Word: cracking
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Some cities around the country are beginning to wage all-out assaults on the crack trade. Last week, after local and federal authorities nabbed 44 suspected dealers, New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward announced the formation of a special anti-crack unit, composed of 101 veteran undercover officers. The unit is the first New York police squad ever devoted to fighting a single drug. Miami's 16-month-old street narcotics operation busted seven crack base houses, arrested 485 dopers and confiscated more than $8,000 in cash during a six-week period this spring...
...from 1,000 in 1984 to about 400 today. The business has merely moved to the streets. Teenage salesmen with rock hidden in their pockets--or sometimes their mouths--now loiter at corners and against fences. As buyers drive by slowly in cars, a quick exchange of cash for crack can take place through an open window...
...ghettos, the economics of crack has created a lucrative cottage industry. Organized crime has not yet taken over the trade, police believe. Instead, a small-time dealer in Los Angeles can buy an ounce of cocaine for $1,000 to $1,500. Since each ounce contains 28 grams and each gram can produce up to six rocks that he can sell for as much as $25 each, the dealer can realize a profit of around...
Some base houses serve as modern-day opium dens, where addicts not only purchase crack but rent pipes, hang out and get wasted. Most of these establishments are run-down and filthy, littered with ragged furniture, trash and graffiti. Rockheads will sometimes stay for days, spending whatever cash they have, so wired from hit after hit that they have no need for food or sleep. Women who run out of money sometimes turn into "cocaine whores," selling themselves to anyone who will provide more crack...
...year-old patient at New York City's Phoenix House drug rehabilitation center who got hooked on crack two years ago. The product of a troubled middle-class family, she was already a heavy drinker and pot smoker when she was introduced to coke by her older brother, a young dope pusher. "When you take the first toke on a crack pipe, you get on top of the world," she says...