Crack, Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy is the latest Netflix documentary to tackle a broad social issue and hit the nail right on the head. It tackles the history of this life-ruining, cheap street drug and how it has become about so, so, so much more than just getting high.
Drug addiction and epidemics are an incredibly hard subject to tackle and no matter how much research you put into it, there’s always bound to be a stone left unturned when it comes to examining the causes and consequences of an incredibly complicated feature in the human experience. But Stanley Nelson does a really good job of squeezing a very well-structured narrative about how America and the African American community in particular has been suffering at the hands of the crack epidemic that’s been plaguing communities since the 1980s.
Starting off with the rise in popularity of cocaine, moving through the CIA’s intervention in the Marxist revolution in Nicaragua, crack changed America forever as soon as this cheaper variant of cocaine hit the streets. Crack, Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy carries us through the story using old footage and commentary from former addicts, dealers, journalists and various experts, starting with the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, which continued and only escalated through the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations, to the point where mass incarceration, predominantly among people of colour, has become one of the most devastating social issues that the United States has to deal with today.
Crack, Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy follows the benchmark set by The Social Dilemma and doesn’t fall short at all in its holistic approach to understanding the issues, its origins, where things got even worse and what we can learn from history when we consider solutions for the debilitating effects of addiction.
It shows how America left addicts behind and considered them sub-human, in a manner that was orchestrated from the very highest echelons of society with the intent to disenfranchise black communities. For example, Black Lives Matter and the contagion of police brutality was arguably born out of the emergence of this very simple narcotic and Netflix has connected the dots in ways that you need to see for yourself
Essential Millennial rating: 5 out of 5 avocados.
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