Footage has emerged of the troubled songstress Amy Winehouse apparently smoking crack at her home in east London. The substance is widely regarded as the “down-and-out” drug. “Crack is whack,” as Whitney Houston once put it. But is it growing in popularity?
Home Office figures show that 28% of drug expenditure in 2003-04 (the most recent statistics) was on crack, compared with 23% for heroin, 20% on cannabis and 18% on powdered cocaine. It is generally bought on the street in small quantities – rocks cost about £10 each.
Crack is a smokable form of cocaine (cocaine hydrochloride), made through a process called “freebasing”, which began in America in the early 1970s, initially as a method used by dealers to test purity. “The euphoric effects are so powerful,” says Gary Sutton of the Relate drugs service, “but what goes up must come down. It’s an incredibly seductive drug. People become dependent on it very easily.” Users may also rely on alcohol, cannabis or Valium to deal with the comedown. Most dealers now sell speedballers, heroin and crack, because the heroin softens the crash.
“Two or three years ago, crack had a stigma that it’s beginning to lose now,” adds Sutton. “Coke was regarded as an aspirational drug, crack was seen as a loser’s drug. That has shifted, but I don’t think it has become an aspirational drug, because I don’t think it has shed its seamy image.”
“The market has changed a lot now,” says Sutton’s colleague Colin Stewart.
“You have a lot of teenagers aged 14-20 dealing, who don’t use it but who sell it to fund their lifestyle. The worrying thing is that the crack that’s around at the moment isn’t very pure. It was 80% and now it’s 50%. People end up in massive debt – £500 a day is common and kids will do anything for a £10 rock.”
