Crack was the poor man’s cocaine—smoked rather than snorted, at a fraction of the cost. It came in the form of a crystal rock, made by dissolving powder cocaine in hot water with baking soda. The rock was then heated through a pipe and inhaled. Crack had surfaced in America by the early 1980s, first in Miami and Los Angeles before spreading to New York. Unlike its pricier cousin, powder cocaine, crack brought an instant high. While coke remained a glamour drug, selling for $100 per gram, crack wound its way through the ghetto at $3 a rock.
