“Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy” A New Series Begins January 11 on Netflix [VIDEO]

In the early 1980s, the crack epidemic tore through America’s inner cities like a tsunami, ravaging all in its wake. Decades later, the destructive effects on people’s lives, families, and communities are still deeply felt. Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy examines not only the personal devastation caused by the drug but also the shadowy origins of the crisis and the resultant, ongoing marginalization of Black and Brown people trapped by the U.S. prison and healthcare systems.

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy is a searing, in-depth look into this defining moment in American history and how it continues to impact our society more than thirty years later. Via a collage of archival news footage, compelling interviews and era-specific hip hop, award-winning documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution; Freedom Riders) peels back the layers of how crack decimated Black and Brown communities and rocked the nation. Nelson goes beyond stereotypes and dog whistles, straight to the heart of the matter: how the Iran-Contra scandal allowed an influx of cocaine into the country; the complicity of the police force and the U.S. government; the rise in gun violence; sentencing disparities between cocaine and crack possession; the devastation of families and individuals caught in crack’s wake; and how mass incarceration became the solution to a public health crisis.

A cheap, powerful drug emerges during a recession, igniting a moral panic fueled by racism. Explore the complex history of crack in the 1980s.