Cross fire in the drug war: aftermath of a crack article.

Nation, The, November, 1989 by Morley, Jefferson

CROSS FIRE IN THE DRUG WAR

I smoked crack and wrote an article abut it for The New Republic. As I had hoped, "What Crack Is Like" instigated many debates within the Washington political class and attracted more than a little interest outside that cloistered group. The article made three points, all of which will strike some people as self-evident: Crack is a pleasurable drug with unpleasant side effects; crack can "make sick sense to demoralized people" and the spread of crack capitalism is related to the phenomenon of Reaganism. That same week I published a historical-economic analysis of the drug problem in The Nation ("Contradictions of Cocaine Capitalism," October 2), which initially drew little media attention, no doubt because it was a more substantive...

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