The term "drug scare" has been used to designate periods when antidrug crusades have achieved great prominence and legitimacy. Drug scares are phenomena in their own right, quite apart from drug use and drug problems. Crack appeared in late 1984 and 1985, primarily in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. Crack was a marketing innovation, a way of packaging relatively expensive powder cocaine in small inexpensive units. Between 1986 and 1992, crack was portrayed by the media and politicians as the most contagiously addicting and destructive substance known, and little attention was paid to psychological and social dimensions of drug abuse such as poverty and racism. The authors review the history of drug scares and drug control efforts in the United States, as well as studies on the sociology of drugs. They conclude effective and human responses to the drug problem depend on moving beyond "demonization" and pharmacological determinism toward more effective drug policy alternatives. 35 references and 6 notes