The crack epidemic was turning into a national political campaign, with Los Angeles as its epicenter. In 1986, Time magazine called it “the issue of the year,” while Newsweek described the drug problem as the biggest story since Vietnam and Watergate. In the summer of 1986, Len Bias, a twenty-two-year-old basketball star from the University of Maryland, who was drafted second by the Boston Celtics and had been compared to Michael Jordan, died of a cocaine overdose.
