Word: cracking
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Inevitably, the antidrug crusade is producing some ludicrous results. A best-selling toy in the U.S. is Madballs, a set of eight rubber balls adorned with gross names and faces. One of the more grotesque Madballs, depicting a creature whose skull has been split wide open, was called Crack Head. Fearful that this charming toy might be accused of glorifying drug use, the toymakers last month changed the name to Bash Brain...
Maybe so, but a growing number of people seem to be willing to suck into their lungs the smoke from cocaine in a far more powerful form known variously as base, baseball, gravel, rock, roxanne and, more commonly, crack. Crack is cocaine boiled down (it makes a cracking sound when heated) into crystalline balls that can be smoked. "Crack is like throwing gas on the cocaine fire," says Manhattan Special Prosecutor Sterling Johnson. A gram of coke costs about $100, but two beads, or pea-shaped pieces, of crack go for $10, enough to guarantee a single user...
Cocaine, many physicians now believe, is the most addictive popular drug of all, and crack is by far its most addictive form. "People fall desperately in love with this drug the first time they use it," says Dr. Arnold Washton, director of research for the National Cocaine Hotline. Unlike heroin users, who vomit and shake when they withdraw, crack addicts show few immediate physical signs of dependency -- at least at first. But they feel an overpowering yearning for more. Bouts of depression and irritability can lead to deep depression and paranoia. "I was afraid to be with it and afraid...
...Since crack is a relatively new phenomenon (it was first imported from the Bahamas around 1983), some parts of the country have remained fairly unscathed. Yet in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, crack is already out of control. In an effort to at least cut down the tools of the trade, New York police last month seized 45,000 crack pipes (some of them labeled I LOVE NEW YORK). But in some New York neighborhoods, crack dealers are so cocky that they waltz down the street patting children on the head and greeting store owners by their first names...
...Crack is an "equal-opportunity addiction," says Kilcullen. Crack is as easy to come by on Wall Street as it is in Harlem, and teenagers drive into the city from their parents' suburban homes to stand in line next to yuppies who are furtively handing over $100 bills for crack vials...