with a technique known as freebasing. The powdered cocaine was treated with ammonia to remove the acid, then dissolved in ether to produce pure crystals that could be smoked. But when you light matches in the presence of ether you run the risk of turning yourself into a human torch, as comedian Richard Pryor and countless others discovered. Crack, on the other hand, is non-explosive, easy to make, and cheap. An individual rock the size of a match head can go for as little as five bucks (roughly three times the value of the coke it contains) and it’s good for a instant trip to the cosmos. Unfortunately, easy come, easy go. The spectacular high is very, very brief. So if it happens to fill a void in your life, there is a tendency to spend every dime you can beg, borrow, or steal on the stuff.  The daughter of a West Coast oil company executive tried a hit in her college dorm one night and proceeded to run through a $200,000 trust fund in six months.^[9]

But crack is the fast-food item on the drug menu, and it naturally appeals to the low end retail user who can’t afford to buy powder cocaine in the sanctity of the locker room. And while we have to assume that these new laws were not intentionally racist, the practical effect has been to focus our wrath on the poor and leave the suburban cocaine users to their own devices. Today—although most drug users in all categories are white—blacks run a 500 percent greater risk of being arrested for a drug offense.^[10] 

Sitting behind his heavy oak desk on a fall day in 1993, Mike Hoke looks over the computer printout before sending it downtown. “For the first ten months of this year we've seized over 600 pounds of cocaine, 35 pounds of heroin, and two tons of marijuana.  We've locked up 3800 people now this year, and seized $3 million in cash.  Ten months. And we have put some of these places completely out of business.  But those are minor victories,” he shrugs.  “They're not major victories.” 

For an old combat hand like Hoke, this body count approach to the war on drugs conjures up unpleasant memories. It’s as if