The Story of Crack: Towards a Theory of Illicit Drug Trends

Michael Agar

88 citations0/0 files storedAddiction Research & Theory

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Youth, Drugs, and Violence Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk

Abstract

Ongoing work with two heroin epidemics in Baltimore produced a "trend theory," a way to explain illicit drug use tends. In this article, the case of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s is analyzed to challenge the theory. Two of the key parameters of the theory - the drug production system and the linking networks - apply directly and generate useful explanatory material. A third parameter - historical conditions of the impacted population - does apply, but it reveals explanatory material based more on economic need than subjective effects of the drug. In the end the theory is modified to account for the new material.

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References

1988The Truly Disadvantaged. The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. By William Julius Wilson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 254p. $19.95.1996In search of respect: selling crack in El Barrio 1990Positive Feedbacks in the Economy 2000Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis 1992Cocaine Changes: The Experience of Using and Quitting.1991Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy

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