How Much Crack Can New Yorkers Possibly Smoke?

Brooklyn authorities arrested 143 Red Hook drug dealers (!) cutting off $50 million (!!) in annual profits, according to District Attorney Charles Hynes. The Brooklyn Paper (.pdf) notes that dealers sold an impressive 9,324 vials of crack a day:

District Attorney Charles Hynes announced last week that the thugs earned $50 million annually slinging drugs in and around the neighborhood’s most-concentrated residential development, the Red Hook Houses.

“The amount of drug dealing turned the development into a drug supermarket,” said Hynes at a press conference last week.

He added that the busts had nothing to do with the city’s latest tourism efforts in the neighborhood, including a brand new terminal for the Queen Mary 2 . . .

. . .

Dealers had treated the neighborhood like they owned it, dividing up the housing development in a very business-like fashion into sections reserved for certain vendors.

The residential enclave closest to Red Hook Park — open fields where children play soccer and baseball — was known as “The Back Tall Buildings,” while the section close to the neighborhood’s popular discount store and its only bank was called “The Front.”

“They were out there every day in the courtyard,”
said resident Andrea McKnight. “Now they are gone and it feels better.”

. . .

Of course, not everyone loves a drug-free zone.

“My pot dealer refuses to come here anymore,” said one bartender on Van Brunt Street, referring to the stepped-up police presence. “He says it’s too hot now.”