This application proposes an ethnographic study of the current and evolving structure and functioning of """"""""crack"""""""" (retail cocaine freebase for smoking) distribution and the natural history of crack distribution careers in New York City. This study will help develop improved policies and programs of law enforcement, treatment, intervention, and prevention towards crack distributors and abusers. Staff will conduct field research in New York City, make numerous direct observations of crack distributors and count the number of distributors and frequencies of crack sales. Staff will also conduct in-depth interviews with 140 focal informants carefully selected to represent a range of crack distributors working for business-like distribution groups or on a free- lance basis and having varied precrack careers in drug distribution. Deviant cases will also be included: regular crack users who do not sell, and crack sellers who are noncrack users. All will provide extensive information about career parameters of the use, sale, and distribution of crack, cocaine powder and other drugs, their frequency, duration and severity of involvement, monetary and nonmonetary returns, nondrug criminality, and periods of noninvolvement. Analyses will document various structures and functions of crack distribution groups, how crack came to dominate the cocaine market in New York City, the reciprocal relationships between crack use and sale/distribution, the emergence of new generations of distributors and abusers, whether prior careers in drug distribution influences crack selling, and whether and how crack distribution is associated with violence and property crime.
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| Dunlap, E; Johnson, B D (1992) The setting for the crack era: macro forces, micro consequences (1960-1992). J Psychoactive Drugs 24:307-21 |
