Activity 5 Post

The author of Cocaine Kids, Terry Williams, used a research method known as ethnography. As Williams explains in the introductory pages of the book, ethnography involves gathering information about the subjects involved, information including behaviors, rituals, languages, gestures, styles, facial expressions, and more. It also involves keen observation of surroundings and social structure. His method to gather data on these particular individuals was to gain there trust, gain inside access to their operation (in this case, cocaine dealing), and using his senses to make observations while taking as few notes as possible.

In reading this book, I was able to take in a lot of new information about the drug culture. The first thing I caught on to was the vast amount of unique terminology in the drug trade. It’s not just a different word hear or there, but it’s like its own lingo that only the insiders understand. Words such as “cop”, “flake”, “rock”, “on the street”, and “comeback” are just a few of the words that have new meaning in the drug culture. “Cop” is not a reference to a police officer, but instead refers to the purchase of drugs, particularly in a “copping zone.” “Flake” and “rock” are direct references to the drugs themselves, with “flake” being the low-quality yellowish-powder that comes off of “rock”, the purest form of cocaine. “On the street” does not entail that drugs are available to the public, but instead that a certain amount is being distributed in a deal. Finally, “comeback” is a type of adulterant that, when cooked with cocaine, it mixes and takes a very similar appearance to cocaine, allowing for greater profits on the mixed product. I think the author’s observation of these terms in the book goes well with how we’ve discussed a variety of terms in class, as well, for many different drugs that would be familiar in the drug culture; terms such as “flyer’s chocolate (a type of meth), “basuco” (coco leaves mixed with gasoline), and others. In covering this terminology in class and in the book, you get a feel for how the drug culture goes beyond the recreational user, and how it has layers that include becoming a lifestyle and occupation for some people.

Another area of drug culture I found interesting was the purity of drugs. Before reading this book and taking ADS, I’d always thought of the purity of a drug as the best coming from the highest quality, healthiest plants, and so on and so forth. I didn’t realize that dealers could mix different substances in with drugs to create a greater profit for themselves by selling less of the actual product. For example, in Cocaine Kids, Max would mix 125 grams of cocaine with 60 grams of baking soda and 40 grams of “comeback.” This formula for his crack cocaine helped him make twice as much money on crack as he would have made making “pure” crack. We further covered this in class discussing the purity and production of a variety of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana, meth, etc. All of them follow the same ideology of looking for ways to provide less of the real product and instead providing a mixture that the user can’t tell the difference in. This is an area we’ve covered class a good bit, including recently talking about how “blue sky”, which is simply meth that is dyed blue, is mistaken as the most pure form of methamphetamine. This is another area in which the author made important observations about the purity of the cocaine in the drug ring he observed, something that ties in well with our course.

A third aspect of drug culture that played a much larger role than I’d imagined was race and ethnicity. Terry Williams refers to the fact that “Dominicans were in charge of 50 of the 53 coke and crack houses” he visited in New York City while conducting his research. This fact stands out because it seems that in our culture, certain races get stereotyped with certain drugs. For example, whites are generally thought of as users (and arrestees) of cocaine and meth. We just recently discussed in class how 71% of meth arrestees are white. African-Americans are more generally associated with (and arrested) with substances like crack and marijuana. It’s strange to think that drugs can be stereotyped to certain races and ethnicities, but there are usually statistics to support those claims, which is why I found it interesting that the author took note of who the leaders of the crack and coke houses were in NYC. This is yet again an area that ties into what we’ve gone over in class, discussing how different races are arrested more for different drugs.