At any given time, someone in Costa Rica might be getting high by smoking crack, the freebase form of cocaine. Popular wisdom would suggest that the smoker in question would be a “piedrero,” which is Costa Rica slang for crackhead, someone hopelessly addicted to the substance and living in extreme poverty as a result. It so happens popular wisdom is wrong in this case; not everyone who smokes freebase cocaine in Costa Rica is a crackhead –evidence suggests that non-addicted crack users who smoke in casual settings greatly outnumbers the crackheads on the street.

 

The issue of social crack use has not been given as much media attention as that of the crack epidemic that started in the 1980s. A few years ago, however, controversial actor Charlie Sheen shed light on his crack smoking habit; although Mr. Sheen’s drug use and debauchery are well-known, he does not seem to fit the mold of a crackhead.

 

For a brief time in the wake of Mr. Sheen’s revelations, the topic of social crack use came up on the public radar. A year later, an episode of the HBO series Girls, a character accidentally smoked a hit of crack while waiting in line to use the restroom at a party. In this particular party, set in the now-trendy district of Bushwick, New York, a crack pipe was casually passed around as if it was marijuana, which is what the character thought it was in the first place. In the 2006 film Half Nelson, Canadian actor Ryan Gosling played the role of a schoolteacher who could smoke crack habitually and still carry out most of his societal duties. That’s about as much as popular culture has produced around the subject of social crack smoking.

 

While there is no denying the deep harm that a crack addiction can cause to an individual and his or her family, it is interesting to note that crack is not universally addicting. As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, the crack epidemic that swept through major metropolitan areas of the United States was almost manufactured during the CIA crack smuggling scandal of the Cold War, in which Costa Rica played a role. The news media in the United States ran with the angle of crack destroying the lives of those already living in poverty at disadvantaged inner city districts, and we were left with the Great Crack Epidemic of the 20^th Century.

 

In 2011, Time Magazine published interesting information about the reality of crack:

 

[According] to data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 75.6% of those who tried crack between 2004 and 2006 were not using it at all two years later. Another 15% were still hitting the pipe occasionally, but not at levels that would qualify them as addicts. About 9.2% were addicted.

 

In 1997, the book Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice, published by The Regents of the University of California, cited research showing that:

 

[The] amount of harm resulting from the use of powder cocaine and crack has less to do with their pharmacological properties than with the social circumstances of their use.

 

[Once] crack had been introduced to the inner-city poor, the “crack epidemic” became a major media event—with literally thousands of articles appearing in newspapers and magazines in 1986 alone. At the time, no scientific studies of the drug had been conducted, but journalists found and quoted a handful of “experts”—mostly law enforcement officials and drug treatment providers—who had decided that crack was “the most dangerous drug known to man.”

 

In Costa Rica, the “crack epidemic” started about a decade and a half after it hit the U.S. To this day, crack is the most demonized drug in our country, although addiction researchers have pointed out that the issue of destitute crackheads is not as severe as of those whose liquor addictions have left them homeless. Interestingly, the demonization of crack has been copied from the U.S. by the news media of Costa Rica; however, we have the excellent work of researcher Ernesto Cortés of the Drug Research and Intervention Association. Mr. Cortés notes that crack is often the drug of choice of those who live in poverty, and the reason is its low cost. Looking into the lives of the crackheads on the streets of Costa Rica, you will find that their lives were quite marginal at the time they embarked on their addiction journey.

 

To shed some light on the issue of social crack use in our country, The Costa Rica Star interviewed Jose Carlos, an informal taxi driver/drug dealer who works the night shift across all districts of San Jose. In the past, Jose Carlos has provided The Costa Rica Star with information about the heroin market, the populous inner city communities of Hatillo, and Zika virus awareness among prostitutes who service sexual tourists at the Del Rey Hotel and Casino.

 

Jose Carlos is very familiar with crack; in a previous interview he explained his past experience with the drug:

 

I was the worst crackhead. I was a liar and a thief; I even lived in the streets for a stretch. Recovery was not easy but it was worth it. In a way, I gave up an addiction for another; I feel that I’m now hooked on making money instead.

 

My clients are not crackheads; I will not sell to people who are as bad as I used to be. I know my clients have jobs, money and, you know, normal lives; besides, I charge extra for the delivery and the dedicated service. In fact, I have cut off clients whom I see are getting out of control; I bitch them out because I don’t want them to hit rock bottom like I did, and I also want their steady business.

 

Most of the clients Jose Carlos services tend to be nocturnal creatures: musicians, security guards, nightclub employees, prostitutes, revelers, and drug users. Jose Carlos makes drug deliveries around the Greater San Jose Metropolitan Area (Spanish initials: GAM); crack and marijuana are his top sellers, followed by cocaine. He claims to be able to tell a crackhead apart from “casual users;” to this effect, his prices are not cheap:

 

Crackheads do not buy from me because they know I charge between 3.000 and 5.000 colones per hit delivered. They buy their crack for 1.000 (about $2), and that’s for just one rock that they are supposed to break up into two or three hits. Some of them just smoke the entire rock in one hit, that’s disgusting and dangerous. The rocks I sell are shaped to fit the pipe for one hit; five are enough for the whole night.

 

The guy who supplies me with crack is old school… he uses only baking soda and ammonia to cook. The stuff out on the streets… you don’t know what they use; I hear it is all amphetamines these days. My clients would bitch me out if I were to sell them crack that they can get from the street corner; their throats would be sore for days.

 

Many of my clients are students at the University of Costa Rica… actually, most of them dropped out but still live with friends in the area. There’s this couple who lives in [redacted by The Costa Rica Star]; they call me once or twice a month to drive them to a motel in San Francisco. If you ever met them, you would never guess that they smoke crack. The guy is a manager at [a major bank] and his wife is beautiful like Miss Costa Rica; she tutors private school students. They have a daughter, and when they call me it means that they got one of their moms to watch the little girl.

 

You know, this couple – I don’t know how they do it. When I pick them up at the motel hours later, they look nervous and depressed. I used to get that way, but then it would move to get smoke even more crack. I never let my clients smoke crack in my car because it brings me bad memories. They can smoke marijuana or do [powder] cocaine, but never crack. So how do they do it? I don’t know how they can go back to normal and they have jobs and their daughter in a nice house… it’s something I was never able to do.