“Crack” versus “rock” cocaine: the importance of local nomenclature in drug research and education

Smokable cocaine is known in the United States by a variety of names. Of these designations, the most popular appear to be "crack," "rock," "ready-rock," and "base" or "freebase." Whereas those who employ the various terms for smokable cocaine often assume the presence of shared definitions, an inspection of the research literature on cocaine smoking and our experiences with cocaine users show that this is not the case even for the most popular terms. Researchers using the terms "crack" and "freebase" are not in agreement about what they connote. Some researchers (Feldman et al., 1993; Inciardi, 1992 and 1993; Pottieger et al., 1992) differentiate freebase from crack, a difference Ratner (1993:16) makes clear in the following: Cocaine powder, which is often adulterated, can also be transformed into highly purified "freebase" cocaine by removing the hydrochloric acid with a liquid base such as ammonia or baking soda and then dissolving the product in a solvent such as ether. ... Like freebase cocaine, crack cocaine is processed from cocaine hydrochloride (with baking soda as a base) and then crystallized. But the end product is different: fewer of the adulterants have been removed, and part of the baking soda remains as a salt. The processing also allows for additional adulterants to be added, such as lidocaine and benzocaine, which look and taste like cocaine but produce no high. Because of this difference in processing methods, crack has been referred to as "garbage freebase" (Inciardi, 1992:305). Other researchers, some of whom recognize purity disparities in the different methods of transforming powdered cocaine into its base form, use "freebase" and "crack" interchangeably (Dunlap and Johnson, 1992; Hamid, 1992; Waldorf et al., 1991). Still another approach to defining smokable cocaine ignores purity issues and instead focuses on its commodity form. Edlin et al. (1992:364) define crack as "cocaine that was in the smokable (base) form when the smoker obtained it; cocaine that the user converted into the base for himself or herself was not considered to be crack." This type of definition was found among cocaine users in Portland, Oregon (Balsham, 1992:158) and in Toronto (Cheung et al., 1991:endnote 8). Sullivan (1993:119) not only employs the commodity-form definition, he also argues that meaningful pharmacological differences between crack and freebase are nonexistent: Freebase is not stronger than crack. The whole point of crack is that it is highly concentrated cocaine. The amount of adulterants added to powdered cocaine has no effect on the potency of the "rock" that results from processing that powder into freebase or crack. Making the "rock" removes the adulterants, whether it is done with baking soda, ether, or another processing agent. Freebase is simply a process in which preparation and consumption occur in immediate sequence. Crack is pre-packaged freebase. Unlike the distinctions between freebase and crack, researchers rarely distinguish between "rock" and "crack" cocaine. A few researchers suggest that some users may define "rock" cocaine as crack that they prepare themselves and "ready-rock" as cocaine that is purchased in its crack form (Ratner, 1993:1-35). However, we are aware of no research that claims crack and rock cocaine differ pharmacologically. The popularity of the term "crack" among researchers, public health officials, news reporters, and others in the mainstream is not duplicated in some cocaine-using populations. Thus while major national questionnaires such as the AIDS Initial Assessment 8.0 and the AIDS Followup Assessment (AFA) used by the National AIDS Demonstration Research projects asked participants if they used "crack/freebase" and "crack/ freebase/hubba," respectively, ethnographic research on crack suggests that users in most cities across the United States favor other names for the substance, the most common of which is "rock." For example, in an eight-city study of crackfor-sex exchanges (Ratner, 1993), only users in New York consistently used the term "crack"; users in Miami were quoted approximately equally using the names "crack" and "rock," while in the other cities "rock" appeared to be the preferred term. …