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Discusses how cocaine and crack affect the mind and body and presents a brief history of cocaine use.
Discusses how cocaine and crack affect the mind and body and presents a brief history of cocaine use.
Providing insight into drug use from the point of view of female users, this book tells of the complex lives, challenges, and choices of women who use crack cocaine. While popular images of these women present them simply as unreliable individuals, unfit mothers, and women who will do almost anything for crack, Claire Sterk's years of ethnographic research reveal the nature and meaning of crack cocaine use in the larger context of their lives -- including the impact of such issues as gender, class, and race. Focusing on active crack users, Fast Lives compiles information from participant observation, informal conversations, individual interviews, and group discussions. Sterk details the ways in which use affects the lives of these crack users. She captures how these women arrived at their use; how they survive under current circumstances, such as the constant threat of HIV/AIDS and violence; how they combine the multiple social roles of mother and drug user; and how -- as they share their aspirations and expectations for the future -- their stories underscore the effects of poverty, sexism, and racism on their lives. Many of these women recognize their own responsibility for ensuring positive change. Sterk's book, which includes an argument for a harm reduction approach, reminds us that their strength and courage will too often be futile without social policies that are realistic and appropriate for women. Fast Lives will engage readers interested in social problems as well as students of cultural anthropology, sociology, criminology, public health, ethnography, substance abuse, and women's health.
Cocaine was once considered the elite's drug, with a price so high that only the very wealthy could afford it, and thought by many to be 'safe'. But during the 1980s, a dangerous and cheap derivative began appearing on the street. This drug, crack, is a cocaine free-base produced relatively safely and easily. Because of its low production costs, crack became popular among the lower classes, leading to an epidemic in the late 1980s, with estimates that over one million people used crack cocaine. The drug's name became synonymous with gangs, crime, and violence. Because of the intensity and apparent suddenness of the crack crisis, people began to wonder if there were any warning signs public officials missed and how exactly crack spread across the nation. Some even floated the theory that agencies like the CIA and FBI encouraged the use of crack in inner cities. No matter where it came from, crack is a menace that, though no longer 'epidemic', must be combated along with all other illegal drugs. This book makes a close examination of the development, responses to, and effect of the crack cocaine crisis in the United States. Included are descriptions of cocaine, crack, and the free-basing process. Also examined are the health questions surrounding the abuse problems and the allegations that governmental authorities had advance knowledge of crack. With the war on drugs a perpetual and critical battle in America, the facts and analyses presented here are of paramount importance to the understanding of a major issue of society's safety.
This book takes a look at the serious and potentially deadly consequences associated with crack and cocaine abuse. Personal stories and the latest statistics bring the dangers of this extremely habit-forming drug into focus.
Examines the problems associated with the use of crack and other forms of cocaine, focusing on the mental and psychological disorders that can occur.
This book presents an historical overview of heroin use in the USA, as well as articles by experts in the field which focus on current developments and emerging trends in prevention, treatment, distribution and consumption. Filling a void in the literature on what is known about the `new' heroin users, this volume also updates the reader on the status of ageing heroin-addicted populations who initiated use of the drug prior to the `age of cocaine'.
During the 1980s, addiction to crack cocaine escalated at an alarming rate. As the demand for crack grew, so did the economic opportunities for entrepreneurial street dealers, who developed criminal underground networks for the supply and retail sale of the high-profit substance. While crack cocaine use has since plateaued and is on the decline, hard-core dealers persist in selling the increasingly unprofitable drug in a high-risk, competitive street market. Bruce A. Jacobs bases his study on dangerous field research conducted in one of the most socially distressed and impoverished neighborhoods in St. Louis. Drawing on no-holds-barred interviews with active dealers, as well as on his own eyewitness observations of transactions and encounters with police, Jacobs captures the crack business as it actually operates on the streets. He examines the underlying motivations for selling crack, describes the complex and intricate social organization of dealing, and explores how dealers protect transactions from law enforcement, undercover police, and criminal predators. Quoting extensively from his conversations with offenders, he conveys much of the fear and aura surrounding the process and lifestyle of crack cocaine dealing. This provocative volume is appropriate for a variety of courses in criminal justice and social problems and gives general readers an inside look at one of America's most troubling problems.