Now Streaming - Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption and Conspiracy, a new documentary from director Stanley Nelson, streaming now on Netflix, tracks the rise of crack cocaine in the 1980s and its devastating impact on communities of color in cities throughout the United States. Largely ignored in the early years by the police, the media and the general public, the “crack epidemic” would become, by the mid-80s, a top issue at all levels of government, resulting in a series of federal laws that, taken together, formed the foundation of the “war on drugs.”

Through interviews with former dealers, former users, historians and journalists, as well as a wide range of searing archival footage, the film places the crisis within the context of the Reagan era, when greed was good, cocaine was a symbol of wealth and status and communities of color were bearing the brunt of Reagan’s economic policies and cuts in social services.

As crack-related violence spiraled out of control in inner-city neighborhoods, an increasingly militarized police force, coupled with punitive “tough on crime” sentencing policies, heaped further misery on a vulnerable population and set in motion consequences that haunt the nation to this day. As former user Felecia Pullen says in the film, “We are still picking up the pieces of the 80s today. Why? Because the responses were not designed to help the people that were in trouble.”