Cocaine in the early 1980s came with Colombians who shot up Miami strip malls, levitating the murder rate and inflaming the public. My first week as a crime reporter in Stockton, California, in 1989, I walked a street lined by two-dozen crack dealers. When I opened the front gate to a dilapidated house, the crackheads fled like roaches. Bloods and Crips came and warred across Stockton. One of their drive-by shootings paralyzed a toddler. I often wonder what became of her. She would be in her midtwenties by now. Next came methamphetamine, made in labs that exploded. Meth left users scabbed and
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