including the origin of the cocaine used, the method of preparation – with ammonia or sodium bicarbonate – and the presence of impurities, but will generally range from white to a yellowish cream to a light brown. Its texture will also depend on the adulterants, origin and processing of the powdered cocaine, and the method of converting the base. It ranges from a crumbly texture, sometimes extremely oily, to a hard, almost crystalline nature.

History & Culture

Crack is available throughout most of the world. In the United Kingdom it is currently a prevalent street drug. It is mostly unknown in Australia and New Zealand.

History & Culture in the United States

Crack cocaine was extremely popular in the mid- and late 1980s in a period known as the Crack Epidemic, especially in inner cities, though its popularity declined through the 1990s in the United States. There were major anti-drug campaigns launched in the U.S. to try to cull its popularity, the most popular being a series of ads featuring the slogan "The Thrill Can Kill".^[1] There has been an increase in popularity within Canada in recent years, where it has been estimated that the drug has become a multi-billion dollar industry.

While insufflated powder cocaine has an associated glamour attributed to its popularity among mostly middle and upper class whites (as well as musicians and entertainers), crack is perceived as a skid row drug of squalor and desperation. The U.S. federal trafficking penalties deal far more harshly towards crack when compared to powdered cocaine. Possession of five grams of crack (or over 500 grams of powder) carries a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment in the US.^[2]

In popular culture, "crack" has become a byword for addiction. Other habit-forming substances and activities are often jokingly compared to crack; for example, the BlackBerry wireless email device is commonly called a "CrackBerry." People are commonly referred to as having "their crack," such as "Coke is my crack."

External references

• EMCDDA drugs profiles: Cocaine and Crack (2007)

• Links to external chemical sources

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