Drug Law & Policy Professor Jeffrey Fagan Columbia Law School, Fall 2016

RACE, MEDIA, AND DRUG POLICY PODCAST SERIES Jose Miranda

EPISODE 3: Crack/Cocaine

When Len Bias, a 22 year old University of Maryland basketball player, was drafted to the Celtics as the second overall pick at the 1986 NBA

Draft, he was supposed to be the next .1

Two days later, when celebrating his newfound success with fellow dorm mates, Bias snorted several rounds of cocaine, and at 6:30 in the morning disaster struck. Bias had a seizure and fell unconscious. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, but at 8:55am he was pronounced dead due to cocaine induced cardiac arrhythmia.2 The city of Boston was in shock.

Though Len Bias was not political by nature, his death was a highly politicized event in sports.3 Despite no such evidence that Bias used crack, some media outlets at the time assumed that his death was caused by crack, because at the time crack was an “inner city,” black problem, whereas cocaine was viewed as a drug recreationally used by affluent whites.4

1 See Modiano, Chuck. New York Daily News. “How Len Bias' death was used to usher in era of mass incarceration,” June 24, 2016. 2 Id. 3 Id. 4 See id., See also Schmidt, Susan. . “Cocaine Caused Bias' Death, Autopsy Reveals : Dose Said to Trigger Heart Failure; Criminal Inquiry to Be Pressed,” June 25, 1986. RACE, MEDIA, AND DRUG POLICY 2

Some scientific background here -- Crack is the crystal, smokable version of cocaine. Both drugs are pharmacologically the same and both have a high potential for abuse. When ingested in purer quantities, both exhibit the potential to cause “Cardiac arrhythmias, ischemic heart conditions, sudden cardiac arrest, convulsions, strokes, and death.” 5

So what’s the difference between the two? Well besides the obvious physical differences and method of ingestion, Crack is significantly cheaper than cocaine and thus in the 1980s, it was perceived to be more commonly associated with blacks, violence, and urban cities.6 Cocaine on the other hand was more commonly utilized by affluent whites due to its higher price tag.7 And, politicians and the media of the time fell into predictable patterns.8

As a direct response to the outcry in Boston following Bias’ death, Tip

O’Neill the House Speaker at the time started an initiative to crack down on crack and other drugs.9 This led to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of

1986 “[which] included devastating mandatory minimum sentences (even for first-time offenders), required the participation of the military in narcotics control efforts, and included the infamous 100-1 Crack vs. Cocaine sentencing disparity where a mere 5 grams of crack would get the same

5 See Department Enforcement Administration. “Drugs of Abuse,” 2015 Edition. 6 See Yankah, Eknow N. “When Addiction Has a White Face,” Feb. 9, 2016. 7 See Cohen, Andrew. The Atlantic. “How White Users Made Heroin a Public-Health Problem,” August 12, 2015. 8 See supra note 1. 9 Id. RACE, MEDIA, AND DRUG POLICY 3 punishment as 500 grams of powdered cocaine. The new laws became weapons of mass destruction.”10

So Basically, laws and law enforcement, started treating extremely comparable drugs drugs differently. And if you look back to see how the

U.S. treated crack in the past, you’ll find that,

“The first crack house had been discovered in Miami in 1982. However, this form of cocaine was not fully appreciated as a major threat because it was primarily being consumed by middle class users who were not associated with cocaine addicts. In fact, crack was initially considered a purely Miami phenomenon until it became a serious problem in New York

City, where it first appeared in December 1983. In the area, it was estimated that more than three-fourths of the early crack consumers were white professionals or middle class youngsters from Long Island, suburban New Jersey, or upper-class Westchester County. However, partly because crack sold for as little as $5 a rock, it ultimately spread to less affluent neighborhoods.” 11

In other words, crack was initially a white people problem, yet no major hysteria or criminalization efforts resulted when it was. Once the problem involved the black community, they blacks were negatively labeled as “crack whores, crack babies, and gangbangers, reinforcing already prevalent racial stereotypes of black women as irresponsible, selfish ‘welfare

10 Id. 11 See DEA. 1985-1990. RACE, MEDIA, AND DRUG POLICY 4 queens,’ and black men as ‘predators’ - part of an inferior and criminal subculture.” 12

As Ekow Yanak from put it, “Once again, African-

Americans were cast as pathological, an indistinguishable and unsympathetic mass. The plight of Black America was evidence of its collective moral failure

— of welfare mothers and rock-slinging thugs — and a reason to cut off all help. Blacks would just have to pull themselves out of the crack epidemic.

Until then, the only answer lay in cordoning off the wreckage with militarized policing.”13

And, Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia Law School said, “Indeed, the harsh, punitive reaction to the crack era was the result of mythology about its use, and its users, that later turned out to be false. It was instantly addictive, it created ‘superpredators,’ you became a sexual deviant, especially if you were a woman, it destroyed maternal instincts,” he said. All of that nonsense led to the draconian sentencing laws associated with crack use in the 1980s,

Fagan told me.14

In 2010 The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced that disparity in sentencing from 100:1 to 18:1, but the drugs are chemically the same. So shouldn’t be treated as such in our media and drug policies? 15

12 See Supra note 1. 13 See supra note 6. 14 See Andrew Cohen. The Marshall Project. “When Heroin Hits the White Suburbs.” August 12, 2015. 15 Id.