High Price

by Carl Hart

  But I did care about my social status a great deal. Though from the outside, it might have looked as though I was heedless of consequences, I wasn’t. Rather than declining to smoke, I took what seemed in my mind like a logical step to reduce the harm that might come from getting caught: I enrolled in my first college classes.

  Ironically, it was my weed smoking that prompted this, not my consciousness-raising friend Mark. My thought was that if I got caught and discharged, at least I’d have a good start on my education before that happened. And that way, I wouldn’t let Brenda and my other sisters down so much. Though that was obviously not the intended outcome of the military’s drug testing policy, it did turn out to have positive results for me, if only in this indirect way.

  So, although Mark influenced my thinking more, it was, oddly enough, the weed-smoking brothers who got me started in genuine higher education. On base, courses were offered by Central Texas College. One of the first classes I took was algebra. I figured that I could build on my math skills and aim for a degree in accountancy or something similar.

  This was, I later learned, another example of motivation relying on behaviors that get reinforced and rewarded. I’d been praised and had had early success at math, so I knew I could do it. I’d experienced the pleasure that could come from this myself. My very presence in the air force was one of the rewards for my math aptitude, though, of course, it didn’t always seem like one. I also probably chose to take algebra first because I did not want to get discouraged if I tried something new, worked hard, and did not manage to do well. And, as it turned out, I easily got a B.

  That gave me confidence when I began to take other classes that I was less sure I’d be able to ace, like Human Resources. For that class, I had to write papers. Though I suspect now that they were pretty bad, I had a friend type them for me and was readily able to get another B. Even in my first year of college, I had no idea that I’d eventually end up as a scientist, studying the complex and challenging human brain itself, no less.

  Outside of the classroom, however, I continued to dislike Okinawa. About once a month, Keith, Bobby, Billy, and I would drive up to the top of a hill near the base’s high school, with a breathtaking view out over the island of Okinawa. We’d sit in my Honda Accord or in Bobby or Billy’s Toyota, smoke, and talk about our plans for when we got back to “the world.” We felt as isolated from events back home as we would have been on another planet. Alternatively, we’d go to Gate 2 Street, which was as bustling and chaotic as New York’s Canal Street, and around once a week, we’d steal the latest VHS movies to watch on Billy’s VCR. As a result, I’m deeply familiar with most Hollywood films of 1984–1985.

  The rest of my free time was spent working out or hanging with Mark. He introduced me to a book called Bloods, by Wallace Terry, which detailed the maltreatment of black soldiers in Vietnam, in frequently horrifying first-person accounts. That made me think back to the stories I’d heard from Paul, whose memories had seemed so vivid and inescapable. Fortunately, during my time in the service, we were not at war.

  Indeed, war was so far from my mind during my time in the air force that the only time I was required to patrol with an M16 to defend my base, I was outraged. That was later, when I was stationed in England. We had bombed Libya in 1986 in response to a terror attack on a German disco frequented by American soldiers. The planes that refueled the bombers came from the base where I was serving; I threatened to call my congressman about this onerous antiterrorism duty when I was made to do it. Of course, my fellow airmen just laughed. I was lucky not to have faced anything like the combat duty those brothers did.

  Mark turned me on to jazz as well. When he played Ella Fitzgerald, I was surprised at his choice of records. I’d always thought that her voice had belonged to a white woman. Mark explained that Fitzgerald’s singing might have been dubbed into films starring white actresses, creating that impression and hiding the true source of her glorious sound.

  And when Bob Marley sang about freeing our minds from mental slavery in “Redemption Song,” I recognized a kinship and a truth. I thought about my own unspoken struggles with a sense of inferiority because of how dark my skin was. I’d always known that those thoughts were racist and morally abhorrent, of course: that was obvious on a conscious level. Still, I had truly thought that that stuff had rolled off my back, and I was outwardly more than confident. I felt unscathed.

  Of course, it really is impossible to grow up in a world that despises people who look like you and not succumb to secret self-doubt at times. It quietly eats away at you, with a corrosive shame that is extremely difficult to extinguish because it goes unexpressed. This was especially true for someone like me, who was so devoted to being seen as cool and above it all. So “Redemption Song” moved me. And when Marley described how we were stolen from Africa to be placed into slavery in America in the song “Buffalo Soldier,” it got me thinking about the heinous crime at the root of America’s relationship with my people.

  I felt like I wasn’t alone for the first time; the sources of my pain had been named and were shared, after all. Moreover, undeniably brilliant and talented people had felt similarly. Even they were fighting the same demons, both from within and without. They had often themselves literally been hidden from view, like Ella Fitzgerald’s voice appearing to emanate from the mouth of a white woman.

  Gil Scott-Heron was another artist I discovered through Mark. His lyrics were intensely inspiring to me. I bought every album he’d ever put out and listened carefully to each song. When he skewered America’s commercialism and the commodification and co-optation of rebellion in “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” I felt like my world and experience were being expertly dissected and explained for the first time. The inanity of concerns like the soap operas that were always in the background back home was emphasized in lines like “women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day.” The way television and commercial concerns about the right brand of products anesthetized us was not something I’d ever considered previously. My mind was opening.

  From Scott-Heron I also learned about civil rights leaders like the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, mentioned somewhat disparagingly in another line of that song. And songs like “No Knock” taught me what I really should have already known about how unannounced police searches lead to abuse of power. It referenced the death of Black Panther Fred Hampton. Hampton was becoming prominent as an organizer in the 1960s, initiating free breakfast programs for children, arranging truces between major gangs, and leading unified actions against police brutality.

  The J. Edgar Hoover–led FBI was so threatened by the Black Panthers and his leadership that they assassinated him, firing more than ninety bullets into his apartment while he lay in bed with his pregnant girlfriend. That no-knock raid occurred in 1969.1 The FBI’s racism and constitutional violations in the killing were so egregious that his family and that of another Panther who was also killed were ultimately awarded nearly $2 million. (The cost to the taxpayer of this and other regularly occurring examples of institutionalized racism is substantial.)

  Listening to Scott-Heron’s music, I felt that Mark and I weren’t the only living black people who found materialism empty and longed for meaningful change. Here was a major recording artist, someone who got mainstream attention, not just some cat talking shit in the hood, who was saying what we all knew to be true. Here was a man who, Mark stressed, had a master’s degree and had written a novel before turning twenty-one. This was not some random guy who just passed along street rumor, but a genuine scholar, someone who was highly educated and really knew history. That inspired me, and pushed me forward at times when I later thought about quitting school. And with brothers who dug Gil Scott-Heron, I felt like I’d finally found my people.

  Back home, however, conditions were getting worse. The no-knock raids of the 1960s became even more prevalent over time: with the war on
drugs as their rationale, by 2006, there were more than forty thousand military assaults on homes every year, with SWAT teams typically entering with no warning. Most of them occurred in black neighborhoods. In some of the tragic cases, police raided the wrong address and innocent people were killed.2

  But, unfortunately, while I was just starting to understand a few things about black history and about who our enemies really were, I was also beginning to fall under the sway of some terribly misinformed ideas about drugs that were being spread for political reasons as a response to the so-called crack epidemic. I’d first become aware of the rise of cocaine during the home leave I took before I’d been sent to Japan.

  I had received almost a hero’s welcome when I returned home after completing basic training and what the air force calls “technical school.”

  My sisters were beaming, as proud of my achievement as I’d hoped they would be. I’d kept up with many of my high school girlfriends with those letters I’d written to keep my status up at mail call. I got to see all of them and hang with my friends. I was on top of the world.

  It was Christmas 1984 and I was both glad to be home and glad I was not yet done with my travels and education. Just being away for such a short time had given me a new perspective on my neighborhood. But I wasn’t yet able to accurately interpret how drugs like cocaine and the harsh drug policies that were starting to be adopted in its name affected my hometown. I did observe changes, however.

  Although crack wasn’t yet big in Miami, powder and freebase cocaine had already become quite popular by December 1984. As far back as July 1981, Time magazine had called cocaine “A Drug with Status and Menace” in a cover story illustrated by a martini glass full of sparkling powder. Newsweek connected cocaine to champagne, caviar, and other icons of wealth that same year. Eric Clapton’s cover of J. J. Cale’s “Cocaine” had been a major hit even earlier, back in 1977. Little gold or silver coke spoons had begun appearing around celebrities’ necks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, along with winking (and some blatantly obvious) references in popular culture, especially Saturday Night Live, then at the peak of its popularity.

  In the black community—as was true at the time for whites as well—cocaine had long been seen as a rich man’s drug. But the price began to come down as the supply increased. This was especially true in Miami, which was a key shipping point where the drug came in from South America to be distributed to the rest of the country.

  In the 1970s, marijuana had been the major Latin American illegal drug export to the United States. Miami was a major transshipment point. However, the use of the American military to interdict cannabis headed for America helped produce a shift to growing and selling the less bulky, more profitable, and easier to hide cocaine. Beginning in the late 1970s, the price of cocaine dramatically dropped for at least a decade, as the market became glutted.3 The “rich man’s” drug was about to become available to almost everyone. The South American marijuana trade began to collapse, but at the cost of creating a much more lucrative cocaine business.

  I should explain here a bit of chemistry and pharmacology that is important to understanding the major distinctions between powder and crack cocaine, as well as many of the incorrect assumptions that have been made about these forms of cocaine and their effects. Powder cocaine is chemically known as cocaine hydrochloride. It is a neutral compound (known as a salt) made from the combination of an acid and a base, in this case, cocaine base.

  Figure 1. Chemical structure of cocaine hydrochloride (powder cocaine), left, and cocaine base (crack).

  This form of cocaine can be eaten, snorted, or dissolved in water and injected. Cocaine hydrochloride cannot be smoked, however, because it decomposes under the heat required to vaporize it. Smoking requires chemically removing the hydrochloride portion, which does not contribute to cocaine’s effects anyway. The resulting compound is just the cocaine base (aka freebase or crack cocaine), which is smokable. The important point here is that powder and crack cocaine are qualitatively the same drug. Figure 1 shows the chemical structures of cocaine hydrochloride and cocaine base (crack). As you can see, the structures are nearly identical.

  So, why do so many people believe that powder and crack cocaine are entirely different animals? This belief stems from a lack of knowledge of basic pharmacology, information that can help you to understand the effects of all drugs, not just cocaine.

  Before a drug can affect mood and behavior, it must first gain access to the blood. From the blood, it then needs to reach the brain, where it can influence what you feel and the choices you make. An important basic principle here is that the faster a drug arrives into the brain, the more intense its effects will be.

  Consequently, if we want to understand drug effects, it’s essential to consider how the drug is taken, or in pharmacology-speak, the “route of administration.” Route of administration is a key factor in determining the speed at which the drug enters the brain, and therefore, the intensity of the high.

  Like most drugs, cocaine can be ingested in several ways. In the United States, it’s rarely taken by mouth, although in some South American countries the oral route is common, usually in the form of chewing coca leaves, the plant from which cocaine is derived. Eating or swallowing a drug is convenient and tends to be safer because the stomach can be pumped in case of an overdose—this isn’t possible with smoked or injection overdoses.

  Once in the stomach, cocaine is dissolved and moved to the small intestine, where it can pass into the bloodstream. This process is called absorption, and many factors can influence it. If, for example, you’ve recently eaten a large meal, this will delay absorption and consequently, the onset of drug effects. By contrast, eating cocaine on an empty stomach speeds absorption and produces faster effects. As you’ve probably experienced, the same is true with alcohol. Drinking on an empty stomach produces more immediate effects than drinking immediately after having consumed a large meal.

  After cocaine has successfully entered the bloodstream via the digestive system, however, its journey is not yet complete. Before it can reach the brain, it must first get through the liver due to the anatomy of the blood vessels it first enters upon leaving the intestines. Since the liver contains proteins that specialize in breaking down chemicals, including cocaine, in order to protect the brain and to make any poisons we eat less destructive, this can significantly reduce the impact of drugs taken orally.

  This phenomenon is called first-pass metabolism. It’s why—although many of them don’t know the mechanism—experienced drug users seeking intense highs tend not to prefer eating their drugs or swallowing them as pills. The high from oral drugs typically comes on more slowly, larger doses are required to produce a strong sensation, and factors like recent meals and variance in liver processes can sometimes obliterate the effects entirely.

  Snorting cocaine powder, on the other hand, bypasses the liver. Blood vessels lining the nose take it directly to the brain. Consequently, about five minutes after snorting a line, you “feel it.” In contrast, oral administration takes half an hour to “hit you.”

  If you really want to get drugs to the brain fast, however, intravenous injection or smoking is the way to go. These routes produce the most intense high—and are associated with greater rates of addiction. Once injected, cocaine passes through the heart and is then transported immediately to the brain. As a result, the onset of psychoactive effects is almost instantaneous. That, of course, makes injection the riskiest form of drug use, not only because contaminated needles or unsterile technique can spread HIV and other diseases but also because overdose may occur quickly as well.

  Smoking cocaine, on the other hand, avoids the risk of blood-borne disease but gets the drug to the brain just as rapidly as injecting. It exploits the large surface area of the lungs, which have lots of blood vessels to move the drug quickly from the blood to the brain, again, skipping the liver. Recall, however, that the hydrochloride form of cocaine cannot be smoked: those who sprinkle
cocaine powder on their cigarettes or joints are probably wasting most of it because making powder hot enough to smoke tends to destroy it. In contrast, freebase or “crack” cocaine is stable at temperatures that vaporize it and that allows smoking rock to be as intense as injecting powder.

  And that’s why the two forms have the same addictive potential: cocaine powder can be injected, producing a high just as intense as smoking crack or freebase. Different intensities result from different routes of administration, but the drug itself remains the same. The following analogy illustrates this point. Consider leaving snowy New York for Miami Beach’s South Beach via a luxury limo or private jet: both will get you to a highly pleasurable beach vacation eventually, but the jet will do so far faster. Similarly, injecting drugs intravenously or smoking them hits the brain more rapidly, producing a more immediate and intense effect than taking the drug by mouth. Despite this, the effects produced by the drug are qualitatively similar. Unfortunately, this is a distinction that lawmakers have yet to understand.

  And to be fair, when crack cocaine first appeared, the truth was not initially clear. In the 1980s, even some researchers were not sure whether it was a new drug, which allowed hysteria and anecdotes to create a devilish image of it. The desire by casual cocaine users, those who snorted the drug, to distinguish themselves from people who shot or smoked the drug helped to fuel claims of unprecedented levels of addictive behavior caused by smoking crack.

  The first media description of crack cocaine is believed to have appeared in the Los Angeles Times in late 1984.4 At that same time across the country, 42 percent of arrestees in New York were already testing positive for some form of cocaine.5 Nationally, 16 percent of all high school seniors reported having snorted cocaine at least once in 1984.6 Statistics for Miami are not available for that year, but at least in my neighborhood, powder cocaine had definitely become a drug that some of my friends did on special occasions.