Great Performance !

Now for another unlikely question: what did crack cocaine have in common with nylon stockings?

In 1939, when DuPont introduced nylons, countless American women felt as if a miracle had been performed in their honor. Until then, stockings were made of silk, and silk was delicate, expensive, and in ever shorter supply. By 1941, some sixty-four million pairs of nylon stockings had been sold—more stockings than there were adult women in the United States. They were easily affordable, immensely appealing, practically addictive.

DuPont had pulled off the feat that every marketer dreams of: it brought class to the masses. In this regard, the invention of nylon stockings was markedly similar to the invention of crack cocaine.

In the 1970s, if you were the sort of person who did drugs, there was no classier drug than cocaine. Beloved by rock stars and movie stars, ballplayers and even the occasional politician, cocaine was a drug of power and panache. It was clean, it was white, it was pretty. Heroin was droopy and pot was foggy but cocaine provided a beautiful high.

Alas, it was also very expensive. Nor did the high last long. This led cocaine users to try jacking up the drug’s potency. They did this primarily by freebasing—adding ammonia and ethyl ether to cocaine hydrochloride, or powdered cocaine, and burning it to free up the “base” cocaine. But this could be dangerous. As Richard Pryor famously proved—he nearly killed himself while freebasing—chemistry is best left to chemists.

Meanwhile, cocaine dealers and aficionados across the country, and perhaps also in the Caribbean and S
outh America, were working on a safer version of distilled cocaine. They found that mixing powdered
cocaine in a saucepan with baking soda and water, and then cooking off the liquid, produced tiny rocks of smokeable cocaine. It came to be called crack for the crackling sound the baking soda made when it was burned. More affectionate nicknames would soon follow: Rock, Kryptonite, Kibbles ’n Bits, Scrabble, and Love. By the early 1980s, the class drug was ready for the masses. Now only two things were needed to turn crack into a phenomenon: an abundant supply of raw cocaine and a way to get the new product to a mass market.

Taken From : FREAKONOMICS - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything