Thick Blue Line

“By the end of Reagan's term in early 1989, the crack epidemic had peaked and the use of the drug declined thereafter (Ramsey, 2023). As the economy began to improve, the conditions which caused both the demand for and supply of crack cocaine dissipated. Hip-hop music lambasted the use of the drug and told stories of its consequences, and movies such as Jungle Fever, Juice, Menace II Society and Clockers depicted the deleterious effects of crack use on Black families and neighborhoods. Black popular media, alongside youths’ lived experiences of the epidemic, shaped a youth culture that was repulsed by the use of crack and assisted in the drug’s decline. Neighborhood patrols in cities such as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. dismantled crack houses, and people began taking the mending of their communities into their own hands. 

And yet, the damage of the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs had already been done and profits had already been collected. Millions of people had become addicted to the drug and millions more non-users were traumatized by the violence and turmoil they witnessed and experienced during this time, with many of the period’s survivors still finding ways to cope with their PTSD today. According to a 1995 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, Americans continued to spend from $33 billion to $90 billion on cocaine each year amidst the drug’s decline. In 1980 —the year before Reagan took office— the total number of prisoners in state and federal prison was 329,821, and in 1989 —the year Reagan left office— that number had more than doubled, standing at 710,054 prisoners (U.S. Department of Justice, 1989). With the founding of the Corrections Corporation of America, the for-profit private prison industry was born in 1983. The Corrections Corporation of America, now known as CoreCivic, generated $1.90 billion in revenue in 2023 (CoreCivic, 2024). This privatized prison system effectively took advantage of “surplus” land, labor, and capital, generating profit for the state (Gilmore, 2007).”

Chapter 2 Paranoid or Perceptive?: Theorizing the Crack Conspiracy in Hip-Hop Music