In the '80s, there was a lifestyle of celebration,
and coke was part of that lifestyle.
It was the glitzy drug.
When crack came along,
it changed everything about the Black community,
and it changed everything about America.
It was like the gold rush.
There was people coming from all over to buy this wonder drug.
The drug so powerful, it will make you sell the clothes off your back.
The reporting played right into all of these stereotypes
and this narrative.
We must be intolerant of drug use and drug sellers.
If you got a war on drugs,
is it not a war on the people that are supplying the drugs?
Or is it only a war on the victims of the drug war?
Just say no.
It felt extraordinarily hypocritical.
This was happening
at a time when the US government was turning a blind eye
to cocaine smuggling.
Our goal was to defeat communism in Central America.
If that meant drugs got in and the youth of America used them,
that was the way it was gonna be.
We knew that they were in on it.
We knew they were dealing on the side.
What would you steal? Money and drugs and guns.
Whatever was there.
That was kind of like chemical warfare on Black communities.
Don't take my mother, please!
It's a story that has to be told.