Proper legalization and regulation would mean it wouldn’t be sold as crack and wouldn’t have the potential to contain fentanyl, eliminating much of the physiological risk. Proper drug legalization would also divert funds currently used for drug enforcement (swat teams, dea, private prisons, etc) to drug treatment facilities accessible to those who need it.
In general the negative effects of most any drug are best fought with education, regulation, and treatment, not prohibition. Cocaine and crack were illegal in the 80s and 90s when the crack epidemic raged, so obviously legal status was not preventing such crises in the first place. The important factors there were more around support of impoverished communities than tepid laws that serve only to further the cycle of social disruption caused by petty arrests and adversarial tension between police and downtrodden communities and the empowerment of gangs by creating a thriving black market.
The struggles we’re having related to crack or other drugs are related to a great many things aside from the drug itself, prohibition itself causing some of the largest problems on a global scale. What if Mexico could have cocaine as a legitimate export? Would we have violent cartels or legitimate businesses that improve the community (though surely they’d also leach as businesses are wont to do, but surely less violently than illegal organizations)? I’d posit the latter, though the transition from one to the other won’t be smooth.