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News

Miami's vice
Crack cocaine is almost dead in many cities, but immigrants, suburbanites and teenagers have kept it alive in South Florida.
By Art Levine
[05/11/99]

Fixin' under Nixon
A new book examines Richard Nixon's progressive drug policies and the deevolution of the war on drugs.
By Lori Leibovich
[05/11/99]

Beijing journal
An American student watches the not-so-spontaneous uprising against NATO and the U.S.
By S.H.
[05/10/99]

Milosz: Peaceful coexistence is still possible in the Balkans
The Nobel Prize-winning poet, whose own country was devoured by its powerful neighbors, supports the NATO attacks -- and holds out hope for the future.
By Tamara Straus
[05/10/99]

Stop this war
Clinton and his leftist buddies in NATO are squandering our money and our military credibility in the Balkans.
By David Horowitz
[05/10/99]

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When reporters discovered crack in the mid-1980s, coverage of the "epidemic" soon eclipsed all other stories from inner-city America. Newsweek called crack the most significant story since Vietnam and Watergate; Time labeled it the "issue of the year" in 1986. In the period from October 1988 through October 1989, the Washington Post alone ran 1,565 crack stories. Suddenly this new form of cocaine, a drug whose addictive properties were compared to potato chips by Scientific American in 1983, was, according to Newsweek, "the most addictive drug known to man." U.S. News and World Report called the crack problem "a situation experts compare to medieval plagues" and "the number one problem we face."

Miami's vice Crack cocaine is almost dead in many cities, but immigrants, suburbanites and teenagers have kept it alive in South Florida. By Art Levine Fixin' under Nixon A new book examines Richard Nixon's progressive drug policies and the deevolution of the war on drugs. By Lori Leibovich

But even at its height, the drug that President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan said was killing "a whole generation of children" was never sampled by many people outside the world of adults who were already heavy drug users. There never was a new generation caught in the web of a brand new drug.

In fact, illicit drug use had reached its peak in 1979 to 1981 and then begun falling before the crack hysteria began. Crack-use rates also began to decline -- almost as soon as they could be measured. As early as 1986, survey data showed that more than three out of four people who tried the drug that newspapers and television shows had said caused "instant addiction" never used it again.

Though the crack threat to the nation was oversold, the trade in the drug and the chaos it caused certainly did severely damage communities where it was sold on the streets. Crime rose dramatically and the suffering of families whose members became involved in using and selling was profound. At its peak, the number of young arrestees who tested positive for crack use reached 70 percent in New York City, and the murder rate in the city doubled between 1985 and 1990, driven largely by turf wars among crack dealers.

By 1991, however, a few reporters and survey researchers began to notice that the media-fed fears that crack and crime would rise forever were unwarranted. In 1993 and 1994, the Washington Post ran two major stories detailing what has come to be called the "younger sibling" effect: Kids who saw their older siblings and parents get in trouble with crack use and sales didn't want to try it themselves. Rappers began to glorify reefer and "chillin'" rather than dealing and the "gangsta" life.

By the early '90s, many crackheads of the '80s had simply aged out. Meanwhile, researchers discovered that crack babies weren't doomed -- in fact, fetal alcohol syndrome does far more lasting damage. And younger siblings of the crack generation, chastened by the family destruction wrought by the drug, turned the word "crackhead" into a devastating insult. They certainly didn't aspire to smoke or sell it. In many cities, falling teen birth rates and infant mortality rates are seen as evidence of the end of the crack epidemic.

Crack "epidemic" stories disappeared almost as suddenly as they had appeared. In 1989, 64 percent of the public had said that drugs were the most serious problem facing the nation. But by 1990, when media focus shifted to the economic problems and layoffs related to a major recession, only 10 percent found drugs to be the No. 1 problem.

The next time we heard about crack it was in the context of police officers and politicians taking credit for having solved the crime problem with their "zero tolerance" on low-level offenders and tougher sentences. The media bought it for the most part, particularly in New York, giving Mayor Rudy Giuliani the lion's share of the political credit for crack and crime reduction.

Next page | A moral panic