When did crack become illegal?

Answer 1

Crack has never been legal. Crack cocaine is just a different, more dangerous form of cocaine, that became popular in the 1980s, and cocaine has been illegal in the United States since 1914.

For a long time, people had been freebasing cocaine. Freebasing is when you put the cocaine on a piece of tin foil, and light a cigarette lighter underneath it. As the cocaine cooks, a vapor rises from it, and you inhale the vapor with a straw made from tin foil.

Sometime in the late 1970s, somebody figured out that if you boil cocaine with water, baking soda, and other household chemicals, it produces a rock-like substance that burns at a lower temperature than regular cocaine. This makes it very easy to smoke, and makes the high more intense than freebasing: since it burns faster than regular cocaine, you end up smoking more of it in the same amount of time. And since you end up smoking more of it in the same amount of time, the risk of overdose and death is that much greater.

Since crack is essentially a diluted form of cocaine, it is cheaper than regular cocaine. The cheap price is what caused the crack epidemic in the 1980s, since people who normally wouldn't have been able to afford the steep price of a cocaine addiction could now get high every day for cheap.

Answer 2

Crack cocaine became illegal in the United States in 1986 with the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The Act imposed harsh penalties for crack cocaine offenses, leading to significant disparities in sentencing compared to powder cocaine offenses.