Phillipe Bour­gois wrote In Search of Respect: Sell­ing Crack in El Bar­rio, an ethno­graphic study of crack deal­ers in East Harlem, where he lived for five years, befriend­ing the deal­ers and tape record­ing thou­sands of hours of their con­ver­sa­tion. In this pas­sage, Bour­gois explains the con­text in which crack was invented and how it came to dom­i­nate the under­ground economy:

The demise of Mafia hege­mony on the street occurred just as the under­ground econ­omy was redefin­ing itself around cocaine and crack in the mid-1980s, which were sup­plant­ing heroin as the undis­put­edly most prof­itable prod­uct. The vigor of the crack-cocaine econ­omy dur­ing the late 1980s and early 1990s was largely the result of an aggres­sive fed­eral drug pol­icy pri­or­i­tiz­ing the crim­i­nal repres­sion of smug­gling. Some­time in the early to mid-1980s, mar­i­juana importers work­ing the Latin Amer­i­can sup­ply routes adapted to the esca­lat­ing lev­els of search-and-seizure they were fac­ing at U.S. bor­ders by switch­ing from trans­port­ing mar­i­juana to traf­fick­ing in cocaine. Cocaine is much eas­ier to trans­port clan­des­tinely because it takes up only a frac­tion of the phys­i­cal space occu­pied by the equiv­a­lent dol­lar value of mar­i­juana. U.S. inner cities con­se­quently were flooded with high-purity cocaine at bar­gain prices shortly after the fed­eral gov­ern­ment increased drug inter­dic­tion efforts. Accord­ing to the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion, the kilo price of cocaine dropped five­fold dur­ing the 1980s from $80,000 to $15,000.

The Columbian orga­nized crime car­tels who have his­tor­i­cally main­tained a monopolly over cocaine pro­duc­tion and trans­port, responded vig­or­ously to the new mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties in the early 1980s and vio­lently bypassed the tra­di­tional net­works of the Italian-dominated Mafia that spe­cial­ized in heroin. The Columbians tapped directly into the entre­pre­neur­ial urge that is such an inte­gral facet of the Amer­i­can Dream. The magic of a highly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket spawned a new, more prof­itable prod­uct — crack, which is…merely an alloy of cocaine and bak­ing soda. The admix­ture of bak­ing soda, how­ever, allows the psy­choac­tive agent in cocaine to be released when smoked. Pow­der cocaine, on the other hand, can only be sniffed or injected. The cap­il­lar­ies in the lungs have a great absorp­tion capac­ity than the arter­ies of the mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem or the veins of the nos­trils. Con­se­quently, crack deliv­ers the psy­choac­tive effects of cocaine to the brain with max­i­mum effi­ciency and speed. Fur­ther­more, within min­utes of smok­ing crack users crave another exhil­a­rat­ing rush of 2 min­utes and a half. They are not con­tent with the sub­tler, longer-term high that comes from sniff­ing pow­der cocaine. This makes crack a per­fectly flex­i­ble con­sumer com­mod­ity. Even though indi­vid­ual doses are inex­pen­sive and there­fore acces­si­ble to the poor, a user with money can spend vir­tu­ally infi­nite sums in a sin­gle extended ses­sion of bing­ing. This tech­no­log­i­cal and mar­ket­ing break­through of alloy­ing cocaine to bak­ing soda unleashed the energy of thou­sands of wanna-be mom-and-pop entre­pre­neurs who were only too eager to estab­lish high-profit, high-risk retail crack busi­nesses. Hence, in late 1985, the Game Room, which had been a strug­gling candy store sell­ing nickel bags of mar­i­juana, upgraded itself to become a video arcade pur­vey­ing $10 vials of crack.

pgs 74–75

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Phillipe Bour­gois wrote In Search of Respect: Sell­ing Crack in El Bar­rio, an ethno­graphic study of crack deal­ers in East Harlem, where he lived for five years, befriend­ing the deal­ers and tape record­ing thou­sands of hours of their con­ver­sa­tion. In this pas­sage, Bour­gois sits with Primo, the man­ager of a crack house called the Game Room, and his assis­tant, Cae­sar, as they explain why they deal:

[Primo and Cae­sar] were usu­ally fired from [entry-level ser­vice sec­tor] jobs, but they treated their return to the world of street deal­ing as a tri­umph of free will and resis­tance on their part. A straight­for­ward refusal to be exploited in the legal labor mar­ket pushes them into the crack econ­omy and into sub­stance abuse. At the same time, how­ever, becom­ing a crack seller is by no means the vol­un­tar­ily tri­umphal­ist deci­sion that many street deal­ers claim it to be. Beneath [Primo’s] out­rage over the bad work­ing con­di­tions he was offered, lay a deep fear that his biggest prob­lem is incom­pe­tence and laziness.

Primo: [while crush­ing cocaine in a dol­lar bill in the back of the Game Room] That fuckin’ lady coun­selor I got; she’s a stu­pid bitch. She wanted me to be like a secu­rity guard, you know. I don’t wanta be no guard. I don’t wanta deal with some crazy son of a bitch out­side. I let them rob any­thing. Word! All I got is a stick in my hand. And I’m only get­ting paid once a week. I let them rob any­thing, man.

That fuck­ing coun­selor she tells me [imi­tat­ing a bureau­cratic whine], “The bet­ter your qual­i­fi­ca­tions, the bet­ter the work.” Well fuck her, I’ll just keep search­ing on my own.

I had an appoint­ment yes­ter­day, a com­pany that I was sup­posed to check out that takes care of like sheets and stuff, like from hotels–room ser­vice. So I went to see, just to take a look at it; but there’s a lot of Mex­i­cans in there, and I’m not a fuck­ing Mexican.

My cousin’s got a job where he’s been work­ing for like three years. He told me last week, “Come with me tomor­row morn­ing to talk to the boss.” But it didn’t work out. I over­slept. I had even set up the clock, but I didn’t hear the alarm [sniff­ing cocaine].

Philippe: Why don’t you just take any old bull­shit job just for right now? Like what your sister’s got at McDonald’s.

Primo: You know why I don’t fly to work real quick? I am twenty-six years old, and if I was to fly out of my way and get a McDonald’s job and not no union job, it just shows that you’re fly­ing to get a McDonald’s to cover your ass.

Twenty-six-year-old guy at McDonald’s! Every time you go to McDonald’s, you don’t see any­body twenty-six years old.

Every time that you see some­one that’s older, it’s prob­a­bly because they don’t have no edu­ca­tion; no high school; no noth­ing. They don’t speak Eng­lish. I mean my Eng­lish is very bad, but I can go fur­ther than at Burger King.

Philippe: Man! You’re just mak­ing up excuses.

Cae­sar: [inter­rupt­ing, almost angry at me] You know what I call work­ing at a Burger King or a McDonald’s? That’s what I call slavery-ing.

I know, because I worked there, and work­ing at McDonald’s is over­worked and under­paid. You could work full time–a week, five days a week–full time, and you only come home with like a hun­dred forty, one thirty.

And you know why it’s fucked up? It’s not only because it’s over­worked and under­paid; it’s that you have to–I mean when I talk about over­worked and underpaid!–you have to fuckin’ fry burg­ers; scrub the floors; because you have to do so much work for bull­shit money.

[sud­denly reach­ing for the dol­lar bill with cocaine and chang­ing his seri­ous tone to a smirk] The only rea­son why I don’t get a decent job is because I’m lazy. I don’t want to go through the processes.

I don’t want to go look­ing for no bull­shit job and be all frus­trated and be get­ting paid weak and shit like that, until some­thing else comes along.

‘Cause think about it; if you got a bull­shit job; how you gonna go look for another one? Cause you gonna be there at the job all the time. And why you wanna be miss­ing a day of your work to go see an inter­view so they could tell you, “We’ll call you.”

[motion­ing to Primo to dip his key in the pile of cocaine] Yo! Feed me Primo!

And then you lose a day’s pay which makes you move more to the brink of hell ’cause then you don’t got money for drugs. [grin­ning wildly before sniff­ing from the key tip full of cocaine that Primo was hold­ing up to his left nos­tril] And if I can’t get high the way I want to be on the weekends…[sniffing again, loud mutual laughter]

Philippe: Okay! Okay! [Cae­sar], I hear you. But seri­ously Primo, you got a court case com­ing up.

Primo: [sniff­ing and recom­pos­ing him­self] Yes, I am mak­ing excuses, but I’ll go to the job cen­ter on Mon­day and fol­low up. I think I had just got used to the street scene, because it’s been a while since I’ve held a legal job that’s been there.

I didn’t like the tuxedo place they sent me to last week. I didn’t want to be mea­sur­ing men. It’s not for me to be touch­ing men all over the place like that. That’s wack!

At the same time I shoulda stayed for more than two weeks. That was just not the whole excuse. My prob­lem was that I was hang­ing out late at the Game Room and I’ve got to wake up in the morn­ing to get to work.

Cae­sar: [reas­sur­ingly] Naah. I vis­ited the store, it wasn’t no place to make a career.

Primo: [morosely] I was just fuck­ing up. I made a choice from there to here and I’m still here.

Cae­sar: Yeah, I’m lazy right now, ’cause I just want to get up at any fuck­ing cho­sen time of the day. Wash my balls and go out­side with a fat belly from all the grub in my house and go hang out and write [rap] rhymes and bug out upstairs and make my lit­tle bull­shit money.

See, I stay out of trou­ble in a way by sell­ing crack, ’cause I chill with Primo. [motion­ing to Primo to serve him more cocaine] See, what fucked me up before when I was work­ing legal was, I was using the crack. That was the only thing that fucked me up.

‘Cause really, I’m happy with my life. [sniff­ing] Like no one is both­er­ing me. I got my respect back.

Buela [grandma] likes me. I got a woman. I got a kid. I feel com­plete now. I don’t really need noth­ing. I got money to get wrecked. [sniff­ing again] I just go down­stairs and work for Pops, and I ain’t tak­ing none of it home because tomor­row I don’t need no money. So I’ll go get wrecked, but then tomor­row I don’t need no money, ’cause I go back to the Game Room: I work; I get the money; and then I can go get wrecked again. [point­ing to Primo, who was dip­ping his key back into the cocaine.]

Philippe: [laugh­ing] That’s why your sneak­ers are so dirty?

Cae­sar: Only rea­son I ain’t got nice new sneak­ers is ’cause I have a deci­sion: I could either save the money to buy the sneak­ers, or I could get wrecked. And right now, I’m going to get wrecked. [sniff­ing again]

The money I make in the Game Room is for my per­sonal mad­ness; for my per­sonal drug-addiction and self-destruction. It’s some­thing only I could con­trol. No one could tell me what to do with it.

[break­ing into a tirade] So I could hurt myself on the inside; so I could wake up every morn­ing with my stom­ach twisted all in knots and throw­ing up and sick; and I can’t eat; and I can’t breathe and I’m fulla’ diar­rhea; and I’m shit­ting all over the place; and I’m fucked up; and my one eye is pink; and one eye is white; and my hair stinks; and I’m dirty; and I don’t bathe; and I’m fucked up; and I stink; and I hate my woman; and I hate every­body in the morn­ing. That’s what hap­pens to me after I get wrecked. [sniff­ing again]

But then I’ll chill; and I’ll be sick; and I’ll puke; and I’ll be cool by the time I get to the Game Room. Then we’re hav­ing a good time; we’re break­ing shit [point­ing to where the tele­vi­sion used to be, then open­ing the door of the Game Room for a cus­tomer who had knocked]. We’re has­sling cus­tomers; we’re curs­ing cus­tomers. Curs­ing cus­tomers in Span­ish in front of them; fuck­ing with their minds; sell­ing them garbage drugs so we can make our money [col­lect­ing ten dol­lars and hand­ing over two crack vials]; and so we can go out and buy garbage drugs [point­ing to the folded dol­lar bill full of cocaine bal­anced on Primo’s knee]; and get ripped our­selves; and talk immense amount of shit [point­ing to my tape recorder].

Pgs 117–119

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