This is actually my favorite chapter. It challenges the common belief that all drug dealers are rich, and proves it incorrect. The author uses the research from sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh conducted field studies in Chicago which granted him access to the inner workings of gangs, including financial information.
The author compares the organizational structure of the gang to McDonalds. He explains how very few executives and upper level managers prosper from the work of 1000’s of minimum wage or low wage workers. He even found that most street drug dealers made less than minimum wage.
“Experts” are often wrong and will commonly lie or exaggerate to support their claims. For instance, advocates for the homeless had recently said that there are 3 million homeless in America when more reputable estimates have put the number far lower. Feminists will often also cite claims that 1/3 of all women will be raped (or perhaps face attempted rape) in their lifetimes, when in fact the real proportion is 1/8.
The image of the wealthy, heavily armed drug dealer is yet another myth created by antidrug advocates with their own agendas.
At MIT, Levitt met with an Indian sociology grad student who had “joined” an inner-city drug gang for the purposes of studying them and who had taken several years’ worth of their financial data (the gang actually kept ledgers).
It was found that all of the drug operations in the city [which was either Detroit or Chicago] were controlled by a 20-man central command full of wealthy, older drug lords. They sold geographical “franchise rights” to different gangs, whereby the gangs were given permission to sell drugs (supplied by the central command) in different, nonoverlapping areas. The gang that Levitt examined was headed by a single leader, who was a highly intelligent yet brutal man in his 20’s or 30’s. He was directly assisted by three officers—a treasurer, an enforcer, and a runner. Below them were 75 low-level drug dealers who sold drugs on the streets. The gang operated in a 12-square-block area and was larger than most of the city’s other gangs. Everyone in this gang was black. The gang also dabbled in selling other drugs that were not supplied by the big bosses, and the gang also made money by charging local people and businesses “protection taxes.”
Whenever there was gang-related violence, it almost always occurred either because two rival gangs were fighting over territory and hence profits, or because one gang member had broken internal rules and was subjected to corporal punishment by enforcers.
Annual salaries:
-Members of the central command - $500,000
-Gang leader - $120,000
-Gang officers - $35,000
-Drug dealers - $15,000
Drug dealing is not very profitable for the vast majority of the people within a gang. In this way, such a gang is similar to a legitimate business.
Drug dealers also repeatedly approached the Indian grad student to ask if he could get them “a good job” as a janitor or low-level worker at an institution like a college. Unhappiness with low drug dealing incomes is pervasive, and many quickly figure out that the job isn’t worth it for other reasons as well. Most drug dealers had legitimate side jobs to supplement their meager drug dealing incomes.The gang maintained public support by paying stipends to the families of slain members and by occasionally throwing free block parties.
Inner-city boys join drug gangs because gangsters and drug dealers are the only “successful” people in their neighborhoods: Without good black male role models, criminals are emulated.
Drug dealers have terrible work conditions, having to work outside in spite of bad weather or temperature extremes, facing beatings from fellow gang members as punishment for breaking rules, typically being arrested for drug dealing or related crimes twice yearly, and suffering a 6.25% yearly murder rate.
Drug gangs forbid their own dealers from using the drugs. Crack was invented in the 1970’s as a more potent form of cocaine. Contrary to popular belief, crack is not hard to make: Cocaine, water, and baking soda are mixed and then boiled until the excess fluid evaporates and the precipitated crystals make a “cracking” sound. (Hence the name of the drug) [Crack is something that, very conceivably, could have been first created in a slipshod drug lab. Its synthesis is not so complex or counterintuitive that only the government could have developed it.]
The invention of crack unfortunately coincided with a huge increase in Columbian cocaine production and with the formation of the Colombia-U.S. coke pipeline.
Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes was a Nicaraguan official in the Somoza regime. After Somoza was overthrown and the pro-Soviet Sandinistas took over, Blandon fled to the U.S. where he worked as a private fundraiser for the pro-U.S. Contras. Around this same time, he also functioned as a key intermediary between the major American drug gangs and the Colombian drug lords. Blandon was the one man most responsible for the creation of the cocaine pipeline, and by extension, for the instigation of the urban crack epidemic that began around 1980 and which ravaged black communities.
Though Blandon was arrested on drug charges in 1986 and convicted of major drug crimes in 1992, he was paroled from jail after apparently making a deal with the DEA. Blandon publicly claimed that the CIA supported him because it needed his help funding the Nicaraguan civil war. This started the urban myth that the CIA created crack to kill off black people. While it is highly unlikely that anyone but cocaine dealers created crack, it is clear that the U.S. government did overlook Blandon’s cocaine dealing operations to a great extent because they needed him as an ally against the Nicaraguan government.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, America reached its zenith of liberalism, with light sentencing for crimes and the criminal rights movement. Criminals were not being adequately punished and were not being put in jail. This largely explains the huge spike in violent crime that began in this period.
In the 1980’s, the pendulum went in the other direction, and tougher sentencing guidelines were imposed. However, the effect was masked by the crack boom, which made the cities even more violent despite stronger law enforcement.
Crack is itself, very pure cocaine. Therefore, only a small amount of cocaine is needed to make many doses of crack, making crack a cheap yet potent drug. This made it affordable among poor people, especially blacks.
In the 1980’s, black drug gangs cut out the mafia middlemen and, with the help of people like Blandon, began buying huge quantities of cocaine direct from Colombia. The coke was then processed into crack.
Around the same time, huge numbers of urban jobs were lost as factories shut down [due to the recessions of the 1970’s and 80’s], putting many black men out of work. Some among them turned to crack dealing for money.
While street gangs had existed in America since the 1800’s, it had been impossible to remain in a gang beyond age 30 until the advent of crack, which made gangs profitable enterprises that could support their members indefinitely.
From 1945 until the crack boom, blacks were steadily narrowing the gap with whites in terms of health, education, and income. After crack was introduced, the process reversed and much ground was lost.
Crack is a main cause of the disintegration of the black family, which had previously been a source of strength and morals.
Crack was the single worst thing for black America since Jim Crow laws.
