Don't forget that drug laws are often racist e.g. cocaine possession carries a lesser punishment than crack, cannabis is a schedule 1 substance, etc. This goes some way to explaining the legal rationale.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

The rest can be found on the Nixon tapes. :)

[–] sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How is this racist? I don't doubt that you're right but I'm not understanding what makes that racist. Are black people significantly more likely to have crack than cocaine or something? At first glance it seems logical to me that cocaine has less of a punishment than crack, but that's based off of a somewhat limited understanding of the effects of the two drugs.

[–] mdurell@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Crack and cocaine are the same drug! From https://americanaddictioncenters.org/cocaine-treatment/differences-with-crack: "Pharmacologically, cocaine and crack are the same substance."

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They are the same pharmacologically, but the effects between snorting and smoking vary greatly.

Regular cocaine powder is cocaine hydrochloride. Crack is made by mixing cocaine hydrochloride with ammonia and then burning off the hydrochloride which makes it a freebase. People don't smoke regular cocaine until it has been turned into freebase. Smoking cocaine powder is just wasteful compared to snorting it.

Smoking crack results in a more rapid absorption into the bloodstream—compared to snorting the powder. Therefore, the effects are more rapid and quicker to dissipate than if someone just snorted cocaine.

Crack is cheaper than powder cocaine, because crack has less cocaine per dose, and is still very potent. So poorer areas get flooded with crack, as no one can afford to be addicted to cocaine powder in the lower class.

So, in conclusion, it is absolutely discriminatory to have harsher punishment for crack than cocaine. Even if crack is more potent, it has less illegal substance in it by weight than cocaine powder does.

[–] tuwwut@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The racist associations between crack and black people are rumored to actually be an intentional thing. The US government says the allegations have no merit, but the CIA has been accused of funneling large amounts of crack cocaine into the black neighborhoods of LA. Here's one article about it on a .gov but you can find many other sources on google: THE CIA-CONTRA-CRACK COCAINE CONTROVERSY Relevant quote from the original source accusing them:

For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.

This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack" capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.

[–] electrorocket@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Air America is a decent movie about another CIA drug ring.