I have read lots of theories behind this, many conspiracies etc. Could some expert in modern American history, specifically African American history shed any light on this issue? Was it something directed by the government to keep the black civil rights movement down? Something else? Several reasons? Perhaps a simpler reason than one might think? Appreciate any kind of concrete insight into this tragic issue.
Edit: Drugs overall, since crack apparently first appeared in the 1980's
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As it relates to crack cocaine, one of the main causes of the epidemic of crack use was the economics of cocaine smuggling and crack manufacture. In the early 1980s, the vast majority of cocaine smuggled into the United States came into South Florida, primarily Miami. The Medellin cartel dominated the business; raising the coca crop in Columbia, converting it into cocaine, and then shipping the cocaine to the US via the Bahamas. They were so successful that there was a glut of cocaine on the market, and the price of cocaine was actually dropping. At the time, you could get a gram of 55% pure cocaine for about $100 dollars. At these prices, the cartel was having problems selling all of their product, as their customers were primarily limited to the middle and upper classes. In the early 80's, cocaine was primarily a party drug, and was most widely used by white collar urban professionals or middle class youths, and was relatively unknown in the black urban community. This changed radically with the introduction of crack cocaine.
The manufacture of crack from cocaine powder is a relatively simple process. You must mix the powdered cocaine with a base (commonly baking soda) and then heat the resulting mixture. The chemical reaction separates the cocaine alkaloid (the active ingredient) from the powder into an oily residue, which can then be skimmed off the top and formed into rocks as they dry. At high purity, these rocks will be plastic enough to snap when broken, creating a cracking sound (hence the name). By using this process on powder cocaine, it is possible to create very high purity (80%+) crack cocaine at extremely cheap prices, with more doses produced for each unit of cocaine smuggled into the country. By using this process, it was possible to produce crack rocks that would sell for as cheap as $5.00 or even $2.50 per dose.
The conversion of cocaine into crack began in South Florida. The cartels taught their lower level dealers and traffickers how to run the simple reactions. At first, crack was considered purely a local South Florida problem, with the first crack house busted by the DEA in Miami in 1982. But from there, crack spread along the expanding network of the Columbian cartels. Crack first spread to New York City in December of 1983. At this time, crack (like cocaine before it) was still mostly used by professionals and the middle class, and primarily by white people. However, the low cost of crack and it's wide availability allowed it to make inroads into less affluent black communities. By 1985, four crack conversion labs were seized in NY State, four more in California, with other labs in Virginia, North Carolina, and Arizona. An additional 23 labs were seized in 1986, all over the country.
In the mid 80's, the use of crack exploded. Americans that admitted to using cocaine (in all forms) jumped from 4.2 to 5.8 million from 1985 to 1986. The availability of cheap, high quality crack cocaine produced an epidemic of drug use in the urban black community. Even though cocaine wholesale prices continued to decline, the cartels were still able to make money with the huge new market for crack cocaine. They were helped by the fact that crack appealed to new users, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it didn't have the stigma associated with the needles necessary to use heroin. Secondly, it was smoked instead of snorted, and many people were already comfortable with the smoking of marijuana. Lastly of course was the extremely low price, making it effective for dealers to even give out free cheap samples, which often resulted in producing new costumers (as the high produced by crack is intense, but short lived).
http://web.archive.org/web/20060823024931/http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/history/1985-1990.html