air. At this point the drug smugglers have the advantage over the DEA. The smugglers were always just a few steps ahead of the law. The DEA tried using helicopters to catch the smugglers’ boats, but by the time the helicopters got close enough to make the grab; they would have to turn back because they were close to running out of gas. The DEA was seen as a dog trying to catch rabbits; the dog would catch one or two, but most of the time the rabbits get away.Crack really began as a problem in Harlem, New York. The spread of crack moved like fire through dry brush in the New York Tri-State area. This drug hit the Black and Latino communities the hardest. Crack became more popular in inner cities because it was cheap compared to cocaine. Cocaine was seen as a drug for the rich, and crack was for the poor. Crack was also more addictive than cocaine, since smoking it made it more concentrated. Before the onset of crack, women were not statistically addicts. When women started using crack, it brought about a total disintegration of the family. Babies born to mothers who used crack were addicted themselves.Heroin has been an abused drug since it’s conception in the late nineteenth century as a patent medicine. Today there are treatments available to heroin addicts, however users are still stigmatized and because of that stigma of being a “junkie”, many do not seek help.The health problems brought on by using heroin are usually associated with the use of needles. Hepatitis C and HIV are two of the biggest heath problems that IV heroin users face. Users that snort heroin or smoke it (referred to as “chasing the dragon”) have very few of these problems. There are different opinions on how to stop America’s drug problem. Two of those opinions are education and treatment, and prison. D.A.R.E. is a popular education tool for teaching children how to avoid the subtle pressure to do drugs, and how to manag...
