Terry M. Williams

Sociologist Teery Williams spent four years in a New York City crackhouse, and talks about the complex culture that's evolved around the drug. Williams teaches at the New School For Social Research in New York, and he's previously published books about a teenage cocaine ring and inner-city poverty.

African-American sociologist Terry Williams. He's the coauthor of Growing Up Poor, a highly-praised analysis of the effects of poverty that persists through several generations. His new book, The Cocaine Kids, is the story of a teenage drug ring. Since 1982 he has spent much of his time hanging out with teenage cocaine dealers in cocaine bars, after-hours clubs, discos, restaurants, crack houses, on street corners and at family gatherings and parties. What emerges is a portrait of the urban cocaine business. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)