DBS
Case 004
The Baking Soda Conversion
Above the surface — the public claim
Crack cocaine arrives in the standard account as an invention: a single originator, a moment of discovery, an epidemic that appeared without warning, and an enforcement response to a crisis nobody saw coming. Nearly every retelling supplies a name.
Below the surface — the record
No confirmed inventor of the baking soda conversion exists anywhere in the historical record. A recipe was published openly in Berkeley in 1976. On 28 February 1995 the United States Sentencing Commission unanimously recommended reducing the 100-to-1 crack-to-powder sentencing ratio. On 30 October 1995 Congress rejected it, the first time it had ever rejected a Commission recommendation, and the President signed the rejection into law.
The question this file is built to answer
Why does the record keep manufacturing inventor-figures for something that had no inventor? The case works from the primary documents rather than the retellings: the 1995 Sentencing Commission report, the Congressional Record of 17 October 1986, the DOJ and CIA inspector general reports. Then it audits the citations behind the origin claims that circulate without any of them.