for $600 can be converted into crack cocaine and sold for $3,000. Dealers can easily recruit "runners," young boys from the local community to market the crack on the streets. Crack houses are established as bases of operation and to facilitate rapid manufacture of the drug. Thus, an elaborate underground economy can quickly flourish, bringing in millions of dollars of profit. As one researcher in Harlem notes, "Cocaine and crack . . . have been the fastest growing--if not the only--equal opportunity employers of men in Harlem. Retail drug sales easily outcompete other income-generating opportunities, whether legal or illegal" (Bourgois 3).
The street-based marketing pattern of crack cocaine dealing marks the most important difference between crack and powder, and this aspect federal policy, though misguided, has sought to rectify. When crack dealing invades a community, a cycle of lawlessness develops. Dealers who are apprehended and imprisoned are quickly replaced with eager young recruits. Neighborhood residents are terrorized by brazen drug trafficking on street corners. Law enforcement officials often find themselves outgunned by the superior firepower of their youthful adversa
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