Crack Cocaine Research Paper

"Cocaine and crack are among the most addictive substances known to modern science, and they have already ruined the lives of millions of Americans" (Morganthau and Miller, 208). Cocaine and crack are both dangerous, harmful drugs. Though pleasurable effects can be obtained from these drugs, the use of crack and cocaine cannot be worth the actual consequences that are inflicted on mind and body. The bad effects of these drugs, by far outweigh the good. Because crack and cocaine are so closely related, it is important to have a firm understanding of both drugs.

The short term effects of the crack includes: higher breathing rate, elevated blood pressure, soaring heart rate, compressed blood vessels, lack of appetite, dilated pupils, extreme euphoria for both casual and heavy users. The long term effects are the following: depression, violent, fearful performances, hallucinations, bad temper, psychosis, heart attack/stroke, sterility (for both men and women), brain convulsion, respiratory malfunction and even death for heavy users! Since crack cocaine is exceedingly addictive, addicts can easily build up tolerance and become addicted in a short time by smoking it constantly. There are many ways to take crack cocaine. Users can smoke through a hand pipe or a water pipe, snort, infuse through vein, or they can combine crack with marijuana, heroin etc (University Of Maryland). While taking crack, users face plenty of risks like: coughing, respiratory bleeding, out of breath, paranoia, lung trauma and many more (“Crack cocaine facts”). Dealers shipped crack cocaine from the Bahamas and the Caribbean to Miami, where the dealers would sell it for lower incomes (“A Complete History of Crack Cocaine”). Anyone can be addicted to crack cocaine – from adults to teens. Crack cocaine is most rampant in urban regions but addicts from rural areas can also be seen. Crack is highly addictive because a user trying for the first time becomes addicted to it and he uses it many times throughout the day. A single dosage is inexpensive but a crack

In 1982 the crack epidemic started, which shortly after Ronald Reagan expanded the war on drugs that Nixon started, one of his top aides admitted that the war on drugs was used to “target African Americans and hippies”. The number of incarcerations before the war on drugs was expanded in 1980 was four thousand seven hundred forty-nine for drug related crimes, in 1990 that number increased to twenty-four thousand two hundred ninety-seven, sixty percent of those incarcerations were African Americans (sentencingproject.org). If you were caught with one gram of crack you got the same sentencing as someone found with eighteen grams of cocaine, it was policies like these that targeted lower income black communities because crack was much cheaper than cocaine and was more likely for a white person to have cocaine.

American people identified the War on Drugs was launched to combat the crack crisis. However, Alexander claims that the crack crisis emerged some years after the War on Drugs was launched. She argues that negative racial stereotypes surrounding the crack crisis were widely dispersed on media. Reagan administration intensified a campaign to gain public and legislative support to the drug war in 1985. Suddenly media was saturated with images of black “crack whores” “crack dealers” and “crack babies” (p.5). There was a widespread discourse that crack crisis was a problem of the poor black neighborhoods. Thus, it was created and constantly reinforced the idea that African American people are drug addicts and dangerous. It is not surprising to know white people that is scared of black people. Moreover, in case you argue to someone that is scared of black people that s/he is being racist, they will claim that statistics prove that many African American are in prison due to drug issues.

They are offered so little educational opportunities within their community as well as the concept that blacks receive harsher sentences than whites and recidivism is almost certain, due to the lack of jobs within black communities. Angela Davis demonstrates this perfectly in her book Are Prisons Obsolete, where she discusses her involvement in anti-prison activism as well as the increase in prison systems, focusing on California prisons which had claimed thirty percent of the African American population in 2002. A surprising amount of blacks are thrown into prison each year for possession of 5g of crack while a significantly smaller number of whites go to prison for cocaine with a higher possession quantity. Which is ironic since crack and cocaine are the same drug with relatively little difference. Also highly intriguing is the sentencing received for crack and cocaine. Whereas, the possession of crack is an average sentence of 115 months, but the carrying of cocaine has a much lesser sentence of 87 months. With this in mind, it is an undeniable concept that blacks are solely being targeted in drug arrests and are being put into the prison system daily, while a low amount of whites are being convicted of the same

African American are some of the most affected by the opiate crisis. When it comes to the opiate crisis in the United States, most people have a mental image of who the most commonly affected type of people affected by this epidemic. Back in the day, in most people’s minds, the ‘‘typical” junkie was a white person shooting up heroin under a bridge in the middle of a city, in the outskirts of town, or they were the homeless man or woman asking you for spare change when you’re walking out of a grocery store. Over time, the ‘typical’ addict has changed. Now, a lot of white kids from suburban communities who got hooked on painkillers and subsequently got onto heroin, such as your high school athlete or your studious 20- somethings in college. That’s

The origins of the problem can be traced back to the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when the use of crack and cocaine had become

This paper explores drug abuse as a problem that crosses ethnic lines for all Americans and translates to a major problem for all society. The articles used show the impact of drug abuse and how it is felt by all Americans. As a result of this paper, the author has discovered the institutional response to drug abuse and how it is felt disproportionately among the poor and among African Americans and Hispanics. According to the research it was discovered from a global survey data from the World Health Organization, that Americans are more likely to try illegal drugs than anyone else in the world. Approximately forty-two percent of American adults have tried marijuana and Americans are also number one in terms of annual prescription

The disparity among young adults who use drugs in the United States of America has been highly an intense topic of studies. The article "Health Disparities in Drugs and Alcohol Use Disorder" was written by a group of researchers who study the racism and the ethnicity of pervasiveness of substance use disorder in youth during their twelve years after incarceration. The authors ways of reason on how the black youth are more likely to be arrested of using drugs even though non Hispanic Whites have the highest chances of consuming amount of drugs. This is relevant to my topic therefore I will be using this towards my essay to show the rhetoric, logos.

Before we thought of the question, we recalled why we chose the topic and wondered why drugs would be an important topic in Main South. In the end, we realized we wanted to know how drugs became important, not just why. To not only learn about the negative drug effects on the many adults located in Main South, but also the youth, since we were included within that group too.

African American youth today appear to be one of the highest grossing substance users in the United States. According to SAMHSA (2016) “The rate of illegal drug use in the last month among African Americans ages 12 and up in 2014 was 12.4%, compared to the national average of 10.2% (p.1). In today’s society, at- risk youth are usually at the top of every conversation. As the impoverished communities continue to diminish, substance use continues to progress. In these socioeconomic areas, that are challenged financially, research has shown that we begin loosing this category of youth essentially from the day they are born through avoidant attachment or insecure attachment.

Cocaine is extracted from coca leaf. People started using it 3000 years before the birth of Christ. They chewed the leaf when they were on the mountain. Nowadays, cocaine is used as the drug, and it is banned in a lot of countries in the world.

In the 1980s, the criticizers of the American criminal-justice system complained that the penalties for possession of crack cocaine were far more severe than the penalties for possession of powder cocaine. Powder cocaine users were typically white, while Crack cocaine overpowered urban black communities in America. The federal government wanted to cleanup the problem by ordering severe prison sentences for those people

Literature presented in this review reflects research conducted during the past five years, 2007 - 2011, and addresses the phenomena of adolescent substance abuse in the African American demographic. Additionally, this literature review will address documented causes of adolescent substance abuse as presented by psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, government officials, urban-policy researchers, addiction counselors and human service professionals. Opposing views will be presented by various experts on the subject of substance abuse among the African American adolescent population. This review will further address current theories, studies and perceptions of the magnitude of the impact of substance

Cocaine’s impact on modern society according to the United States Department of Justice says, how only 1% of cocaine is used on an everyday basis by college-aged students. Furthermore, they say that the casual use is much higher because within the last year 5.1% of college-aged students consumed cocaine. However, nothing can really be done to change these percentages because due to the 20th century this illegal drug, as some others, have become legal in the United States therefore, trying to prevent this drug is something that can’t be accomplished.