Word: cracking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bitter, remorseful and full of resolution. The easy tolerance of the late 1960s, when turning on was a statement of personal freedom, has turned to dread. Cocaine, the glamour dust of the late '70s -- fast, clean, fun! -- has been boiled down to hard and mean little pellets of crack, giver of euphoria, taker of lives. To a nation that espouses self-reliance, drug dependence has emerged as the dark side of the American character, the price of freedom to fail. It is as if America, so vain and self-consciously fit, has looked upon itself and suddenly seen the hideously...
...country, it seems, is awash with drugs. Fine white powder pours past the border patrol like sand through a sieve. On busy street corners and in urban parks, pushers murmur, "Crack it up, crack it up," like some kind of evil incantation, bewitching susceptible kids and threatening society's sense of order and security. The public is outraged; opinion polls show that drug abuse has surpassed economic woes and the threat of real war as the nation's No. 1 concern. For a nation whose penchant for righteous crusades can surpass even its tolerance for libertine individualism, the crackdown against...
...Drugs" is now a regular feature on the nightly news and the front pages. CRACK USERS' BABIES CROWDING HOSPITAL NURSERIES, blares a headline in the normally staid New York Times. The networks air two prime-time specials in a week: CBS Anchorman Dan Rather can be seen tagging along on the police bust of a crack house in New York City; NBC's Tom Brokaw earnestly questions addicts about the evils of dope. The war on drugs, like the war in Viet Nam, has been brought home to the nation's living rooms...
...precisely why drugs are this year's public bane, just as it is hard to know why other threats that are ever present -- from nuclear holocaust to world hunger to environmental disaster -- seem to obsess the national consciousness in cycles. Perhaps it is the sheer insidiousness of crack, the newly popular, highly potent form of cocaine that can in short order transform the casual pleasure seeker into an addict. Perhaps it is the perception that drugs have spread into the workplace and the neighborhood, that they have arrived like the wolf at the door, or at least next door...
Even so, the fear that has seized the nation is hardly unwarranted. Drug abuse remains unacceptably high, and its more virulent form -- crack addiction -- appears to be spreading. The press and politicians may be guilty of hyping the drug crisis, but the costs to users and society are nonetheless appalling...