What are the street names for it?

Cocaine: Coke, snow, nose candy, snowbirds, flake, blow, white.
Crack: rock, freebase, baseball, pebbles, apple jacks, 151, half track, pony.

What type of drug is it?

Cocaine C 17 H 21 NO 4 is a potent brain stimulant and an anesthetic. It is one of the most powerfully addictive drugs drawn from the leaves of the South American bush Erythroxylon coca.

What does it look like?

The traditional method of coca use is to chew the leaves, producing a mild stimulation. Cocaine is distributed on the street in its more refined and extracted forms: cocaine hydrochloride which is a white crystalline powder and crack - cocaine hydrochloride that has been processed with ammonia or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and water into a freebase cocaine in the form of chips, chunks, or rocks.

What is its history?

Cocaine: As early as 3000 B.C., there is evidence of coca use in South America . The inhabitants believed that the coca plant was a gift from God. In the middle of 1800s cocaine was first extracted from coca leaves. In 1886, Coca-Cola was introduced, containing cocaine and caffeine. Around the same time Parke, Davis began to manufacture cocaine.
Crack: Home "freebasing" (producing pure cocaine with an ethyl ether-based distillation process) became popular in the 1970s.

How is it used?

Cocaine can be snorted up the nose or dissolved in water and injected. Crack can be smoked.
Cocaine can be used by sniffing or injecting the powder (dissolved in water) or by smoking a purified form ("freebase" or "crack") of the drug. Outside of South America , where cocaine is chewed and absorbed by the membranes of the mouth, stomach and intestines, cocaine is most frequently used in the form of powder.
Crack is usually smoked in pipes constructed of glass bowls. The user heats the side of the bowl (usually with a lighter), and the heat causes the cocaine base to vaporize. Alternatively, crack can be sprinkled in marijuana or tobacco cigarettes and smoked. 

What are the effects?

Cocaine increases alertness, wakefulness, elevates the mood, induces a high degree of euphoria, decreases fatigue, improves thinking, increases concentration, increases energy, increased irritability, insomnia, restlessness. In large doses users often display symptoms of psychosis with confused and disorganized behavior, irritability, fear, paranoia, hallucinations, may become extremely antisocial and aggressive. It increases heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature, temperature, pulse, and respiration, decreased sleep and appetite, seizures, strokes, heart attacks, death.
Crack has the same effects as other types of cocaine but much more intense. The effects, however, are also more short lived, and once the drug leaves the brain, the user experiences a "coke crash" that includes depression, irritability, and fatigue, a greatly increased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, high blood pressure, stroke and death.

Long-term consequences include: the coughing of black phlegm, wheezing, lung trauma and bleeding, hoarseness, parched lips, tongue and throat from inhaling hot fumes, mental deterioration, psychosis, suicidal thoughts, social withdrawal and violent behavior.

Physical Dependence:

moderate

Psychical Dependence:

severe

Tolerance:

strong