The Darkness - Jason Pinter [64]
murders, and an economy on the verge of chaos, the
plumbing system that was New York was about to get
hit with a cherry bomb that nearly destroyed it totally.
That cherry bomb was a new drug known to scientists as methylbenzoylecgonine. Or as it is more
commonly known, crack.
Crack first appeared on our shores in 1984. Before
that, the drug of choice was cocaine. But as cocaine
became more plentiful, prices dropped and dealers
began to lose much of their profit margin.
Poor them.
So to get back the money they were losing on coke,
they came up with a new way to profit. In a nutshell,
they used baking soda or other bases to cut the cocaine.
This increased the volume of their product while retaining the same toxicity of the drug. It was the equivalent
of taking a dollar bill, mixing it with a few pennies, and
turning it into two dollars.
By 1986, just two years after crack hit the streets,
over fifty-five thousand people were admitted to
emergency rooms around the country with crackrelated injuries (most often this was either from
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overdosing, or violence which was a result of the
drug trade).
For those of you who lived in New York during
that time, as I did, the effects of the crack epidemic
were as visible as a streetlamp. Crime in this city hit
highs never before seen. Murder and rape rates rose
dramatically. Cases of aggravated assault skyrocketed
from just over 60,000 in 1980 to over 91,000 by the
end of the decade. Burglaries. Larceny.Vehicle theft.
New York began to resemble less of a modern, cosmopolitan city than an outpost of Beirut.
Thankfully, this trend reversed itself in the 1990s,
and through the new millennium New York has
enjoyed its lowest crime rates per capita since the
1960s. New York was known as one of the safest big
cities in the country, and if you live here or came to
visit, you could walk down the street feeling safe.
After the atrocities of 9/11, New Yorkers banded
together to create a safer city. One that reclaimed its
place among the grandest in the world.The virus that
infected us twenty-five years ago had long been forgotten.
To my horror, though, recent developments have
proven that this virus was not extinguished, but had
rather been lying dormant, in remission, waiting for a
catalyst to revitalize its poisons.
That catalyst has finally found us.And it is not a terrorist,or a crooked financial institution.It exists in the
tiniest form possible: a small black rock.
Though the human eye might not register this tiny
specimen as anything more than a pebble, a piece of
gravel,something that might even pave a driveway,the
properties that exist within it threaten the very
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sanctity of the city we have fought so bravely to
protect.
The culprit? A simple black rock that dissolves on
your tongue as fast as a breath strip.
Nobody is quite sure where the Darkness came
from, who manufactures it, or whether this drug has
spread to other states. Crack began in primarily metropolitan cities. New York. Los Angeles. Washington,
D.C.Cities with large urban populations. Cities where
there was enough poverty to turn the need of a cheap
hit into gold for the men and women whose lack of
humanity drove them to produce it.
As of press time, the police had no leads on who
deals the drug. A high-ranking member inside the
NYPD did comment, off the record, stating,"We are
fully preparing for another epidemic similar to the
rise of crack cocaine we saw in the 1980s. Though
privately, we're worried that this one will be much,
much worse and have a potentially more devastating
impact considering that our infrastructure is already
damaged."
So what's the harm in a little black rock, you might
ask? Why should I care about some idiots getting high?
Because increases in drug production and consumption lead to increases in crime.But here's where
this drug differs: a normal crack user will find successive hits of the drug granting decreasing effects.The
hits, as they are, are not as potent.
With the Darkness,however,some