Nope. Cocaine, the drug, is a cocaine salt. Commonly cocaine hydrochloride, but Wikipedia seems convinced it's also neutralised into sulfates and nitrates. Crack contains cocaine, the chemical, but is not cocaine, the drug.
You're saying that freebase cocaine isn't "cocaine, the drug", but chlorides and sulfates are? It may be relevant to this discussion that salts dissociate in solution, but maybe it won't convince you because it sounds like you're steering painfully close to "the sun goes around the earth because people say 'the sun rises', and therefore it doesn't make sense to talk about sunrise on Mars."
That is, it sounds like you're trying to bend over backwards to invent a coherent meaning to impose on the utterances of people who are just confused and ignorant, with the result that your own utterances are losing meaning. The reason people say things like "crack isn't cocaine, the drug" and "coca leaves don't contain cocaine" isn't that their utterances refer to some coherent entity called "cocaine, the drug", which consists of some arbitrary collection of cocaine salts but excludes the hydroxide. They're just wrong, because being wrong is a thing that people do a lot, especially when they're talking about things they don't know about, like chemistry.
> saying that freebase cocaine isn't "cocaine, the drug", but chlorides and sulfates are
Yes. So does the DEA. We had separate charges for “cocaine” and “crack” for decades, with the former referring to the powdered salt and the latter to the base. The fact that the active compound is identical is irrelevant.
> They're just wrong, because being wrong is a thing that people do a lot, especially when they're talking about things they don't know about, like chemistry
We’re talking about language. Not chemistry per se.
Someone saying someone doing crack is doing cocaine is simply incorrect in a colloquial context. Sort of like how tomatoes are culinarily a vegetable even if botanically they are fruits.
I mean, taking your definitions from the DEA for cocaine is just wrong. Even if you believe it to be meaningful, it is US-centric to a fault, and government definitions of things are not meant to generalize.
Crack is "crack cocaine". It is a Form of cocaine.
The separation of "cocaine" and "crack" was a policy and marketing choice, in order to make it possible that a black person would get 20 years for dealing the same drug that would only get a white person 5 years.
The people chewing coca leaves before the 1800s were doing so in order to consume the cocaine within.
The DEA isn't even trying to say true things instead of false things; they routinely describe cocaine as a "narcotic" and lithium as a "methamphetamine precursor", because such lies enable them to increase their jurisdiction beyond what enabling statute law or public opinion would tolerate.
Someone saying that doing crack is doing cocaine is simply correct in a colloquial context. If the DEA says they are incorrect, they are simply bullshitting due to political incentives.
Nope. Cocaine, the drug, is a cocaine salt. Commonly cocaine hydrochloride, but Wikipedia seems convinced it's also neutralised into sulfates and nitrates. Crack contains cocaine, the chemical, but is not cocaine, the drug.