“Cocaine and crack are essentially the same thing. Cocaine is a middle-class drug. Crack is a poor person's drug, which carries a felony conviction for possession. And once you get this felony conviction, which given that the whole community is pretty much strung out on it, you become basically sidelined into an alternative kind of lifestyle. You become completely marginalized. You can't get public housing, you can't get a lot of jobs, you can't vote. You have a real problem doing anything to get you out of the rut that you're in. You become basically a non - person.”
