GRAGK: COCAINE, CORRUPTION & CONSPIRACY.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: DOCUMENTARY

It "seemed like a good idea at the time," former Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) says in the Netflix documentary Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy. Rangel, who represented Harlem from 1971 to 2017, is talking about the draconian political response to the crack cocaine "epidemic" of the 1980s.

That response included a federal sentencing scheme, backed by then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), that treated crack as if it were 100 times worse than cocaine powder and imposed a five-year mandatory minimum for possessing as little as five grams. Crack reminds us of the circumstances in which policies like those, which overwhelmingly targeted African Americans, seemed like a good idea to supposedly liberal black Democrats such as Rangel. "Clearly," he says now, "it was overkill."

The documentary recalls seminal events in the tangled cultural history of crack, such as Nancy Reagan's inane but widely echoed "Just Say No" campaign, the 1986 death of college basketball star Len Bias, the...