When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era

by Donovan X. Ramsey

This period marked the birth of America’s racial double standard on drugs. While previous generations believed that drugs had a special impact on Blacks, they were simultaneously puritanical about drug use in whites. In the 1970s, however, Americans developed two minds regarding drugs. They continued to believe in the Black drug fiend but also came to accept “experimentation” in whites as a hallmark of youth. At the absolute worst, addiction in whites was considered a sickness, a tragedy. Cocaine illustrates this point more than any other drug. While other drugs were targets of government campaigns and bad press throughout the 1960s and 1970s, cocaine was normalized. It was given a pass, the kind bestowed in this society only on something found sufficiently white. “Among hostesses in the smart sets of Los Angeles and New York, a little cocaine, like Dom Perignon and Beluga caviar, is now de rigueur at dinners. Some partygivers pass it around along with the canapés on silver trays,” read a May 1977 story in Newsweek magazine. The same year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse published a report simply titled “Cocaine: 1977.” It detailed the rapid rise of cocaine in the United States during the 1970s and outlined the history of the drug and its pharmacology. “It produces a euphoria, a sense of intense stimulation and of psychic and physical well-being accompanied by reduced fatigue,” the report explained. “It is also ranked high in desirability because of its convenience of...