Quiz2: The Crack Cocaine Epidemic & America’s Wrong Response

[johnkarls]

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SECOND SHORT QUIZ - THE CRACK COCAINE EPIDEMIC AND AMERICA’S TRAGICALLY-WRONG RESPONSE

1. Should the Crack Cocaine Epidemic be the “star attraction” (or Exhibit A) of any book entitled “The Age of Addiction: HOW BAD HABITS BECAME BIG BUSINESS”???

2. Has cocaine been obtained for thousands of years from coca leaves with the “purified chemical” (commonly called “powder cocaine”) being identified as “cocaine hydrochloride” whose chemical formula is C17-H22-Cl-N-O4?

3. Is crack cocaine created by processing the drug with ammonia or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and water, then heating it to remove the hydrochloride to produce a smokable substance? Is it called “crack” because of the crackling sound when it is smoked?

4. Do users inject or snort the “powder cocaine” (cocaine hydrochloride) which is water-soluble enabling it to enter the blood stream directly through nasal membranes or by being mixed with water and injected directly into blood vessels?

5. Do users smoke “crack cocaine” which is water-insoluble?

6. Has “powder cocaine” been big business for more than a century?

7. By the 1970’s and early 1980’s, had Miami become the location of drug cartels controlling 70% of the nation’s cocaine supply (most of which was sourced to Colombia)?

8. And were these drug cartels at war with each other because (like OPEC’s perennial problem of trying to maintain oil prices without curtailing oil production whose production costs were a small fraction of the sales price), they were fighting over market share with “guns blazing” -- literally???

9. Was the real economic solution for the cartels to bifurcate the market, maintaining the high retail price for powder cocaine sold primarily to long-standing affluent customers? While beginning to manufacture crack cocaine which could be sold at a “bargain basement” price that was still profitable because of the low production costs for cocaine, whether powder or crack -- IN MASSIVE QUANTITIES TO SOAK UP THE EXTRA PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY (“massive” because of the “bargain basement” price) to the poor inhabitants of our inner cities???

10. Did the resulting “crack epidemic” produce the national Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that called for a 100:1 criminal sentencing disparity for trafficking crack cocaine vs. trafficking powder cocaine?

11. And was there extensive “piling on” in the national Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which, for example, funded 100,000 new police officers, provided $9.7 billion for new prisons, even stooped to denying Pell Grants (for taking college courses) for prisoners, etc., etc., AND PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY, in its Sec. 70001, provided a notorious “three strikes and you’re out” requirement of a MANDATORY LIFE SENTENCE if --

“a person is convicted in a court of the United States of a serious violent felony… [and] the person has been convicted in a court of the United States OR OF A STATE of (i) 2 or more serious violent felonies; or (ii) one or more serious violent felonies and one or more serious DRUG OFFENSES…..”

12. And re the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, did the 1994 Act define “serious violent felony” as including any criminal offense that involves physical force (the “stock in trade” of every drug dealer) punishable by as much as 10 years of imprisonment?

13. And re the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, did the 1994 Act define “serious drug offense” as including a criminal offense involving 5 kilograms (11.023 pounds) of any mixture containing powder cocaine OR INVOLVING ONLY 280 GRAMS (ONLY 0.617 POUNDS) OF ANY MIXTURE CONTAINING CRACK COCAINE?

14. Did 28 states “take their cue” from the national Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to enact their own “three strikes and you’re out” laws?

15. Have the anti-drug laws and “three strikes and you’re out” laws destroyed a high percentage of inner-city families by incarcerating their husbands/fathers?

16. After all, didn’t we study for our last meeting June 3 that during the 1990’s, inner-city children knew by age 5 that they were INELIGIBLE for their dreams and that their only realistic career objectives were pusher or pimp, or girl friend of a pusher or pimp graduating to whore?

17. Which, of course, do NOT require much education?

18. And that the typical conditions in the 1990’s facing the “Dreamers” (third graders through high school graduation) in the 178 “I Have A Dream”® Programs in 51 American cities were -- (A) 99% of Dreamers living in single-adult households; (B) 95% of total Dreamer households headed by a druggie; AND (C) 75%-80% of total Dreamer households headed by a single-adult druggie who turned over any receipts to the pusher so the kids had to steal just in order to eat?

19. Wasn’t the “right” response to America’s “cocaine epidemic” the “I Have A Dream”® model that adopted an entire third-grade class of an inner-city school (or entire third-grade cohort in a public housing project) and provided each of them with a tutor and mentor through high school graduation with a guarantee of college tuition?

20. After all, didn’t the IHAD model enclose the Dreamers in a “cocoon” with de facto surrogate parents (the tutors and mentors) in which “cocoon” education was worshipped rather than derogated?

21. And didn’t that result for the later IHAD programs in the 1990’s in 90% high school graduation - college matriculation rates despite the class just ahead and the class just behind each Dreamer class typically having SINGLE DIGIT high school graduation rates?

22. BTW, was $84 billion of private funding available to provide IHAD- or IHAD-style programs for 10 million inner-city children -- and during litigation 2009-2011 against 15 of the world’s largest financial institutions for the $84 billion that they owed Yours Truly which he had long-since pledged in legally-binding fashion, did 21 of the nation’s highest political leaders refuse to file Amicus Curiae briefs and 43 of the nation’s top news-media superstars refuse to “shine a light” on the litigation?

23. DESPITE THREE LETTERS TO EACH OF THEM OVER THE THREE YEARS IMPLORING EACH OF THEM TO “LIFT A FINGER”???

24. While each of the 21 political leaders and each of the 43 news-media superstars knew that ONLY ONE OF THEM “lifting a finger” might have been sufficient to save 10 million inner-city children from “a fate worse than death”???

25. Would the 51 inner-city clergy who were supporting that litigation have been able, presumably, to provide the tutors and mentors from their congregations for at least 51 such programs “right off the bat”?

26. And had Yours Truly already devised the concept of “Magnet Schools” that required affluent students and their families to tutor and mentor the minority students -- in order to “take to scale” the IHAD model for 10 million inner-city children?

27. BTW, is this the same “Magnet School” model that was the subject of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following our recent June 3 meeting?

28. In considering the “right” and “wrong” response to America’s “cocaine epidemic,” is it helpful to re-consider the Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz?

29. Didn’t Q&A-2 report that most drugs have been used historically by governments in order to maintain order or social control -- for example (A) opium to numb Chinese coolies, (B) wine to numb Roman soldiers, (C) gin to numb the English working class after the advent of the industrial revolution, (D) cigarettes included with the K-rations of World War II U.S. soldiers, and (E) alcohol in India causing Gandhi to campaign against it?

30. So, similarly, did American plantation owners prior to the Civil War provide their slaves with alcohol to cushion their misery? Or were the plantation owners, in terms of the proverbial “carrot and stick,” primarily practitioners of “the whip”?

31. Whichever their proclivity, would a plantation owner have benefitted from providing her/his slaves with incredibly-cheap crack cocaine if it had been available before the Civil War???

32. And would any plantation owner have been SO INSANE as to throw in jail any of her/his slaves who were “drowning their sorrows” with the crack cocaine that the plantation owner had so humanely provided???

33. So why did the U.S. government do exactly that to its Permanent 30% Under-Caste???

34. Why not, instead, try to solve the problem of America's Permanent 30% Under-Caste by providing a decent education for its children???

35. And why not, instead, try to provide decent jobs for American workers rather than exporting their jobs 1993-2016 to China, et al., via so-called “free trade” agreements???

36. And why not refrain from destroying inner-city families by incarcerating their males for the only two professions that they were effectively permitted to enter (pusher or pimp)???