Without a steady supply of cocaine there is no crack. Without the global war on cocaine, the crack trade would be neither so profitable nor so punishing. Thus to understand crack, it helps to first understand cocaine, how that drug went from widely available pharmaceutical marvel to illicit and glamorous narcotic. First comes cocaine, then comes crack.

Not that long ago, cocaine was just another thing a person could buy. It was legal in the United States and pretty much everywhere else. It was cheap. It was made by a small group of major pharmaceutical houses. And while cocaine was sold in powder form it also was a critical ingredient in medicinal syrups, patent medicine elixirs, and, to use an anachronistic term, energy drinks. Procurement of powder cocaine or a cocaine-infused consumer product took no more than a walk to a corner store.