Crack epidemic in the United States

Okay.

So one of the Black men affected by the crack epidemic was Maury Travis.

In March of 1988, while he was home from college on spring break, he held up five shoe stores in St. Louis County for the cash he needed to feed his $300 a day cocaine habit.

Ooh.

In the 1980s, America’s inner cities were hit by a wave of violence, addiction, and incarceration tied to a new drug: crack cocaine.

Neighborhoods, particularly Black communities, were devastated by what became known as the crack epidemic.

But behind the headlines and public outrage, a darker theory began to emerge: that the U.S. government, and specifically the CIA, had allowed or even facilitated the flow of crack cocaine into American cities to fund a secret war in Central America.

The heart of this allegation was exposed in 1996 by investigative journalist Gary Webb, whose Dark Alliance series in The San Jose Mercury News linked the CIA to drug traffickers who supplied Los Angeles street dealers during the height of the epidemic.

The profits from these drug sales, Webb alleged, were funneled back to the Contras, all while the CIA looked the other way.

The story exploded.

For many in Black communities, it confirmed what they had long suspected: that the crack epidemic wasn’t just a failure of policy, it was a deliberate act of sabotage.

The mainstream media pushed back hard.

And Tim, uh, you're, you're spot on.

So obviously you're educated in, in, in the crack epidemic, how it was, uh, c- cooked and also how it affected, and it did.

It was, to me, it was heart-wrenching because I saw the effects.

Uh, there's, there's a chapter in the book where, uh, you know, I, I won't spend the time in it, but, uh, how it, I came across a young boy whose mother was a, a crack prostitute, for the, uh, a nicer way of saying it.

So the city is the city, man.

And growing up here during the crack era, like I said, I went to McKinley Tech.

And when you come to school the next day, somebody's dead.

Somebody you stood next to on the corner is dead.