Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy

At the start of the eighties a cheap, powerful drug appears. It is cocaine processed; low in price, fast in effect and addictive. There is no work in the cities, the factories have closed and the neighbourhoods are already broken. The selling spreads quickly. Then the news starts: the same images and the same language every evening on television. Laws are changed; the penalty for possessing crack becomes many times the penalty for possessing cocaine. The prisons fill. The documentary describes how that happened and who decided it. Stanley Nelson directs. Carl Hart, Nelson George, Corey Pegues and many people who lived through the period speak in it. It is an American production and went out on Netflix. The matter it treats is moral panic; the film is about the story built around the drug rather than the drug itself. The documentary shows the difference in the sentencing law in detail and ties that difference to race. The narrative talks to sellers, to users and to police. The documentary makes heavy use of the television news of the period and that language becomes its evidence. The narrative brings the economic ground forward; deindustrialisation and unemployment are its starting point. The film proposes no solution. Its limit is scope; the narrative covers a wide subject in a short time and some sections stay superficial. Who it is for: viewers who like political documentary and are curious about recent American history. Who it is not for: it is dense, angry, and the ending offers no resolution.