>> Obesity is a severe health problem tearing poor communities apart,
> Is it?
Well, throw in lack of access to free health care and I think it could be argued that obesity is a bigger health threat than crack cocaine.
>> but we don't lock people up for 20 years for possession of a Big Mac.
>
>
> You might want to actually read before you waste k-wattage. I'd asked
> for comments from people who were willing to leave aside the fact that
> we don't need to throw people in jail for using drugs. I've long argued
> that they should be decriminalized.
I read what you wrote, but I wanted to throw in that quip.
> Do you have anything that is actually useful to me WRT my question which
> was about whether crack tore apart communities because of the nature of
> the drug/addiction?
I used to catalog stuff for a library at a drug prevention resource center and I've followed the drug war quite closely.
I think the stats show that the number of people who partake of cocaine products has always been low in relationship to other drugs. Cocaine and crack do send people to the emergency room and kills people, but not to the extent that drugs like alcohol and tobacco do.
There used to a be a report on drug-related emergency room visits that I think was published by CDC. There are statistics out there, but they should be treated with a grain of salt, given the politics involved in the drug war.
> Your reply, if taken seriously, suggests that you accept that crack, in
> and of itself is a horrible danger (like Big Macs) and it did tear
> communities apart. If this is so, why do you think that?
No, it just isn't the horrible danger that it is made out to be. Cocaine and crack just aren't used by many people, now or back during the "crack epidemic." People will argue that the "crack epidemic" tore apart poor communities ten years ago, but I think that arguments could be made that racism and the American capitalist system were as much at fault. In Washington, the crack epidemic hit right after the black middle class had spent a decade moving to the suburbs, leaving behind really poor neighborhoods that were looking for anything to improve their lives.
> I don't think that is likely, simply by virtue of research in the
> sociology of drug and drug use--ack, the dreaded "social construction"
> of drugs and addiction!
Right. Gary Webb's book "Dark Alliance" might have some answers to your questions, at least from the economic-political standpoint.
<< Chuck0 >>
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