The crack cocaine trade that dominated the late 1980s and early 1990s led society to misunderstanding the basics of the drug trade. As Freakonomics discusses, there was a belief that crack dealers were getting super rich, stockpiling massive weapons, and essentially running large criminal rings. In truth, crack dealers were not making that much money at all, and in fact, they were dealing crack in dangerous conditions for less than minimum wage. This brings to bear the question of why any person would put up with those oppressive conditions in order to make such a small amount of money when a job flipping hamburgers would be categorically “better” for the people involved.
There are many reasons why dealing crack was attractive. In some cases, the younger people dealing crack were receiving more than just money for their services. The rise of gangs in inner city neighborhoods was led by the need for young people to feel safe. In this way, the crack trade fed on itself. Crack-infested neighborhoods became more dangerous, and many young people did not feel safe because they had to work through or play in unsafe conditions. In fact, many did not have supportive family structures to fall back on. With this in mind, they would often join gangs to gain a degree of protection. Rather than potentially be caught in the crossfire or put in danger by gangs, they were joining gangs in hopes that they would stay safe. This means that the money was sometimes not the most important element in their work. Many of them were just looking for a family support structure that they otherwise lacked, and they found that structure in perhaps the worst place possible—a crack dealing gang that would use them and abuse them worse than any family could.
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Beyond that, there are some structural reasons why those young people could not just hop on and get a job at a local fast food restaurant. For one, everyone knows that discrimination exists in the traditional employment space. Young black kids, for instance, might have felt they could not get typical jobs because of the discrimination they might face in hiring. This was especially true for people who had criminal records. One of the worst things that happened during the 1990s was the check the box movement, where employers would discriminate in a big way against people who had been arrested or convicted of a crime. This, too, was something that built on itself. People were getting arrested for petty drug crimes, as the police ramped up enforcement during the War on Drugs. Those people would then have a more difficult time getting jobs, and they would be almost forced into drug dealing jobs to try and make ends meet. They were, in essence, taking under market jobs because there were structural factors that kept them from getting jobs at their actual market value in safer workplaces.
Society made a major mistake by focusing on harsh enforcement rather than fostering support in communities. Rather than treating those communities like warzones and the people in them like enemy combatants, society could have invested more in better schools and in jobs programs in those communities. Mentoring programs could have taken hold, giving young people the support they felt they needed so those young people would not have looked to crack dealing gangs to give them support. Beyond that, better enforcement of anti-discrimination laws might have curtailed some of the problems, leaving young people feeling less hopeless about their situation and providing them with alternatives that would make them less likely to take a job dealing drugs.
