What is the difference between freebase cocaine and crack cocaine?

Answer 1

Normal cocaine (Cocaine Hydrochloride) is the typical white powder people snort. This form is a water soluble salt of the cocaine free base and the HCl. This form also vaporizes at a temperature very close to the temperature at which it burns, making it difficult to smoke.

Crack cocaine is a cheap yet inefficient method of freeing the base cocaine molecule from the salt. It uses baking soda to remove the proton from the base. However, this safe, cheap method does not involve any purification steps, leaving some water and baking soda (impurity) along with the newly formed "crack" which forms crystals and floats to the top. So freebase cocaine along with other impurites are what make up crack cocaine.

Freebase cocain is formed by a similar process. However, ammonia is used to remove the proton and free the cocaine base. Diethyl ether (extremely flammable and volatile) is used to dissolve and remove the freebase cocaine. This can simply be siphoned off the top since ethyl ether does not mix with the water/ammonia solution. The Diethyl Ether evaporates and pure freebase cocaine is left behind.

The straight forward answer is that there is absolutely no difference between crack and cocaine base, because crack is a street name or nick for cocaine base. The uses and effects are 100% identical.

So the next question is why is there a higher penalty for crack than cocaine base. The straight forward answer is our Legislative, Executive and Judicial branch has engaged in racial discrimination when charging black americans, which is what we call the new form of the Jim Crow Law.

Whites who are charged with cocaine base don't get the aka crack added to their indictment and therefore since 1914 the federal statute continues to treat cocaine hydrochloride (snortable) the same as cocaine base (smokable) , whites therefore receive a lesser prison sentence.

Black Americans on the other hand get the aka crack included in their indictment therefore receiving excessively long prison sentences. Example a white person who is charged with 5 grams of cocaine base would get a 6 to 12 months sentence the same sentence 5 gram cocaine powder would provide 'a misdemeanor'.

While the black individual who possess the same quantity would receive, a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years which is a felony for a substance that is identical to the substance a white person possessed, the only difference is the aka crack term used in the indcitment to described the cocaine base possessed by the black defendant.

So a fact, which is undissputable, crack does not physically or scientifically exist because no scientifically test exists that would differientiate cocaine base as being crack remember it is a street term, the test only results in cocaine base.

Therefore crack is a nick name for cocaine base. Crack and cocaine base are the same thing, the only difference is what race you are and the sentence imposed, because of your race.

Answer 2

There is not much difference in the sense that they both alter the brain chemistry in the same way, crack however causes an onset of euphoria in double the time of cocaine hydrochloride and therefore wears of more rapidly leaving users with more of an intense psychological need for more.

Answer 3

Crack is the freebase of cocaine.