What Makes Crack Cocaine More Powerful & Addictive Than Cocaine in the Powder Form?
Question by The Equalist: What makes crack cocaine more powerful & addictive than cocaine in the powder form?
I was reading about how crack destabilized entire communities in the 80’s and early 90’s, and also watching documentaries on how it’s more addictive.
What makes it more addictive than regular cocaine? Is it the fact that smoking it is more addictive? I mean what is different about crack from regular coke – isn’t crack simply created by cooking it with baking soda and freezing the “rocks” to make them hard?
Best answer:
Answer by Skip
Because “crack” cocaine can be smoked, and exposure of the vapor to the lungs brings the fastest and most intense “high.”
Most cocaine is brought into the country as a hydorchloride salt or a sulfate salt. These salts are not very volatile. To make the volatile free base, one must add a base and extract the free base into a solvent such as ether or gasoline, then evaporate the solvent. (Google “Richard Pryor free base”) Alternatively (and much more safely), the salt can be blended with a wet paste of baking soda (a mild base) and allowed to dry. These “rocks” can then be smoked, and they make a crackling sound as they are heated and burn.
Answer by dullard
In addition to the difference in bioavailability, there is also the societal issue.
Middle class people snorting coke off coffee tables generally don’t end up robbing people within a month to keep up their habit.
When crack turned up destroying communities it was partly because those communities were pretty much destroyed already. When some members of the community then start taking to petty crime to get money for a drug habit the result is pretty grim.
Simply put, the only people who have drug problems are the one’s who can’t afford drugs.
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