An Interesting Read.... The Cocaine Kids!!

The book Cocaine Kids by Terry Williams gave me an insight into the drug culture of the 1980’s. It depicted the ups and downs of the lives of eight teens as they try to live a sustainable lifestyle for different reason. The author provided much details of the lives of these teens through an ethnography. The author acted as part of the drug culture, viewing the lives of the kids’ sometimes in real time and by having one on one conversations with them. He would gather information by taking note, quick sketches and also keeping things in his memory so that he doesn’t scare of clients and seem out of place. He would meet the teens for two hours a day, three days a week to discuss details about the drug world.

Three aspects of the drug culture that was interesting to me was the starting of a crew, the slangs used in the drug culture, and the importance of being powerful and strong in this culture. The first aspect that caught my attention was the process starting a crew and keeping business intact. The main character, Max had to find reliable individuals who was a good supplier and could hustle. I thought that the way Max treated his fresh starters was very interesting. He would “request money at the middle of the week before it was due, he would go collect the money himself”. This way there was less room for failure and room for messing up.

The second aspect of the book that I thought was interesting was the slang/ drug language. Throughout the book there were a number of words that confused me while I was reading. There were many words related to cocaine that I had no idea what it meant. For example, shake is the term for a mixture of cocaine powder with adulterant, recompressed cocaine is when you cut cocaine to make rocks so the buyer thinks that it is pure. Chalking is a chemical procedure that makes cocaine white. There were many words used to describe the different jobs of the main eight teens in the book for example, a steerer was someone who directed people to the drug house. I really enjoyed having the glossary at the end of the book to help me understand the slang spoken throughout the book.

What I found the most interesting was length that some of the dealers would go to while trying to prove themselves as powerful, strong and independent. Towards the end of the book depicted a great example with Chillie. Chillie tried to take over McQueen’s drug spot and her customers. He kept trying to split from Max, and would lie about his dealing with McQueen to make others think that he was powerful. Kitty also wanted to show her strength by being independent. She started feeling powerful when she had a limo pick her up from her place. By as shown in the book, the drug business is very dangerous can has many draws backs such as death.

This relates to class because the author talks about the many different types of cocaine as we have learned about in class such as freebase and crack. The book has shown that different people react differently to drugs, some are more addicted and cannot resist the urge and therefore do badly at selling the drug. We also learned about the different routes of administration, as the author points out in her book. Some individuals sniffed, snorted and smoked cocaine. The author also pointed out that the color of the cocaine mattered.  I enjoyed the book overall and learnt a lot about cocaine and the drug culture.