Crack cocaine as sold on the streets may be adulterated or "buffed" to increase bulk. According to Cpl. Kent Dahl, with Red Deer RCMP Federal Drugs, Canada, white substances mimicking the appearance of cocaine are added to increase bulk. Use of toxic adulterants such as levamisole although it is not uncommon for some users to "wash up" or "cook" the cocaine into crack themselves. This process is done with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), water, and a spoon. Once mixed and heated, the bicarbonate breaks down into carbon dioxide and sodium carbonate, which then reacts with the hydrochloride of the cocaine molecule, leaving cocaine as an oily free base. Once separated from the hydrochloride, the cocaine alkaloid floats to the top of the now leftover liquid. It is at this point that the oil is picked up rapidly, usually with a pin or long thin object. This pulls the oil up and spins it, allowing air to set and dry the oil, and allows the user and/or maker to roll the oil into the rock-like shape.
Crack vaporizes near temperature 90 °C (194 °F), much lower than the cocaine hydrochloride melting point of 190 °C (374 °F). Whereas cocaine hydrochloride cannot be smoked (burns with no effect), crack cocaine when smoked allows for quick absorption into the blood stream, and reaches the brain in 8 seconds. Coupled with the fact that crack is considered more potent than cocaine hydrochloride, users obtain an intense high much more quickly than with the normal method of insufflating ("sniffing" or "snorting") the powdered cocaine.
A typical response among users is to have another hit of the drug; however, the levels of dopamine in the brain take a long time to replenish themselves, and each hit taken in rapid succession leads to increasingly less intense highs. However, a person might binge for 3 or more days without sleep, while partying with hits from the pipe.
Use of cocaine in a binge, during which the drug is taken repeatedly and at increasingly high doses, leads to a state of increasing irritability, restlessness, and paranoia. This may result in a full-blown paranoid psychosis, in which the individual loses touch with reality and experiences auditory hallucinations.
Stimulant drug abuse (particularly amphetamine and cocaine) can lead to delusional parasitosis (aka Ekbom's Syndrome: a mistaken belief they are infested with parasites). For example, excessive cocaine use can lead to formication, nicknamed "cocaine bugs" or "coke bugs," where the affected people believe they have, or feel, parasites crawling under their skin. These delusions are also associated with high fevers or extreme alcohol withdrawal, often together with visual hallucinations about insects.
An appreciable tolerance to cocaine’s high may develop, with many addicts reporting that they seek but fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first experience. Some users will frequently increase their doses to intensify and prolong the euphoric effects. While tolerance to the high can occur, users might also become more sensitive (sensitization) to cocaine's anesthetic and convulsant effects, without increasing the dose taken: this increased sensitivity may explain some deaths occurring after apparently low doses of cocaine.
When large amounts of dopamine are released by crack consumption, it becomes easier for the brain to generate motivation for other activities. The activity also releases a large amount of adrenaline into the body, which tends to increase heart rate and blood pressure, leading to long-term cardiovascular problems. It is suggested by research that smoking crack or freebase cocaine has additional health issues beyond other methods of taking cocaine. Many of these issues relate specifically to the release of methylecgonidine, and the specific effect of methylecgonidine on the heart, and the smoke does not remain potent for long. Therefore, crack pipes are generally very short, to minimise the time between evaporating and losing strength. This often causes cracked and blistered lips, colloquially "crack lip", from having a very hot pipe pressed against the lips. The use of "convenience store crack pipes" - glass tubes which originally contained small artificial roses - may also create this condition. These 4-inch (10-cm) pipes
Many recall that "crack babies," or babies born to mothers who used crack cocaine while pregnant, were at one time written off by many as a lost generation. They were predicted to suffer from severe, irreversible damage, including reduced intelligence and social skills. It was later found that this was a gross exaggeration. However, the fact that most of these children appear normal should not be overinterpreted as indicating that there is no cause for concern. Using sophisticated technologies, scientists are now finding that exposure to cocaine during fetal development may lead to subtle, yet significant, later deficits in some children, including deficits in some aspects of cognitive performance, information-processing, and attention to tasks—abilities that are important for success in school.
Some people previously believed that crack cocaine caused infant death as SIDS, but when investigators began looking at the incidence of SIDS in the children of women who used crack cocaine, they found it to be no higher than in children of women who smoked cigarettes.
There are also warnings about the threat of breastfeeding: "It is likely that cocaine will reach the baby through breast milk." The March of Dimes advises the following regarding cocaine use during pregnancy:
Cocaine use during pregnancy can affect a pregnant woman and her unborn baby in many ways. During the early months of pregnancy, it may increase the risk of miscarriage. Later in pregnancy, it can trigger preterm labor (labor that occurs before 37 weeks of pregnancy) or cause the baby to grow poorly. As a result, cocaine-exposed babies are more likely than unexposed babies to be born with low birthweight (less than ). Low-birthweight babies are 20 times more likely to die in their first month of life than normal-weight babies, and face an increased risk of lifelong disabilities such as mental retardation and cerebral palsy. Cocaine-exposed babies also tend to have smaller heads, which generally reflect smaller brains. Some studies suggest that cocaine-exposed babies are at increased risk of birth defects, including urinary-tract defects and, possibly, heart defects. Cocaine also may cause an unborn baby to have a stroke, irreversible brain damage, or a heart attack.
In the United States cocaine is a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act since it has high abuse potential but also carries a medicinal purpose. Under the DEA listing of schedule I substances, crack is not considered separate from cocaine since they are essentially the same drug compound in different forms.
There has been some controversy over the disproportionate sentences mandated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for crack cocaine (versus powder cocaine) since 1986. Whereas there was a 5-year minimum sentence for trafficking 500g of powdered cocaine, the same sentence could be imposed for mere possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, a 100:1 ratio. There is no mandatory minimum sentence for mere possession of powder cocaine. The United States Sentencing Commission long recommended that this disparity be rectified and existing sentences reduced. Some claim that this disparity amounts to institutional racism, as crack cocaine is more common in inner-city black communities, and powder cocaine in white suburban communities. The Supreme Court ruled in Kimbrough v. United States (2007) that the Guidelines for cocaine are advisory only, and that a judge may consider the disparity between the Guidelines' treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses when sentencing a defendant. The Fair Sentencing Act reduced the disparity between United States federal criminal penalties for crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses from a 100:1 ratio to an 18:1 ratio (based on the number of grams of cocaine in possession) and eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine, among other provisions.
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| Caption | Eastwood in 2008 |
|---|---|
| Alt | An older man is at the center of the image smiling and looking off to the right of the image. He is wearing a white jacket, and a tan shirt and tie. The number 61 can be seen behind him on a background wall. |
| Nationality | American |
| Birth name | Clinton Eastwood |
| Birth date | May 31, 1930 |
| Birth place | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor, director, producer, composer |
| Years active | 1953–present |
| Spouse | Maggie Johnson (1953-1984, divorced)Dina Ruiz (1996-present) |
| Partner | Sondra Locke (1975–89)Frances Fisher (1990–95) |
| Children | 7 |
Following his six-year run on the television series Rawhide (1959–65), Eastwood starred as the laconic Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s, and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films of the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, and several others as tough-talking, no-nonsense police officers, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. While in Los Angeles, Hill became reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak Eastwood into a Universal studio, where he showed him to cameraman Irving Glassberg. Glassberg arranged for an audition under Arthur Lubin, who, although very impressed with Clint's appearance and stature at 6'4" (193 cm), After signing, Eastwood was initially criticized for his stiff manner and hissing his lines through his teeth, a life-long trademark, along with his squint. Eastwood had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand (his first western film) in June 1956 with Law Man. In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet in the West Point television series and portrayed a suicidal gold prospector in Death Valley Days. Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in the French picture Lafayette Escadrille and played a major role as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass, a film which Eastwood viewed disastrously and professes to be the lowest point of his career.
The Dollars trilogy was not shown in the United States until 1967. A Fistful of Dollars opened in January, For a Few Dollars More in May, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in December 1967. However, all three films received generally bad reviews from critics and marked the beginning of Eastwood's battle to win the respect of American film critics. and Renata Adler of The New York Times remarked that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre",
Stardom brought more roles in the "tough guy" mold. Eastwood signed for the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High (1968), which featured him alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Ed Begley, Bruce Dern, and James MacArthur. He plays a man who seeks revenge after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead. Jennings Lang arranged for Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who would soon become one of Eastwood's close friends, forming a close partnership which would last more than ten years. In the winter of 1969–70, Eastwood and Siegel began planning his next film, The Beguiled, the tale of a wounded Union soldier held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girls' school. }}
1971 proved to be a turning point in Eastwood's career.
In 1974, Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The film is a road movie about a veteran bank robber, Thunderbolt (Eastwood), and a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges). On release in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy but was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million (US$}} in dollars). Eastwood decided to make a third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer, which had Harry working with a new female partner (Tyne Daly) in which they face a San Francisco Bay area group resembling the Symbionese Liberation Army, culminating in a shootout on Alcatraz island. The film became another box office success and was among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.
In 1982, Eastwood directed and starred in Honkytonk Man alongside his son Kyle, based on Clancy Carlile's novel set during the Great Depression. about an aspiring country music singer named Red Stovall. The film received only one good review in the United States, from Time, with most reviewers criticizing its blend of muted humor and tragedy.
The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, shot in the spring and summer of 1983, is widely considered to be the darkest and most violent of the series.
In 1992, Eastwood revisited the western genre in the self-directed film Unforgiven, where he played an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime opposite Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, and then girlfriend Frances Fisher. Scripts existed as early as 1976 for the film, but Eastwood delayed the project, partly because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play his character and to savor it as the last of his western films. By re-envisioning established genre conventions in a more ambiguous and unromantic light, the picture laid the groundwork for later westerns such as Deadwood. Unforgiven was a major commercial and critical success and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, As the vice chairman of this commission, with chairman Bobby Shriver, in 2005 he led an opposition movement to a six-lane extension of California State Route 241, a toll road that would cut through San Onofre State Beach. Eastwood and Shriver supported a 2006 lawsuit to block the toll road and urged the California Coastal Commission to reject the project, which it did, in February 2008. the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC) asked for a legislative investigation into the decision. According to biographers Marc Eliot and Patrick McGilligan, Eastwood always had a strong sexual appetite, particularly in the 1970s, and had affairs with many women, including actresses Catherine Deneuve, Jean Seberg, Peggy Lipton, Kay Lenz, Jamie Rose, Inger Stevens, Jo Ann Harris, Jane Brolin, Jill Banner, script analyst Megan Rose, and swimming champion Anita Lhoest. Jazz has played an important role in Eastwood's life from a young age and although he was never successful as a musician, he passed on the influence to his son Kyle Eastwood, a successful jazz bassist and composer. Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward. Eastwood co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, which was recorded by Diana Krall. Eastwood was a licensed pilot and often flew his helicopter to the studios to avoid traffic.
|- ! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;"|National Board of Review |-
Category:1930 births Category:Actors from California Category:Akira Kurosawa Award winners Category:American actor-politicians Category:American actors of English descent Category:American actors of Scottish descent Category:American aviators Category:American composers Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American firefighters Category:American libertarians Category:American people of Dutch descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American restaurateurs Category:American television actors Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:Best Director Golden Globe winners Category:California Republicans Category:César Award winners Category:Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Category:Eastwood family Category:English-language film directors Category:Fellini Gold Medalists Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Restaurateurs Category:Living people Category:Mayors of places in California Category:Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun Category:People from Oakland, California Category:People from Piedmont, California Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:Producers who won the Best Picture Academy Award Category:Spaghetti Western actors Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:United States Army soldiers Category:Western (genre) film actors Category:Western (genre) film directors
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
