The Evil Prohibition to Promote Cigarettes

let's call it what it really is - an outdated agricultural mercantilism
The 'Drug War' - Banning the safest stimulant (Coca) for the sake of protecting and promoting the most dangerous (Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco)

The last U.S. Bottle of Vin Mariani?

the 1906+ restrictions and ban of Opium and Coca and the protected market growth of Virginia Bright Leaf Cigarettes- against the 'Tobacco Habit Cure' of Coca

It's a pity that a man as Ronald Wilson Reagan ignored the utter inconsistencies of his political sloganeering about excessive and fiscaly unwise government, particularly concerning such governments' choice of agricultural commodities we are offered for our daily stimulation and relaxation, cir:1884-1906

- machines for the mass production of cigarettes are 1st deployed; previously they had to be hand rolled.  Nonetheless sales of such cigarettes grew reletively slowly until 1906.

- isolated cocaine is introduced commercially. Introduced in a variety of forms, with the more potent concentrated forms remaining a minor niche item, and most use the dilute useful Coca products, until 1906.  Until the USDA was able to step in with its goal of protecting U.S. domestic agriculture.

U.S. Cigarette production spiked with drug prohibition: 1906, 1914,1937;

coinciding with the crackdowns on Opium, Coca and Cannabis

(p230 Licit & Illicit Drugs Breecher)

1906 U.S. Food and Drugs Act - key points - selective listing of ingrediants - alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroin, alpha or beta eucaine, chloroform, cannabis indica, chloral hydrate, or acetanilide, or any derivative or preparation of any such substances contained therein, but not caffeine or nicotine - granted dictatorial power to the USDA Bureau of Chemistry to ban whatever it determined as 'dangerous or detrimental to health ingrediants, while excluding Tobacco from this USD of Agriculture regulatory authority for being de-listed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia which this Act defined the sope of the regulatory authority to those substances (drugs) contained within.  The Act was used by USDA Bureau of Chemistry Chief (1883-1912) Harvey Wiley, paradox - also of the AMA-APhA Council on Pharmacology, who developed a strong thrust to inveigh against 'cocaine' regardless of dosage or form in 1904, including via a media campaign designed to confuse the public about the dangers of concentrate cocaine in some vaguely defined way to imply dangers nonexistent with dilute cocaine.   Dilute cocaine/Coca products dissapear from retail and altogther, while concentrated cocaine - infinitly the most dangerous for of the drug become's its sole available form.

Harvey Washington Wiley

Lyman Frederick Kebler

Of particular 'concern' to the USDA, 'cocaine' or more accurately dilute cocaine in products either or by the isolated alkloid or the more or less whole leaf extract, used as a substitute for Tobacco.  According to the overtly mercantilist propaganda piece April 20, 1910 USDA. Farmer's Journal article "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare" by L.F. Kebler:

There are quite a number of so-called tobacco habit cures on the market.

The USDA here wrote "so-called tobacco habit cures.." in refusing to acknowledge the utility it was here condemning, continuing:

All of them are ineffective, and some contain cocain in one form or another, which at once indicates the purpose of the promoter of the remedy. Instead of eradicating what is commonly believed to be a comparatively harmless habit, there is grave danger of fastening a pernicious drug habit upon the user. Examples of preparations of this character recently examined and found to contain cocain and caffein derivatives are Coca-Bola, Tobacco Bullets, and Wonder Workers. The Coca Bola is marketed by Dr. Charles L. Mitchell, of "Philadelphia, and the Tobacco Bullets by the Victor Remedy Company, now the Blackburn Remedy Company, of Dayton, Ohio, while the Wonder Workers were produced by George S. Beck, of Springfield, Ohio.

That followed a January 1, 1910 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 'Pharmacology' review (at pp 63-64 of Volume LIV, Number 1), “Coca Bola and Oxy-Tonic: Two Nostrums Exposed by the Chemists of the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station” by E.F. Ladd, a chemist at the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station

"We have recently had occasion to examine a sample of Coca Bola, a product labeled as having been produced by Charles L. Mitchell, M.D., Philadelphia, and the face label bears the following statement:

Each ounce contains 0.71 grams of cocain. A chewing paste of leaves of the cocoa [sic] plant, combined with other valuable tonics. The directions for use say coca-bola is made in the form of flat cakes or plugs divided into squares and should be used by chewing one of the small squares marked on the plug and swallowing the saliva.

They further say it should be used at occasional intervals as needed throughout the day. To get its full effect it will be necessary to use several squares. They further say:

"Although a powerful muscular or nervous tonic, coca-bola has no evil after-effects, and hence is far superior to any other stimulant in the material medica"

Now this information given out in the advertising which accompanies each package is, it would seem, intended to give the impression that this product is an entirely harmless one; in other words, that a preparation containing cocain as an active constituent, is to be generally recommended for use without any caution as to the harm that may come from forming a habit for cocain. They further say:

"A small portion chewed occasionally acts as a powerful tonic to the muscular and nervous system, enabling the chewer to perform additional labor, and also relieves fatigue and exhaustion without evil after effects. It contains no injurious ingredients and is perfectly harmless."

So we might quote from the circular which is sent out by a man who claims to be a physician, urging, as it were, on the people the use of a product of this kind, which, as has clearly been shown, must in the end result in the formation of the cocain habit, if not in the complete demoralization and degradation of the individual himself.

The laws of North Dakota prohibit the sale of any compound or product in the state which contains cocaine in any form. It further prohibits the refilling of a physician’s prescription that contains cocain, and yet a product of this kind, it would seem from information that has been gathered, is sold directly to the customer, although it is true that the proprietor of the product maintains that it is now sold only to physicians.

The JAMA article echos the assumptions of "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare"

During the last twenty years a large number of soft drinks containing caffein and smaller or greater quantities of coca leaf and kola nut products have been placed upon the market. Preparations of this class, on account of insufficient information, were formally looked upon as harmless, but they are now known to be an impending evil.

Centuries before cocain was introduced as a remedial agent, wonderful accounts of the energy-creating properties of coca leaves were chronicled. The phenomenal endurance attributed to the Peruvians and others was often ascribed to the stimulating effects produced by the chewing of coca leaves, and this idea has been widely exploited. It is believed to some extent at present that the use of cocain taken internally produces a sense of exhilaration, and the amount of muscular and mental power appears to be temporarily increased. Impetus was given to this belief by the enthusiastic reports of this drug, published not only in medical literature but in the secular press as well.

Cocain is one of the most insidious and dangerous habit-forming drugs at present known. Many lives have been wrecked and many crimes have been committed as a result of its use, and strenuous efforts are being made to curtail its employment. The amount present in certain soft drinks is small, to be sure, but such an insidious, habit-forming drug certainly has no place whatsoever in these products. The presence of tropococain, an ally of cocain, has also been established.

Not only is it pernicious to add cocain to soft drinks in any quantity (usually in the form of coca leaf extract), but even the use of coca leaf extract so manipulated as to reduce the amount of cocain, or eliminate it altogether, must be looked upon as a questionable practice, because any product or name which would suggest the presence of cocain or its allies, by taste or otherwise, must have a baneful influence. It is known that the very small amounts of morphine or cocain, or even the suggestion of their presence, will tend to destroy the equilibrium of reformed addicts and bring back the former craving.

The virtues of coca leaves and kola nuts have been exploited together, and it is only natural that they should be combined in preparations which would represent the purported virtues of both. Such combinations were made with the result that quite a number of so-called soft drinks now on the market contain both of the habit-forming agents, cocaine and caffeine. It was not uncommon to find persons addicted to the use of medicated soft-drinks. It is well-known fact that many factory employees, stenographers, typewriters, and others subjected to mental or nervous strain spend a large part of their earnings for drinks of this character.

In passing, it may be of interest to note that life insurance companies are considering the status of soft-drink habitués as future risks.

Various arguments have been advanced in justification of the use of caffeine and the extract of coca leaves, treated or otherwise, in soft drinks. It is a well known that parents, as a rule, withhold tea and coffee from their children, but having no knowledge of the presence of cocain, caffeine or other deleterious agents in soft drinks, they unwittingly permit their children to be harmed by their use. Manufacturers of drinks of this class, containing cocain, have been successfully prosecuted, for example, Koca Nola, Celery Cola, Wiseola, Pillsbury's Koke, Kola-Ade, Kos-Kola, Cafe-Coca, and Koke.

Absent was any demonstration, only baseless presumption, that use of products as Coca-Bola resulted in a 'cocaine habit' of any greater legitimate public health concern than a 'caffeine habit' or a 'nicotine habit'.  Indeed at the COMMlTTEE ON lNTERSTATE AND FORElGN COMMERCE hearing on the Food and Drug Act, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, April 3, 1912, L.F. Kebler testified about Tobacco products:

http://books.google.com/books?output=text&id=dgE9AAAAYAAJ&dq=food+drugs+act&jtp=1 

Dr. Kebler. Yes; and investigation has shown that tobacco and preparations of tobacco contain arsenic and lead, due to the fact that there has been used in the growing of tobacco lead arsenate, a chemical to deter or kill certain pests. As a matter of fact, some tobacco contains a goodly quantity of arsenic.... We have not been able to go into that as fully as we would like. We know that tobacco is adulterated, but how generally it is adulterated we do not know.

Mr. Hamilton. I suppose you would be able to cite certain brands that are dangerous to health, would you not?

Dr. Kebler. I suppose most of them would be dangerous to health.

Get that.  Kebler knew Tobacco products contaned lead and arsenic from their methods of commercial agriculture, yet his "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare" concern about this Tobacco, was it being displaced by Coca - of course as the U.S.D.A.'s very mission from its onset was promoting domestic agriculture.

Likewise, Wiley knew Tobacco as harmful.  Writing for an article published in 1922:

What does tobacco do to us? There is in it a poison called nicotine so deadly that one full drop of it would kill an adult. A smaller portion of it taken for the first time by a boy makes him deathly sick. That gives warning of its poisonous character, but doesn't usually wean him from the folly. It did not in my case, for I speak as an ex-smoker. I quit at the end of my first week, after.

I had got over the nausea and had begun to enjoy "a good cigar." But I had already discovered that tobacco would hobble my brain and lead others to follow my bad example. Tobacco of any kind puts a soft-pedal on efficiency of mind and body. It puts us in a state of narcosis. We are half chloroformed.  The Literary Digest of April 15, 1922, records a test of the effects of tobacco on efficiency at Stanford University. Telegraph operators of three kinds were selected for the test. None of them smoked on duty. Those who smoked much when off duty were regarded as "heavy smokers." Their percentage of efficiency was 38. Those who smoked two pipes a day or one cigar, or two or three cigarettes before and after work and at noon, were regarded as "light smokers." Their efficiency was 40.1. The women operators, non-smokers, though of the "weaker sex," excelled both the other groups with an efficiency record of 46.6. The nicotine not only dulls our nerve cells, but kills some of them. If you have brains to burn, a tobacco bonfire is a good way to get rid of the surplus. One criminal lawyer argued jocosely to me that it was better for the world that he should smoke as he could in that case do less harm in his profession. I seriously agreed that was one of the many cases where "truth had been spoken in jest." If your work for the world is a curse, the more you dull your powers and shorten your life through "Lady Nicotine," the better.
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/protect-growing-youth-against-habit.html

1916: We begin speaking out against the dangers of smoking and the effect advertising has in recruiting new smokers. "Unfortunately, there are many subtle ways of encouraging young men to smoke," writes Dr. Wiley. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent every year in telling the readers of periodicals of the merits of this, that, and the other brand of tobacco."

1921: Dr. Wiley links tobacco use to heart disease, noting that men smoke more and so suffer more heart disease than women. Seven years later, he warns women that use of tobacco is a cause of mouth, tongue, and throat cancer, more than 30 years before the U.S. Surgeon General officially acknowledges the connection. http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/history/good-housekeeping-research-institute-timeline

Absent was any demonstration from Wiley/Kebler's AMA-APha of any dangers with dilute cocaine in products as Vin Mariani (the 1905 Council of Pharmacy condemnation focused upon its labeling as foreign, when in fact its foreign formulation was replicated in Mariani & Co.'s New York facility for North American sales with the identical formula and ingrediants).   Although Wiley was famous for his USDA 'Poison squad' volunteer tests of foods laced with varius additives, he apparantly never had such a demonstration even attempted for coca or cocaine.  This was even as he persued numerous prosecutions of Coca or otherwise dilute cocaine food products for "adulteration" - for containing a dangerous substance to wit cocaine.  Usually such prosecutions were coupled with those for "mislabeling" for not stating cocaine on the label; however, as his famous prosecution against Coca-Cola demonstrated, Wiley did not see himself needing a charge of "mislabeling" required for one of "adulteration" which he brought against Coca-Cola for containing the 'dangerous' substance of caffeine.

      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/post-1906-demise-of-us-coca.html

      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-dark-ages-usda-crusade-against-coca.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wiley-cocaine-policy.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-washington-wiley-paradox.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wileys-usurpation-of-power-over.html

      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wileys-subversion-of-our-freedom-of.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wiley-resume-1915.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wileys-great-american-fraud-of.html

What is a drug habit? .... The habit-forming drugs which are most extensively used are alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. If we class as drug addicts those who have acquired the habit for one or more of these drugs the number of them in the United States would be very close to half or two-thirds of the population. When we speak of drug addicts, however, we usually have in mind a more restricted sense and refer rather to those who are slaves to opium or the coca leaf and their derivatives. ... I would not favor of any restrictive legislation respecting tobacco and tea and coffee, except in so far as children are concerned. [box 201 - Harvey Wiley papers]

In the sudden light which the Pure Food law throws into certain dark corners, that widely-bruited pick-me-up for lassitudinous ladies, Vin Mariani, takes on a changed aspect. From the enthusiastic encomiums, given out for advertising purposes by sundry actresses, one might suppose that the so-called French preparation was at once the most bracing and the most harmless of concoctions. Across its label, however, the pure food law has recorded the warning fact: "Each ounce represents one-tenth of one grain of cocain." This shuts it out of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, all cities and towns in Massachusetts, and many other places. As the average American woman can read and is not a fool. I fancy that even in those localities where cocain can be sold only in patent medicine form without a prescription (as has been the case until recently in the District of Columbia, thanks to Senator and ex-Doctor Gallinger's efforts on behalf of the nostrum people), the Vin Mariani trade will rapidly decline.

Next to cocain nostrums, the most dangerous class of patent medicines is that containing narcotics, such as opium, morphin and cannabis indica. Various are the evasions and contortions resorted to by these dopes in their efforts to make the best of the new law. [*JAMA 'The Nostrum Evil']

This 1904+ campaign against 'cocaine' (to confuse the public about the vast difference between dilute and ultraconcentrated drug-dosing- try sniffing Blast caffeine instead of drinking Coffee) centered around the Harvey Wiley AMA-APhA campaign against the substances 'habit-forming' as what people choose to consume regularly and hence the greatest market threats to their alliance of synthetic pharamceuticles and Tobacco cigarettes- an alliance marked by several decades of medical journals featuring cigarettes advertisements with doctors implying the 'healthiness' of cigarettes. 

This campaign included the AMA-APhA 'model legislation' campaign in the various State legislatives to enact prohibitions upon foods containing any amount of cocaine, and to require a non refillable prescription for any such drug products. 

On the federal level this included the efforts within the U.S. Congress to 'amend' the 1906 Act, leading to what became the Harrison Act, signed into 'law' December 17, 1914. 

Internationally it included U.S. State Department participation in this agricultural racketerring via the 'Opium Convention' scheme, with the ultimate goal of getting other nations to ban low dose dilute cocaine, as well as decieving the Emperor of China.

This all came upon the heels of the USDA's experimentation in assessing the commercial potential of Coca and other drug crops as domestic U.S. agriculture, likely confirming U.S. domestic Coca's requirement of greehouses- making it costlier then say Tobacco.

It is my opinion that the Coca plant is adapted for culture in many countries where it is now unknown. Among the countries where it would be well to experiment with it are Guatemala, Mexico, the East and West Indies, India, Southern China, potions of Africa, and possibly India. It is doubtful if it would grow in any portion of the United States. Requiring an average temperature of at least 70o, the only districts at all suited would be Florida and Southern Texas [this was written before the 1898 U.S. acquisition of the Kingdom of Hawaii]; and it is highly probable that proximity to the sea-coast at so low an altitude would prove fatal. Nor would irrigation prove adequate in those countries possessing a long dry season. The plants must not only have an abundant supply of water at the roots; they must be bathed in a humid atmosphere for the greater portion of the year. But from what I have read of some of the countries above named, I am confident that the plant would there find a congenial home. Jamaica offers especially hopeful conditions. U.S. William Martindate, p 37 1892 book Coca and Cocaine: [see: Journal of a Voyage on the Amazon and Rio Negro, Hooker's Journal Of Botany, vol. 1853, p. 212; Therapeutic Gazette, January 1886, p. 14 Pharmacy Journal 1886, p.705]

January 10, 1904 issue of The Boston Sunday Globe ‘Uncle Sam’s poison Farm.’

‘Government Conducts a Novel Industry on the Potomac Flats- plants which yield the most powerful and valuable drugs known to science- will start growing opium growing, too, in Texas’.

This experiment ended at roughly the time that the U.S.D.A. adopted its stance against Coca in food and drug products, which was mere months after the U.S.A. aquired control over the construction of the Panama Canal, which would have drastically shortened the shipping routes of Coca from the Peruvian coast to North Atlantic markets, and which was completed and opened for traffic in 1914- the year of the Harrison 'Narcotics' Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal

  

Standard histories often fail to get beyond the sensationalist newspaper claims regarding the use of 'cocaine' by Blacks.

Overlooking the Pharma-Tobacco Connection

For Coca was already being seen as a market alternative to other stimulants, such as Coffee/caffeine, and particularly to Tobacco, at least since sometime after the initial apparance of Vin Mariani.

Initially sold as an energizer for overworked, overstressed Parisian opera performers, and inspiring other such Coca leaf derived herbal products as other Coca beverages, lozenges, Vin Mariani was found to have numerious therapeutic virtues:

“I have also employed it in cases, happily rare in our army, of chronic alcoholism resulting from the abuse of brandy, absinthe or strong liquors. The produced all the excitement sought by drinkers, but had at the same time a sedative influence on their nervous systems. I have frequently seen hardened drinkers renounce their fatal habit and return to a healthy condition." "I have also used to save smokers of exaggerated habits, from nicotinism. A few glasses of taken in small doses, either pure or mixed with water, acted as a substitute for pipes and cigars, because the smokers found in it the cerebral excitement which they sought in tobacco, wholly preserving their intellectual faculties." -- Dr. Liberman and Villeneuve

And also with smoking Coca leaves.

According to an article by Dr. F.E. Stewart in the September 19, 1885 Philadelphia Medical Times, about a newer form of Coca leaf products introduced by the 1880s- Coca leaf smokables- cigars, cheroots and even cigarettes.

"Coca has been used with great success in the treatment of the opium habit, it is also an excellent substitute for Tobacco [emphasis added]. It has been successfully used in dyspepsia, flatulency, colic, gastralgia, enteralgia, hysteria, hypochondria, spinal irritation, idiopathic convulsions , nervous erethism, and in the debility following severe acute affections. As it is a valuable restorative agent, checking tissue-waste, it is also a useful remedy in consumption [?] and wasting diseases generally. It is also of value in the nervous forms of sick-headache, migraine. It is also said to be an aphrodisiac." -- Dr. F.E. Stewart appearing in the September 19, 1885 Philadelphia Medical Times

Reporting on several cases of experiences with smoking Coca, Stewart found that most found them useful, with a high percentage finding Coca cigars as useful for stemming depression -- the "blues" -- and as a mild stimulant. Citing one example of a leading Wilmington, Delaware physician:

"After dinner, he smoked a couple of the cigars, with the effect that the blues were expelled and he felt the exhilarating effect of the drug in the same manner as after a dose of the wine. It is his opinion that the effect of the cigars is milder than that of the wine, but he is satisfied that he experienced the peculiar power of the coca by smoking it."

 Citing others, a man suffering dyspepsia -- a digestive disorder -- and its attendant depression:

"smoked the cigars...the result being to dispel the depressed feeling and remove the fullness experienced after each meal. Repeated experiments confirm this. As coca is said to stimulate the gastric nerves and greatly facilitate digestion, the above experiment seems to prove that the cigar has a similar effect."

These experiments included Dr. Stewart's own use. Writing upon his personal discovery of Coca leaf smoking as a treatment for hay fever:

Personally, I have found the effect of smoking coca leaves to bear out the statement that the drug produces a general excitation of the circulatory and nervous systems. Smoking and inhaling the smoke of one or two cigars will increase my own pulse rate some eight or ten beats to the minute.

It certainly relieves the scene of fatigue. Smoked at night, in my own case and in the cases of several of my patients, it produces wakefulness similar to strong coffee. The exaltation produced by it does not seem to be followed by any feeling of languor or depression. I find it a relief after a full meal, like a good tobacco cigar. It seems to impart increased vigor to the muscular system as well to the intellect, with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. I have never experienced any intoxicating effects from smoking it.

Dr. Bartholow says that coca, as in the case with tea and coffee, acts as an indirect nutrient by checking waste, and hence a less amount of food is necessary to maintain the bodily functions; and as I have just learned, in a letter from Messrs. Parke, Davis and Company, that "a Mr. Stevens, a citizen of Abilene, Kansas, who was afflicted with hay fever, and was about to go to the mountains, has concluded to remain at home, having obtained relief from the use of cigarettes of coca. Every morning he uses a cigarette and perfect relief. He uses three per day.

And with Coca chewing gum, such as Coca-Bola.

After many trials I succeeded in having the coca put up as a masticatory in the form of plugs like tobacco. These were made at my suggestion by C.L. Mitchell, M.D. & Co., Pharmaceutical Chemists, of Ninth and Race Streets, Philadelphia. I have given this preparation the name of “Coca-Bola” from coca and bolus, a mass. Each plug is about the size of an ordinary plug of chewing tobacco, and contains about 200 grains (nearly half its weight) of coca leaves, besides a small quantity each of tea, coffee and coinchona bark. Each plug is marked off for convenience into squares, each square containing about 16 grains of coca leaves; this quantity is about sufficient for a single dose or chew and even a smaller portion my suffice. It is to be thoroughly masticated in the same manner when chewing tobacco, the saliva being swallowed, not ejected as in tobacco chewing. After the mass has been masticated for some time and the virtues of the coca leaf pretty well extracted, the residue is to be ejected. A chew of the “Coca-bola” take in this manner occasionally throughout the day will generally completely satisfy the craving for stimulants, and at the same time remove any feeling of depression or fatigue. The addition of the tea and coffee seem to assist considerably the sustaining and stimulating effect of the coca leaves without producing any injurious after effects.

The advantages of this method of administering were found to be many and removed completely all the difficulties previously referred to. It contained no alcohol, did not require the use of the objectionable bottle and spoon, was exceeding convenient, and as it so closely resembled tobacco, its continued use excited no remark. Besides it could be easily carried in the vest pocket and was always at hand when needed.

By the use of the “Coca-bola,” in the treatment of the class of cases previously referred to , we substitute for the objectionable habit of drinking liquor the harmless use of coca. So free is it from all injurious effects that I can say that in my opinion no greater boon could be conferred on humanity that in the conversion of all alcohol drinkers into coca chewers. At my request, Dr. Mitchell has now prepared the “Coca-bola” for sale and will shortly place it on the market, when I would ask its careful trial by such of my professional brethren as are interested in the treatment of this class of cases.

Coca-Bola will also be found to be a very valuable substitute for tobacco, especially in the treatment of those who are suffering from the pernicious effects of its excessive use in the habit of chewing. It is a well known fact in the treatment of the cases that the greatest obstacle, and the one which meets the physician at the very outset, is the difficulty experienced in providing a suitable substitute for the offending “quid.” The chewing of tobacco, soon leads almost unconsciously to the formation of a habit of chewing, and when the mouth becomes accustomed to the frequent regularity of the movements of mastication, and the continued presence of a foreign body, the action becomes in a certain sense an involuntary one, and any interruption or break in its regular performance adds a disturbing element which greatly enhances the depression naturally resulting from the withdrawal of the physiological stimulus of the tobacco. A habit soon becomes a second nature, and a habitual chewer of tobacco derives as much satisfaction, and from the “company” of the “chew”, to which he had accustomed himself, as he does from the drug itself.

The use of tobacco in chewing or smoking, as well as the frequent drinking of liquor, produces a catarrhal condition of the mouth which also adds to the desire for the presence of the quid. The oral mucosa are in a state of sub-acute congestion, and while the first result of the habit is to stimulate their secretions, this is soon followed by catarrhal changes, whereby the saliva and other juices become greatly diminished in quantity. An uncomfortable feeling of dryness and heat in the mouth soon results, only alleviated by the employment of the alcohol, or the tobacco. To relieve this condition of affairs in many different "tobacco substitutes" have been recommended, but with very little success. They are generally compounds containing large quantities of licorice-root, and while they partly satisfy the taste, they do not supply any stimulus or sustaining agent to take the place of the refreshing and almost nourishing tobacco, neither do they allay the congestion of the mouth.

Coca leaves should, theoretically, be an excellent substitute for tobacco.

They have an agreeable, bitter aromatic taste when chewed in the mouth; they greatly diminish the blood supply in the superficial capillaries of the mucous membrane, and should thus relieve the congestion of the oral mucosa; and the general tonic, stimulating and sustaining powers of the drug should render it a suitable and innocent substitute to take the place of tobacco. Moreover, it leaves behind it no injurious after effects, and its use can be at any time suspended after the patient has lost his desire for the former drug. When, therefore, the coca leaves can be presented in the form of a masticatory, and satisfy both the physiological requirements of the case and the "habit" of the chewer, it would seem as if every condition for a perfect substitute for chewing tobacco had been fulfilled. – C.L. Mitchell, M.D. in "Clinical Notes".http://books.google.com/books?id=vzj0SGBjK_4C&pg=PA36-IA4&lpg=PA36-IA4&dq=coca+substitution+for+tobacco&source=bl&ots=TV6P-OVKGV&sig=phe_-y4Ai7oex5X14nmFWgFOWPE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D1APUJ2KJIa36wGR2oDwBw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=coca%20substitution%20for%20tobacco&f=false

     http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/coca-to-combat-opiate-alcohol-and.html
     http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html
     http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/criminal-mercantilism-public-health.html

Meanwhile attempts were made to hide Tobacco addiction with claims that Tobacco cigarettes were being laced with Opium in order to make them more habituating, as if the more physically addictive substance, Tobacco needed such.  Or if this was even ethical, given what was already known on the very floor of the U.S. Congress as it debated the 1914 Harrison 'Narcotics' Act.

 

      ... there are tens of thousands of people in the United States who die every year from the excessive use of cigarettes;    and yet I find Senators still pulling away at the cigarette as though t were a perfectly harmless thing. I believe the Senator will agree with me that there are many thousands of people who die from what is called tobacco cancer, a cancerous growth affecting the throat from overuse of cigars; and we find perhaps 60 percent of the Senators pulling away at the cigar as unconcerned as though no one were dying as a result of these cigars...
U.S. Congress, Senator Porter James McCumber (R) North Dakota, August 15, 1914

With Tobacco so protected by the 1906 Food and Drug, and the 1914 Harrison Acts, cigarette manufacturers were not only free of the market competition of herbal Opium and Coca leaf products, they were additionally free to be exempt from the basic requiring of labeling of the ingrediants of their cigarettes, required for anything else except alcoholic beverages.

Powder cocaine and heroin could become the new scapegoat used to 'justify' this repression, forgetting the numerous benifits and safety of Opium and Coca as plant drugs compared to the refined ultraconcentrates favored by prohibition, along with with the officially protected cigarettes.

In each major category of intoxicant used by our species, there appear to be one or two drug plants that researchers have noted, are more controllable, hence safer, than all the other plants or synthetics in that category. Coca leaf stands out among all the stimulants, licit and illicit, as the easiest to control and the one least likely to produce toxicity or dependency.  http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/coca-leaf-stands-out-among-all.html

And this is what the USDA was able to ban, for the sake of protecting the most dangerous option of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco, particularly as cigarettes, more physically addictive then heroin, and way more intrinsically harmful -- imagine taking nicotine as heroin is customerily under prohibition -- taking nearly half a million lives annually within just the U.S.A.

Protecting Cigarette Ingrediant Secrecy

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-preceeding-post-was-previously.html

 

Adulterated, Mis-Branded Cigarettes
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/adulterated-tobacco-cigarettes.html
 

Criminal Virginia Bright Leaf Addiction Racketteering

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/criminal-virginia-bright-leaf.html

And that, along with alcoholic beverages are the only two class of consumables exempt from retail product labeling requirements- you can't even find labling informing if your beverage is sweetened with regular sugar or HFCS.

Yet we have this empire of a 'drug war' to deny us Opium and Coca, perverting them into concentrated heroin and cocaine, for the sake of protecting all of that space behind cash register counters everywhere for cigarettes.

That's some drug war.

Missing the Opportunity
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/08/missing-opportunity.html

Drug Policy Reform Subverted by Cigarette Industry Influence?
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2010/07/peter-lewis-ira-glasser-is-waste-of.html
 

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Legalize Coca & Opium, Not Just Marijuana

A serious flaw of the drug policy reform movement- limiting attention to Marijuana while acting afraid of Coca-cocaine and Opiates; from a comment at Drug War Rant that quotes this article:

"When we talk about legalizing marijuana, we inevitably have to decide what other drugs should be legalized. Do we legalize cocaine, crack, ecstasy, meth, heroin? If not, why not? Shouldn’t we legalize all drugs, regulate them and tax them like alcohol?

I’m all in on legalizing marijuana. Tax it and we can retire the deficit overnight. Smoke it in bars and coffee houses and have laws governing where it can be used.

I don’t know about the other drugs, though. We can debate it, but it seems futile to try to outlaw stuff that people want no matter the cost. At least maybe we could have a sane drug policy that recognizes reality.”

Why do we continue to hear/see such nonsense. There’s NO reason not to legalize Opium and Coca, indeed no reason they go un-mentioned- the plants and products representing them in their natural potencies at a minimum.  The prohibition ensures that we do not have Opium nor Coca, only instead the highly concentrated derrivitives of heroin and cocaine hci or sulfate- denying the safe while promoting the dangerous.  No way is that rational- except as a criminal scam of market protection - mercantilism.

Imagine an alternative reality where we made caffeine and nicoine into white powder poisons. Drug policy reform must break away from the death grip around Ira Glasser etc, like some sort of twisted advice from some cigarette-pharma conflict of interest law firm to protect pharma and cigarettes:

July 4, 2012 Seize the Day
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/06/july-4-seize-it.html

Douglas Andrew Willinger Angelo Francois Mariani Coca Activism
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/06/douglas-andrew-willinger-angelo.html

Drug War Tobacco Pharma Agricultural Mercantilism
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/03/drug-war-tobacco-pharma-agricultural.html

Drug War Criminal Mercantilism to Protect Pharma and Cigarettes
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-was-criminal-mercantilism-to-protect.html

Drug 'Warriors' Neglect History of Coca - Vin Coca Mariani
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-history-of-coca.html

Drug 'Warriors' Neglect Pharmacokinetics - Promote Drug Abuse
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html

April 1 "interview" concerning drug policy movement - pharma cigarette law firm advise program
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/04/about-drug-policy-covington-and-burling.html

NO discussion of the drug war should overlook the reality of it as an illegal market protection scam for cigarettes- which is obvious from that p 230 chart of cigarette production with the upturns happening with the various ‘drug control’ statutes in 1906, 1914 and 1937.

Yet we continue to see all of this ‘scholarly’ work that completely neglects this.

USDA Banned Coca to Protect Tobacco - Public Health DISASTER
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html

By focusing upon MJ to the exclusion of Coca and Opium we have unwittingly extended prohibition. Why continue to do so?

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"Tough" Drug Laws Tough

http://www.drugwarrant.com/2012/03/tough-drug-laws-harm-health-and-safety/comment-page-1/#comment-113675

The “‘tough’ drug laws” are all about protecting the market shelf space at retail outlets for cigarettes, alcohol and coffee-caffeine, from the market competitors of Cannabis, Coca Leaf and Opium products- all of which are safer substances.

Drug War Criminal Mercantilism-Pubic Health Disaster 101
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/03/drug-war-cigarette-pharma-criminal.html

That alcoholic beverages and Tobacco products are the only two class of consumables that governments fail to require the labeling of the ingredients confirms the morally and constitutionally in-validness of the various ‘Controlled/Dangerous Substances Acts’- all by legislative criminals who knew better:

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/1914-tens-of-thousands-in-us-who-die.html

Opponents of the drug war are guilty of gross understatement.

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Open Letter to David Boaz- CATO

Licit & Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and Consumers Reports at page 230 showing upturns in cigarette use following the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 U.S. 'drug control laws'

David-

Is CATO willing to demonstrate its independence by addressing certain issues, such as the Tobacco Mercantilistic nature of the drug war?

Drug War - Tobacco - Pharma Mercantilism
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/03/drug-war-tobacco-pharma-agricultural.html

1906 Tobacco - Pharma Mercantilism Act
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wileys-1906-us-food-drugs-act.html

Pre-1906 Coca Products as Vin Mariani
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-history-of-coca.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-was-criminal-mercantilism-to-protect.html

Drug War Criminal Mercantilism Public Health Subversion
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/criminal-mercantilism-public-health.html

Drug War Infinitely Worse Than Acknowledged
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/01/drug-statutes-infinitely-worse-than.html

USDA Feared Coca as a Tobacco Habit Cure
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html

Tobacco-Alcohol Sweat-heart Exemption From Labeling the Ingredients
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/criminal-virginia-bright-leaf.html

Does CATO support the sweat-heart exemption of Tobacco products and alcoholic beverages from retail product labeling laws?

Shall CATO continue to effectively sanctify the drug war by continually neglecting the issue of anti Coca, pro Tobacco Mercantilism, as does the Drug Policy Alliance?

Let's not forget that opposition to the drug war should NOT be limited to Marijuana, and must include the drug that was used as the hysteria-excuse during the 1980s -- cocaine -- which the drug warriors made into a drug problem (imagine snorting or smoking NoDoz instead of drinking Coffee or Tea), and which the failure to address by groups as CATO and the Drug Policy Foundation/Drug Policy Alliance, conveys the false message that cocaine must remain illegal.

Sincerely

Douglas Willinger
Freedom of Medicine and Diet

DPF COCA '95 Panel October 1995, moderated by Douglas Willinger
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/11/14-years-ago-coca-95.html

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The 'Elephant in the Living Room' of anti Coca pro Tobacco Protectionism

Licit & Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and Consumers Reports at page 230 showing upturns in cigarette use following the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 U.S. 'drug control laws'

Just look at that graph of cigarette production on page 230 of Licit & Illicit Drugs; EACH upturn in production -- note that it was relatively flat from the 1880s introduction of industrialized cigarette rolling machines -- until what we can call the 1906 Tobacco Market Protection Act, officially known as the 1906 'Pure' Foods and Drugs Act, and subsequently the continuations of such represented by the 1914 Harrison "Narcotics" Tax Act, and the 1937

This represented utterly unconstitutional usurpation for high level organized crime, and an enormous crime against humanity health wise, and human rights wise.

A usurpation of powers into the hands of a federal agency -- the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- set up to promote US domestic agriculture and hence establish a conflict of interest to ban foreign yet safer natural substances, to wit Coca Leaf- and doing so after expressing a clear interest in ascertaining whether Coca and other "drug" crops including Opium, and Indian Hemp were commercially feasible as U.S. domestic crops.

It was a clear abuse of the congress's constitutionally granted power to "regulate" interstate commerce. Yet its sly exemption of tobacco indicates it was an unconstitutional, a denial of equal protection and as an establishment of a religion of Tobacco Tea and Coffee, with severe costs.

The last bottle of Vin Mariani in the U.S.?

It banned the safest and most beneficial agricultural stimulant -- Coca Leaf -- for the sake of protecting and promoting the most dangerous -- Tobacco, particularly that agribusiness creation of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco for a smoother smoke for deep and repeated inhalation, resulting in countless billions in added costs attributed separately to the drug war and to cigarettes that together represent a major 'elephant in the living room' of the anti-Coca Tobacco Mercantilism.

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Research Campaign Financing

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/RENAMED_Concerned_Parent/newt-gingrich-marijuana_b_1126122_121333527.html

Google a politician­'s state name and the term, "campaign finance"

Then search the campaign finance site for his/her name.

Then search his/her info for the terms, beer, beverage, spirits, liquor, wine, hospitalit­y.

Then get mad.

Then search his/her info for the term, "correctio­ns" , just to see if they're getting paid by the private prison industry.

Then you'll know something about their position on marijuana.

Tell your friends.

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Romney- Criminal Mercantilism for Pharma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot82v5Mqguw

Is OK with "synthetic" marijuana, but not the real thing- indicating that it is not MJ's properties but rather that it was something that people could grow rather than have to pay for a doctor, prescription and extra expense of a synthetic pharmaceutical preparation.

So this is what people consider as "electable"?

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2012/01/romney-crony-capitalism-on-cannabis.html

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5 Drugs Protected By MJ Prohibition

Reminders that the drug war is all about Criminal Mercantilism

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/5-popular-but-harmful-drugs-that-can-be.html?mid=54631

Activist Post

5 popular but harmful drugs that can be replaced with marijuana

This article is dedicated to anyone that struggles with prescription drugs on this list because they are afraid of consuming a plant deemed illegal by the State.

Cannabis is simply the best natural remedy
to safely treat many ailments
The notion that any authority can determine what a sovereign human being can and cannot ingest into their own body is the very essence of control. Banning any substance from responsible adult consumption no matter how harmful should simply not be permitted in a free society.

However, certain substances are deemed so harmful by "experts" that they claim to adversely affect society as a whole and thus they're banned from the population. Of course, force of laws with guns and jails have never been able to eliminate their use throughout history. So, as a practical matter, banning any substance from society always tends to do more harm than good.

The utter failure that is the war on drugs seems to have ulterior motives besides protecting society, as evidenced by the countless harmful chemicals that are legal to consume. Marijuana is the most obvious example of a substance that remains illegal not because of health threats, or because it's a danger to society, but rather because its benefits threaten entire industries, especially Big Pharma.

If you need a fix to ease pain, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and a host of other ailments, then a legal drug dealer is happy to sell you a chemical concoction with endless side effects. Recent studies show huge spikes in psychiatric drug use, as well as addiction to prescription pain pills, yet they remain legal and doctors get incentives to push them.

In nearly every case, marijuana is a safer alternative and just as effective. When eaten or vaporized, cannabis has proven entirely beneficial as a natural alternative. Here are 5 popular but dangerous drugs that could, in most cases, be replaced by cannabis.

1. Painkillers: Vicodin, Demerol, Oxycontin, or Percodan are used to treat moderate or severe pain. They're all highly addictive and come with side effects that vary widely from stomach problems, dizziness, depression, pain and spasms, to even death. Marijuana is a proven pain reliever that takes the edge off even the most severe pain. It is not physically addictive, has very few side effects by comparison, and has never caused a single death in 5000 years of recorded use.

2. Tranquilizers: Valium, Xanax, and Ambien are examples of popular anti-anxiety drugs. All Americans will likely know someone close to them who are dependent on these drugs to cope with daily life. The side effects are similar to anti-depressants and painkillers; stomach and liver problems, depression or suicidal thoughts, dizziness and confusion, etc. Marijuana is an excellent substitute for these temporary anxiety relievers, again with far fewer negative effects.

3. Alcohol: Alcohol is the most commonly used and accepted substance for self-regulated stress relief. It's used by countless Americans to take the edge off a long work day, and also by many soldiers seeking to relieve Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Alcohol is highly addictive and causes many long-term problems like high blood pressure and liver failure. Marijuana has proven to be far safer and more effective in reducing stress, especially among PTSD sufferers.

4. Anti-depressants: Prozac, Zoloft, Elavil, or Paxil are popular anti-depressants that a huge portion of the population are now dependent on. Side effects like nausea and sexual dysfunction are common, while suicidal tendencies are also increased tremendously, which seems to negate their very purpose. These selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) reduce the body's ability to produce natural serotonin and can be difficult for people to find a healthy balance once they rid the drug from their system. Marijuana, although a temporary anti-depressant, is far less dangerous and may result in instant happiness bordering on silliness.

5. Aspirin and Tylenol: These commonly-used over-the-counter drugs for minor aches and pains cause stomach problems like ulcers, liver damage, and even death. That's right, Tylenol causes about 450 deaths a year and Aspirin causes a whopping 13,000 deaths per year from sudden bleeding. Many natural alternatives can be used for the symptoms that these drugs ease, and marijuana is just one of the safer options -- with none of the damaging side effects.

As you can see, marijuana, which can be easily grown in nearly every climate, is a huge threat to these billion-dollar-a-year drugs. And this list represents a tiny fraction of the harmful pharmaceuticals that can be replaced by cannabis. To claim that cannabis is more dangerous than any of these popular legal substances is blatantly false, thus there's no reason for its prohibition other than the threat of competition to Big Pharma.

Thankfully, you're not a criminal in over a dozen states if you use marijuana in place of them. And surely, it's only a matter of time before it's obvious to everyone that marijuana users should not be labeled criminals no matter what they use it for.

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Banning the Safer Plants

What the politicians need acknowledging



Opium, Cannabis and Coca Leaf are safer substances then the 'licit' substances of Alcohol, Coffee and Tobacco



Opium versus alcohol.



Cannabis versus alcohol.



Coca Leaf versus Coffee and Tobacco.

In each major category of intoxicant used by our species, there appear to be one or two drug plants that researchers have noted, are more controllable, hence safer, than all the other plants or synthetics in that category. Coca leaf stands out among all the stimulants, licit and illicit, as the easiest to control and the one least likely to produce toxicity or dependency.

Prohibition PROMOTES HARD (Concentrated) Drugs

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wiley-father-of-drug-problem.html



Prohibition PROMOTES HARD Drug Abuse

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-war-promotes-drug-abuse-over-drug.html



Drug Warriors Ignore Pharmakokinetics

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html



Drug War Criminal Mercantilism Public Health Subversion

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/criminal-mercantilism-public-health.html





Drug experts say alcohol worse than crack or heroin

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/01/us-drugs-alcohol-idUSTRE6A000O20101101

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Obama's Continuation of Tobacco-Pharma Criminal Mercantilism- More

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/04/exclusive-doj-plan-to-arrest-state-licensers-tax-dispensaries-could-doom-medical-marijuana-industry/

[excerpt]

A recent letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ), threatening state employees in charge of implmenting medical marijuana laws with prosecution, has forced some governors to re-evaluate and even veto popular legislation -- all seemingly in violation of what the medical marijauana community thought was a cease-fire with the federal government.

Facing the threat of seeing otherwise innocent state employees thrown in jail, lawmakers are responding in an entirely human fashion: what Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), called "the old need to CYA -- cover your ass."

Ultimately, the administration's confusing legal position has led to a stagnation of medical marijuana reform efforts, with some states simply deciding it's not worth the risk.

It also represents a significant change in momentum for the prohibition reform movement as a whole, and one that's taken them almost entirely by surprise.

In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department issued a memo stating that it would not prosecute medical marijuana patients, suppliers or caregivers in states that have passed voter initiatives to legalize the drug's use -- so long as they were all abiding by that state's laws.

Earlier this month, however, the Justice Department sent a letter to the governor of Washington, warning that state employees may be prosecuted if they are in any way involved in the licensing of production or distribution of marijuana.

"The prosecution of individuals and organizations involved in the trade of any illegal drugs and the disruption of drug trafficking organizations is a core priority of the Department," department attorneys wrote. "This core priority includes prosecution of business enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana."

"Any" without regard to efficacy nor safety, to say nothing of U.S. AG Holder's previous lip service to USC 10th Amendment values - the U.S. Department of "Justice" is guilty of reckless endangerment for the sake of cigarette-pharma racketeering.

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Wiley's Subversion of Our Freedom of Medicine & Diet- Key Points

place a negative spin upon bulkier dilute herbal preperations- pills are more profitable

get a law with an unequal protection under the law- some drugs bad others too entrenched to be restricted

get a law giving the power to unilaterally declare a substance bad to the USDA, while of course exempt the major agricultural commodity of Tobacco

declare cocaine bad without any science, confusing acute toxicity of concentrated forms of the drug with chronic use of dilute versions

get cocaine out of foods as adulteration- regardless of whether labled; Wiley also tried this unsubstantiated position against against caffein in coca cola.

get cocaine out of 'proprietary' medicines- badmouth it as bad, push non-refillable prescription requirments at the State legislatures and ultimately the U.S. Congress.

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Drug War Tobacco Pharma Agricultural Mercantilism

From Licit & Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and Consumers Reports at page 230 showing upturns in cigarette use following the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 U.S. 'drug control laws'

Neither the 1914 US Harrison Narcotics Act, nor the legislative efforts leading up to it, particularly the 1906 'Pure Foods and Drugs Act' can be viewed as honest or truly 'progressive', but rather a hurried-rush of hysteria for a political economic agenda, with its central public figure of Harvey Washington Wiley- Chief of the USDA Bureau of Chemistry and prominent within the private organizations- the American Medical Association and American Pharmaceutical Association.

It was most certainly not about the publics' health.

It was about protecting markets: first and foremost for that favored agricultural commodity of 'Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco' - a variety that was not found in nature, but rather selectively bred to produce a far larger leaf with far less active Tobacco ingrediants per leaf area and with little or none of the natural more psychoactive components put there by God that had made it a more interesting and infrequent smoke- now with no interesting psychedelic properties but now far 'smoother' to be now taken deeply into the lungs- repeatedly fostering consumtion/addiction and far greater profits starting with such places as Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas; and secondly for that to be favored class of drugs, 'pharmaceuticles' that is syntheticly derived chemicals, remotely or not based upon natural substances as plants: IOW favoring the patentable drugs over those naturally occurring.

The 1906 US Pure Food and Drug Act reflected this by giving dictatorial power to the USDA Bureau of Chemistry to declare a substance 'dangerous' or deleterious to human health' WITHOUT any scientific requirements, while setting up certain substances (while lacking any justifiable science) for a public perception as extra-problematic by only requiring them but not any of their comparable competitor substances within the Act's retail lableing requirments for opiates and cocaine to be labled, but not caffeine or nicotine- skipping out on the latter by the 'grandfathering of Tobacco', by the Act's limitation of its jurisdictions over substances within the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, and that publication's convenient deletion of Tobacco a mere one year earlier in 1905. Fathom that: an Act empowering the US Department of Agriculture to effectively ban anything EXCEPT that agricultural commodity of Tobacco.


Also fathom a Harvey Washington Wiley lionized in the William Randolph Hearst's yellow journalist' mass press as a great protector of the public's health, who conducted numerous 'poison squad' experiments upon the toxicity of numerous food additives, yet apparantly never did so for the isolated caffeine, cocaine and whole Coca leaf extract that he so strongly opposed particularly the latter two- while making no real distinction between them or any levels of potency- fostering vague notions by those unacqainted with Coca/dilute cocaine to suppose that drinking the original formula Coca Cola or Vin Mariani led to injecting cocaine.

Such a view is something that was seen in certain medical journals, particularly those emanating from locations within Tobacco growing regions following the near simultaneous development of commercialized pharmaceutical grade concentrated cocaine, the industrial cigarette rolling machines, and the medical recognition of Coca's utility as a way of getting people off of Tobacco "to save smokers from exaggerated habits of nicotinsm". It was a view fully adopted by about 1904 (Harvey Washington Wiley, interestingly apparantly wrote or said little about Coca or cocaine previously, even though he had held his USDA position since 1883); and its reflected throughout such things as the 'concern' over Coca/dilute cocaine's popularity in regions that just happen to be major Tobacco growing regions, particularly as a "Tobacco Habit Cure"!

Notably, the USDA had then recently explored the commercial agricultural potential of Coca, Opium, Cannabis and other such drug plants, as it does a century later with regards to the concept of GMO Tobacco plants for manufacturing pharmaceutical (patent) drugs.

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US continuing cigarette mercantilism 2011

this is a continuation of the policies enacted during the early 1900s over concerns about Coca displacing Tobacco - despite Coca's safety and Tobacco's then already known dangers -- for the sake of a mission of agrilcultural mercantilism

THE COCA LEAF

Storm in an Andean Teacup

A Battle Over Mastication

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n043/a03.html?397

TOURISTS who visit Bolivia's capital, La Paz, or Cusco, Peru's former Inca seat, are routinely given welcome cups of coca tea to mitigate soroche (altitude sickness). For centuries, people who live in the high Andes have chewed coca leaves, whose alkaloids act as a mild stimulant and help to ward off cold and hunger. The Spanish conquistadors declared coca a tool of the devil, until they saw how it improved the work rate of the Indians they sent down the mines.

But refine the alkaloids in coca, and you get cocaine. In 1961 a United Nations convention on narcotics banned the leaves, giving countries 25 years to outlaw this ancestral practice. Half a century on, consuming coca remains legal in Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and some parts of Colombia, in defiance of the convention. In Bolivia and Peru, some cultivation is legal too. In 2009 Bolivia, where a new constitution protects coca as part of the country's cultural heritage, proposed an amendment to the convention that would remove the obligation to prohibit traditional uses of coca. Other South American countries agree.

The amendment would have passed if no objections were raised by the end of this month. But this week the United States spoke up, probably scuppering the change. The European Union (at Britain's behest) may follow. They argue that tolerating the use of coca harms efforts to suppress cocaine. Bolivia insists it would continue to fight cocaine and limit coca cultivation. But cultivation in Bolivia and Peru has long outstripped traditional use, and is rising sharply.

Yet this smacks of hypocrisy. The United States' State Department's website recommends coca tea for altitude sickness, and its La Paz embassy has been known to serve it to visitors. The UN's declaration on indigenous peoples, which the United States endorsed last month, guarantees the protection of "cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions".

"It's clear to me that some people there [in the State Department] realise it's senseless to continue the war on drugs," says Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president of Brazil who wants marijuana decriminalised and is chairing a commission on drug policy worldwide.

But the drug warriors in the American administration seem to have prevailed over the diplomats. Bolivia is considering pulling out of the convention if its modest proposal is struck down. The State Department has been trying to repair ties with Bolivia's socialist government since a spat in 2008 in which ambassadors were expelled.

But all too often American policy towards Latin America has been dominated
by drugs.

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