Drug War Chronicle, Issue #1193 -- 8/11/23 table of contents with lead article.

[Bobbie Sellers]

Drug War Chronicle, Issue #1193 -- 8/11/23
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psm...@drcnet.org
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/1193

A Publication of StoptheDrugWar.org
David Borden, Executive Director, bor...@drcnet.org
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"

Please support our newsletter with arecurring or one-time donation!
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Table of Contents:

1. CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW: WHEN CRACK WAS KING
A new book takes a new look at crack.
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/10/chronicle_book_review_when_crack

2. FLORIDA AG OPPOSES LEGALIZATION INIT, MONTREAL MUSHROOM SHOP RAIDED
AGAIN, MORE... (8/4/23)
There have been a couple of hiccups as marijuana legalization rolls out
in Minnesota, Florida's attorney general thinks voters are too stupid to
know that pot would remain federally illegal if the state legalized it,
and more.
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/04/florida_ag_opposes_legalization

3. SAN FRANCISCO HAS MAGIC MUSHROOM CHURCHES, DESANTIS DOUBLES DOWN ON
CARTEL THREATS, MORE... (8/7/23)
Wisconsin's Democratic governor signs a bill heightening penalties for
fatal drug overdoses, Israel's Health Ministry says patients can be
prescribed marijuana beginning in December, and more.
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/07/san_francisco_has_magic_mushroom

4. MANHATTAN US ATTORNEY WARNS ON SAFE INJECTION SITES, AYAHUASCA CHURCH
MOVES TO MAINE, MORE... (8/8/23)
Four veterans are suing New York marijuana regulators over the
application of social equity provisions, New Hampshire's governor signs
a fentanyl and xylazine test strip decriminalization bill into law, and
more.
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/08/manhattan_us_attorney_warns_safe

5. SAN FRANCISCO JAIL BEING FILLED WITH DRUG LAW VIOLATORS, PARTISAN GAP
IN SUPPORT FOR LEGAL WEED, MORE... (8/9/23)
The man who was once Colombia's most powerful cocaine traffickers gets
decades in US prison, New Hampshire will study the state liquor store
model for potential legal marijuana sales, and more.
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/09/san_francisco_jail_being_filled

6. OR GOVERNOR SIGNS ADDICTION & MENTAL HEALTH BILLS, FED APPEALS COURT
THROWS OUT DRUG USER GUN BAN, MORE... (8/10/23)
New York sees its first marijuana farmers market open today, Australia
sees its first federal marijuana legalization bill filed, and more.
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/10/or_governor_signs_addiction

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================

1. CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW: WHEN CRACK WAS KING
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2023/aug/10/chronicle_book_review_when_crack

When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era
(http://www.donovanxramsey.com/when-crack-was-king) by Donovan X. Ramsey
(2023, One World Press, 427 pp., $30 HB)

Black journalist Donovan X. Ramsey grew up in Columbus, Ohio, in the
crack-dominated 1980s and 1990s, where he learned "crackhead" as an
insult before he even knew what it meant. One reason he didn't know what
it meant was because no one in the community talked openly about the
drug crisis ripping through Columbus and other cities across the country
after crack took off in the early '80s.

Later, that silence struck him as weird. "It was like growing up in a
steel town where nobody talked about steel," he writes in When Crack Was
King. After establishing himself as a freelance journalist whose credits
include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and
Ebony, Ramsey set out to chronicle the crack epidemic of his youth. Five
years and hundreds of interviews later, this book is the result.

One place where Ramsey makes an invaluable contribution is in setting
the stage for the arrival of crack. He writes about the victories and
promise of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and how, as the
country began exporting manufacturing jobs abroad in the 1970s and '80s,
the Black vision of achieving the American dream turned to grief and
despair. It wasn't just declining economic prospects, though; it was a
determined political counterattack led by Richard Nixon and Ronald
Reagan that, based on Nixon's 1968 Southern strategy, demonized the
Black community, unleashing our decades-long experiment with mass
incarceration and filling prisons with Black bodies.

Grief and despair may have weakened Black defenses against crack and
made it all to easy to slip into the drug's intense embrace -- and crack
addiction ruined the lives of countless people -- but it was the
flipside of grief and despair that make the crack trade so attractive to
so many. With the civil rights revolution of the 1960s came aspirations
toward Black upward mobility, as evidenced by popular culture
programming such as Fresh Prince of Belair, The Jeffersons, and the
Cosby Show, and in Black neighborhoods across the country where good
jobs were vanishing, involvement in the crack trade offered not only
upward mobility and its outward signs -- expensive cars, gold chains,
high-dollar sneakers, and the like -- but for many in the industry, the
more basic goal of finding enough money to put food on the table. If
grief and despair drove use, envy and foreclosed opportunity drove the
corner rock-slingers and those who rose above them into the trade.

As Ramsey narrates the history of crack, When Crack Was King provides a
useful corrective to the hysterical coverage the drug got amidst the
epidemic. He demolishes the notions of "crack babies" and "super
predators," and exposes "crack heads" as real human beings with
problems, not zombie harbingers of the apocalypse. And he dissects the
draconian drugs laws passed amid the moral panic around the death of
basketball star Len Bias -- laws that led to tens of thousands of Black
men and women disappearing behind bars for years or decades. If crack
decimated inner city neighborhoods, so did the war on crack.

(As for crack destroying the inner city, comedian Chris Rock had
something to say about that
(https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/chris-rock-bring-pain-transcript/):
"Crack is everywhere, crack everywhere… you know what they say? 'Crack
is destroying the black community.' 'Crack is destroying the ghetto.'
Yeah, like the ghetto was so nice before crack! They say that shit like
everybody had at least a mansion, a yacht and a swimming pool… then
crack came by and dried it all up!)

One of the more unique and enrichening features of When Crack Was King
is Ramsey's use of the stories of four survivors of the crack era to
paint a deeper portrait of the drug's impact. We meet Lennie Woodley, a
girl from a broken family in South Central Los Angeles, where factory
jobs had fled, leaving "gangbangers, hustlers, and pimps" to fill the
vacuum. Fleeing sexual abuse by an uncle, she took to the streets as a
young teen, falling into a life of prostitution salved by crack
addiction. It is not a pretty story, but it brings home some ugly realities.

We also meet Elgin Swift, a white kid from poor, multi-racial Yonkers,
New York, whose dad was a crack addict and who slung rocks on the side
to make enough money for food, bus fare, and other household essentials.
He came through the crack era wounded but sound and, having parlayed his
crack-selling skills toward more socially acceptable ends, now runs a
chain of automotive dealerships.

And then there's Shawn McCray from the projects in Newark, whose
basketball prowess got him into college and who barely escaped a prison
sentence for selling crack when a judge showed him mercy. He stayed on
the edges of the life, though, until dozens of his friends in the city's
notorious Zoo Crew crack-selling machine were wrapped up and marched off
to prison in a massive bust. After that, McCray walked away, turning his
attention to youth athletics. He is now a major figure in Newark youth
athletic programs.

Crack didn't destroy Elgin Swift or Shawn McCray, but the drug and
society's response to it -- repression -- deeply impacted their lives.

And then there's Kurt Schmoke. Ramsey profiles the man who became the
first Black mayor of Baltimore and who in 1988, in the midst of the
crack wars, became the first major politician to call for drug
decriminalization. That hasn't happened yet (except in Oregon), but
Ramsey holds him up not only as a profile in courage but in pragmatism.
Schmoke may not have achieved decrim, but he delivered the first major
blow to the drug war paradigm by speaking out. (And he managed to get
city-sponsored needle exchanges going in 1994)

A heady mix of urban ethnography, social history, and political and
cultural critique, When Crack Was King is a worthy addition to the
literature of the drug.


================ ...
___________________

It's time to correct the mistake:
Truth:the Anti-drugwar
<http://www.briancbennett.com>

Cops say legalize drugs--find out why:
<http://www.leap.cc>
Stoners are people too:
<http://www.cannabisconsumers.org>
___________________

bliss -- Cacao Powered... (-SF4ever at DSLExtreme dot com)

--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cacao that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.