Shortages in the marijuana supply became acute around 1981 and caused Rastafari marijuana distributors very reluctantly to disregard religious injunctions against the use of any psychoactive substance except marijuana. They began to experiment with the use and distribution of powdered cocaine for intranasal administration and, later, for smoking as freebase cocaine and crack. This experimentation proved ruinous, and many people were retired ignominiously from drug distribution. In the crack era, they have been succeeded by completely new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. The crack economy currently has six levels. The top level, located in Colombia, entails transactions worth billions of dollars and tons of cocaine. The fifth level involves large numbers of persons who sell cocaine to finance their own use, as well as freelancers, but profits are lower than consumption and the transactions involve quantities under an ounce. The sixth level is pure consumption at the street level; purchasers use nondrug incomes to finance their use and receive no profits from their drug sales. The institutions of this crack economy are still emerging and should receive further research attention. Notes and 16 references