Cocaine Prohibition: Water or Gasoline [for treating the flames of drug abuse]

Originally published in the
1991 conference paper compendium of the
Washington, D.C. based "Drug Policy Foundation"

Cocaine Prohibition: Water or Gasoline [for treating the flames of drug abuse]

Douglas A. Willinger

I have a funny feeling about this question about this question of legalization. I don’t know whether this is a correct comparison, but it is kind of like putting gasoline on a fire to put it out or giving alcoholics free whiskey wherever they want.

Congressman Dante B. Fascell, House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, Hearings on the legalization of illicit drugs, September 29, 1988

Introduction

Fascell’s remarks typify the way most people view the question of drug policy. Largely fueled through a legitimate concern over the abuse of certain drugs, “anti-drug” sentiment today against such drugs as cocaine rests comfortably upon the perception that prohibition is not only our wisest move, but our only sane one. For conventional wisdom the matter seems clear. “Make it v difficult, very difficult” to obtain drugs, intoned Reagan drug policy advisor Lois Herrington on a recent “Firing Line” debate. For many, it is a seductively simple idea that simply should work: thwart drug abuse by stopping the drugs, utterly and

Unequivocally as one would put out a fire by dousing it with water. Not surprisingly, alterative approaches to drugs are seen on the contrary as akin to dousing the flames of drug abuse with gasoline.

Are we so sure, though, that this last analogy is not more accurate when applied to drug prohibition? In the face of today’s situation, viewing cocaine prohibition as a bulwark to drug abuse is questionable. From what one would think of a policy meant to work as prohibition is supposed to, today’s reality should be different. Finding cocaine for sale as it is now understood would be difficult, and there would be little if any pf the abuse now common under prohibition.

Obedience to a Dogma: Most Simply, Drugs Are Bad”

In spite of the drug war’s lack of success with controlling drug abuse in a worthwhile manner, keeping cocaine strictly illegal remains popularly perceived as our wisest policy. In light of its failures this may seem strange, especially when even that most vocal and vibrant defender of the drug policy status quo, U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, admits that drug prohibition is a failure. Nonetheless, illegalizing cocaine is continually called a “good” policy, even though the same can not be said of the situation that has evolved under it.

As with all things, whether rational or irrational, there exist reasons. On the surface these are the beliefs that serve as the war on drug’s justification. The following remarks by former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration director John Lawn and Chairman of the Board of the National District Attorney’s Association, Arthur C. Cappy Eads, given before the same September 29, 1988 House Hearings, provide a glimpse of these basic dogmas:

“Drugs are not bad because they are illegal. They are illegal because they are bad. They are bad for society. They re bad for the user. They are bad for those around the users and for our communities.”

According to this official doctrine, the drugs declared illegal by Congress in 1914 are intrinsically evil. Any use is assumed intolerable. Thus, regardless of any pharmacological realities regarding their form, potency or mode of use [administration] is assumed intolerable, the marketing and buying any of these drugs in any form is strictly illegal. Viewed through this prism, it is not surprising that cocaine is seen this particular way today. Many undesirable features now related to cocaine’s trade and use do appear to buttress the official beliefs about the drug and our social and legal policies toward it.

However, in light of the failures of the approach that assumes itself as good and cocaine as evil, should not we be asking ourselves this question: is the orthodox perspective of cocaine and our social and legal policies toward it that underlay the “war on drugs” the only way to view this matter, let alone the wisest?

Now, this is not to suggest that the current situation with the drug is not on the balance undesirable, or to deny the drug abuse problems now surrounding the drug. Indeed, I think that almost everyone – asides from some of the more prosperous black market dealers in the white powder – would deem our ideal drug policies as those that would eliminate today’s abominable predicament with powder cocaine and crack.

Instead, I would like to draw attention to the influence popular beliefs have upon the nation’s choice of law, and ultimately, because of the law’s effects, the profound influence these beliefs have upon the current situation with cocaine.

Drugs Per Se, or Prohibition

In recent years, the ever-growing problems now surrounding cocaine’s trade and use outside the protection of the law has inspired a general questioning of cocaine prohibition. Presenting a different perspective of the drug war then the official one, advocates of drug policy reform make a number of observations that suggest that the unquestioning admiration of the war on drugs routinely found in such conventional publications as Reader’s Digest is not merited. Accordingly, prohibition is not the answer to fighting “drug related” problems, but to an extent the cause. As noted by several of these advocates, criminalizing popular drugs has not only failed to stop their flow into the country, but has worsened the situation: crime, corruption, the erosion of liberty, and, as Richard Cowan and Ethan Nadelmann have noted, the shift to the relatively dangerous contraband drugs have been the liabilities not of drugs per se, but of illegalizing them.

Because of the nature of any debate about cause and effect, prohibitionists and anit0prohibitionists can argue endlessly as to whether the drug war is beneficial or deleterious. Like the proverbial fable about which came first, the chicken or the egg, the simultaneous escalation of the drug war and the drug problem during the 1980s can be seen two ways. The cause is either crack or prohibition, as the effect is either prohibition or crack- all depending upon one’s perspective. While drug abuse may be what is on our minds, prohibitionists perceive rte situation in a way that calls for targeting certain drugs. Perhaps thinking about this may provide some insight as to why our current policies are useless at targeting abuse.

Breaking the Stalemate

Breaking this intellectual stalemate requires an approach that can ultimately determine the correct way of looking at the drug issue. Because today’s situation

With drugs involves the meshing of drugs and prohibition, harping upon either an illicit drug as cocaine or the policies that made it illegal will not answer our fears about drugs or laws. Instead, it has only presented the two clashing interpretations typified below. With all due credit to the rhetoric of one particular devote of this century’s 80-year crusade against “drugs”, I present a portion of Congressman Soloman P. Ortiz’s opening statement before the September 29, House Narcotics Committee Hearings on Drug Legalization, among with a re-write from an alternative point of view.

Those who bravely wage this war will also know what illegal drugs are doing to our children, our communities and our nation as a whole.

Those that bravely resist the war also know what making certain drugs illegal is doing to our children, our communities and our nation as a whole.

More then we realize, conceptions do set our perceptions. Revealing which of these outlooks is correct requires that abstract look be taken with both points of blame: cocaine or its criminalization (1914-) Only by divorcing and separating the two can each be seen for what it is, thus answering the question whether either is intrinsically good or evil.

Child of Conception

If there where ever a story where conception played a greater role in the history of anything, that was of cocaine.

Although characterized in similar terms by North and South American colloquialisms as the “Lady” of drugs, cocaine has been seen in many different ways for so many things to so many people. Perhaps no other drug in history has been so widely praised – or damned – as the source of so much joy or misery.

For a certain young Viennese doctor more then a century ago, cocaine was a “good” drug. The tonic which dispelled his depression, cocaine or coca – terms he used much as coffee and caffeine are today – was Sigmund Freud’s elixir of life in the form of 50 milligrams of cocaine hydrochloride dissolved in a glass of water. To others though cocaine was something else: a Lady of an altogether different nature. M medication that enslaved its victims, cocaine was a seductively habit-forming toxin that could lead to psychosis, fornication, paranoid delusions and death. For a prominent group pf physicians using cocaine injections upon themselves as a nerve block notably the famous American surgeon William Halsted, cocaine soon became a psychosis inducing problem drug of compulsive abuse as it did for Freud’s friend, Dr. Fleischl-Marxow, who was addicted to morphine.

In light of the many pharmacological factors that would explain such discrepancies, not to mention our current drug abuse problems, it would seem advisable to study cocaine’s history carefully. More specifically, the times when cocaine was popularly viewed as a wonder drug, or as a “benign, useful tonic.” If the drug had once been widely used and praised, it would seem that the problems now encountered with it could be avoided. Indeed, if true, then such a study of such benign and beneficial uses would suggest ways to mitigate or eliminate our drug abuse problems. Given cocaine’s reoccurring indeed inevitable popularity, this approach would be more sensible then current ones.

Unfortunately though, the search for an alternative approaches for ultimately doing away with today’s deplorable situation surrounding cocaine is stymied by the orthodox stance against certain drugs. If something contradicts today’s favored definitions of cocaine as a problem, and its use as a “disease” called drug addiction, then it simply is not recognized. A good example of this approach to the drug is provided by the preface of the 1^st edition of Mark S. Gold’s tome “800 COCAINE, widely promoted during the 1980s as “the book that answers all your questions about today’s fastest-growing drug problem,” and named for the U.S.A.’s 1^st nationally promoted hotline for individuals who feel or were told that they had a drug abuse problem. The reader will discover that certain ideas are repeated throughout this book. This is deliberate. It is done to emphasize what I consider the key issues concerning cocaine. That it should not be regarded as a benign recreational drug. That it’s use can exact a terrible toll. That it can cause addiction. That there is no “cure” for cocaine addiction except permanent and total abstinence from its use. That it is better to say a firm “NO” to the drug than to have to deal with its destructiveness once it takes hold.

With little questioning, this line of thought has been widely repeated as the all encompassing view of “cocaine.” Regardless of how authoritative it may sound, this belief should not be seen, properly, as one that enshrines from drug researchers. More properly, they’re the products of drug abuse researchers whom base their opinions upon only what they look at: drug abuse. This distinction may seem unimportant, because its so rarely discussed, but it is vital.

Drug researchers, like the type usually reserved for legal drugs like caffeine or aspirin, generally stud drugs with the attitude that they have legitimate uses, even if taken on a regular basis. For such uses, the drug is studied so that the beneficial uses may be cataloged. Indeed, as this is the point of much drug research, such substances like aspirin and caffeine are tested under conditions that minimize their bad effects and maximize their good ones.

In contrast, drug abuse researchers, as their name suggest, pursue a different line of research operating on a different premise. Accordingly, the drugs are by definition substances of abuse, without legitimate uses. Consequently, this sort of research often seeks to prove any possible harms that may result from abusing the drug, though laboratory experiments designed to maximize these harms, often through massive overdoses of intravenous administered refined drugs.

Given the reality that not all illicit drug users are abusers, defining cocaine strictly as a substance of abuse is questionable. As a paper by the pharmacologist Dr. Ronald K. Siegel of UCLA on contemporary cocaine use concludes,

“the hypothesis that long term use of cocaine is inevitably associated with escalating dependency marked by more frequent patterns of use is not supported by these findings.”

From the standpoint of those who usually focus exclusively upon the worst segments of a bad situation though, it is certainly understandable how some do become conditioned into seeing things the way they do. As 800-COCAINE’s Mark S. Gold presents the perspective not of those who study drugs broadly, but rather the hard core abusers whom form a minority of the total population of illegal drug users.

Fortunately we are under no moral or spiritual obligation to limit ourselves to the orthodox perspective that views cocaine solely as a substance of abuse. Even if God gave them a list of every ingredient in all the plants in Eden, it is doubtful that Adam and Eve would have picked cocaine as the source of so much future trouble. If God intended cocaine as anything, is there any good reason why He would have intended that its primary use would be anything other than that of other once similarly used substances of its category found in their respective leaves or beans?

The Hidden Essence of the Lady

Today’s virulent rhetoric asides, cocaine is an alkaloid – a nitrogen bearing molecule often containing a carbon ring that is synthesized from amino acids within living organisms – found within the leaves of the South American plant erythroxylon coca. A powerful central nervous stimulant and an anesthetic for people, cocaine is a Schedule II controlled substance by U.S. law under the 1970 Drug Control Act, defined as a substance with a high potential for abuse...

Amongst these are a number of medical applications with an interesting twist upon one of the drug’s popular uses and forms under prohibition. For elderly people suffering from rheumatic arthritis who invariably lost much of their ability to move, intranasally administered Esterene worked where any of the conventional treatments failed. It gave them an increased range of motion, improving the consumer’s muscle, joint functions and strength, a situation all of the physicians present agreed was due to Esterene – sniffed freebase crack cocaine. Words that usually conjure up the image of the self destructive crack addict, their appearance here reminds us that words often have more then one meaning. A non-addictive medication that greatly improved the quality of life for patients, indeed freeing the patient discussed of her need to perpetually consume 12 aspirin a day, this type of medical cocaine did not induce excessive use because of the drug’s relatively slow rate of absorption. 3

Such positive uses may be surprising to those accustomed to the drug’s infamous reputation. The fact that cocaine is of the same family of drugs as caffeine and nicotine though may come as an even greater surprise given how differently they are popularly perceived. All are alkaloids found naturally occurring in plants. All serve as potent central nervous system stimulants, constrict the blood vessels, and act upon that part of the brain governing heartbeat, blood pressure and mood. Like any drug, their range of effects is no less broad than that of dosage. All three are psychoactive.

Judging by the ways these drugs are commonly spoken of, one would never know this. {Or, if they knew it, they still probably would not realize it]. Caffeine and nicotine innocuously, either as good or bad, caffeine for instance being an U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowable food additive, “generally regarded as safe up to six milligrams per fluid ounce.” 6 Cocaine, though is only addressed as a manifestation of evil. While good things are said about caffeine or nicotine, no one hears anything said good about cocaine.

Now America think! Is this because cocaine is inherently any worse than say caffeine, let alone nicotine? Or may it just have to do with the convoluted situation engendered under drug prohibition? Although we’re looking at three drugs of the same category, these there stimulants are not being used similarly.

Popularly consumed through coffee, tea, kola and chocolate products, caffeine is taken by mouth and in the potency as found in each of its parent substances. Appearing in concentrations of around one percent within these substances, caffeine is diluted further through the popular use of the oral infusion; this is the practice of soaking these plant products in water, beverages such as coffee, tea and Kola beverages such as Coca-Cola that deliver roughly 50 to 100 milligrams of caffein per dose are overwhelmingly the popular mode of caffein use – aside from a relatively small minority that sometimes take caffeine in tablet form. Nicotine on the other hand is consumed differently. Sometimes it is absorbed through the mucous membrane through Tobacco chewing, or more directly through the lungs by smokers of cigarettes containing 0.1-1.0 milligrams of nicotine. Like caffein though, it is only taken more or less in its natural potency through tobacco products where tobacco is bred and processed to minimize the amount of the drug due to the toxicity of nicotine and tobacco’s other components.

In contrast, cocaine outside of South America is almost never used in the domesticated manner as its two best known counterparts, indeed being used in ways never dreamed of for caffeine and nicotine. Unlike either of these licit, more socially accepted stimulant drugs, cocaine now undergoes a rite of passage as inconceivable for legal caffeine or nicotine as it is now inevitable with illegal cocaine. Criminalized under statutes that make no distinction between herbal coca and pure cocaine base, cocaine destined for overseas consumption is stripped out of coca leaves, refined with kerosene and other unpalatable chemicals into a thick, potent paste which is then converted into that well known white powder, cocaine hydrochloride, that has usurped the alkaloid’s very name as its own. Available to consumers outside of South America solely in refined base or hydrochloride form, cocaine today is a comparatively ultra-potent concentrated contraband substance far more expensive per weight then gold. In 1991, a 99 percent pure ounce of that precious metal may fetch $400, yet a 10 percent to 50 percent pure ounce of cocaine commands two to four times that amount. Consumed in a manner that for all intents and purposes is non existent for any other drug of its category, cocaine is commonly taken into the body as a powder of varying potency that is sniffed. More recently, a newer mode of cocaine use has become increasingly popular: crack. The purified – non-hydrochloride – drug remixed with baking soda and/or other adulterants, crack is taken directly through the lungs, much like nicotine is through smoking cigarettes. However, because the latter is delivered through smoking a material up to 200 times more concentrated than coca leaf (and not being diffused as the 0.8 milligrams of nicotine found in the average Marlboro medium light cigarette, “by the FTC method”), the potency of today’s average dose of “smoked cocaine” is far, far higher then that of “smoked nicotine.”

The Original Formula for the 90s

With few exceptions, today’s drugs and drug abuse researchers make little to no mention of the pharmacological variables concerning use and misuse of stimulant drugs. Instead, so as not to dare challenge the dominant attitudes of the day, cocaine is condemned time and time again. Yet one almost never heard a condemnation of the practice of putting refined stimulants up one’s nose.

Following the pretense of the prohibitionists undeniably requires us to either accept some interesting things about drugs, or the way they are comparatively perceived. By taking the notion that cocaine is the “bad” drug to its logical conclusion, this currently infamous stimulant would be “bad” even if only consumed in the manner we’re now accustomed to for caffeine or nicotine. Under this quantitative model perspective of an United States of America aghast at the prospect of 100 million cocaine users within its borders, chewing coca leaves or drinking infusions of coca including teas and soft drinks like the original 1890s formula (“90s Formula”) Coca-Cola would be viewed differently then the widespread legal consumption of tobacco leaf snuff (i.e. Skoals), coffee, tea and other caffeinated beverages like the “New Coke” as well as the aptly misnamed “Original Formula” variety. A preference for coca over tobacco or coffee cold be defined as “drug addiction”, as would the “need” to place imbibers of coca leaf based beverages or smokers of non tobacco coca leaf cigarettes into “drug treatment” centers. Unlike these caffeine and nicotine containing products, coca leaf products would be viewed as a serious “drug problem” as many would infer from cocaine’s strict definition as a problem drug. [This sort of “understanding” underlies the Coca-Cola corporation’s attitude to attempt to forget that the beverage ever included the cocaine alkaloid, never minding that the amounts included were never shown harmful.]

Given the focus of today’s discussions of drug abuse upon a drug’s identity, but never the way it is used, one apparently could consume either caffeine or nicotine as cocaine under prohibition without any fear of toxicity, psychosis, depressive rebound, compulsion or addiction. One cannot really know if these are the true beliefs of today’s medical orthodoxy. One can wonder, though, if that “government-appointed panel of experts” Vivarin claims declared its tiny 200 milligram caffein pills “as safe as coffee” would concern themselves with the supposed need to completely outlaw these currently licit alkaloid if sniffing or smoking NoDoz or Vivarin caffein tablets – let alone nicotine sulfate – ever became popular.

Of course either of these conclusions can be checked out by doing at least one of two things: forsake one’s favorite caffeinated beverage or cigarette in favor of purified caffein or nicotine – sniffed, smoked or injected; or check out the story and reality of coca. Whatever you do though, please don’t try caffeine or nicotine in forms comparable to those known for cocaine under prohibition. [Or, if so, use extreme caution, particularly with nicotine]. Few may view stimulants other than cocaine and the synthetic amphetamines as dangerous, indeed largely due to the interesting tendency of the prohibitionists to down play or overlook the potential hazards of licit drugs. However, any stimulant can be potent, habit forming poisons in sufficiently concentrated form, with history upon careful study, not necessarily indict the indirect, dilute ways of taking drugs, but rather the direct methods of using and abusing concentrated drugs.

If anything can be learned from the widespread use of products based upon coca leaf throughout the 50 years leading up to prohibition in 1914, consumer substances that presented the cocaine alkaloid comparably to the way the caffeine and nicotine alkaloids are carried in coffee or cigarettes were not the harmful substances today’s unequivocal stance against illicit drugs may lead one to believe. Like the universal practice of the oral infusion of coffee or tea, coca was most popularly taken in beverage form – or tonics as they were often called.

At the time, one man was generally recognized as perfecting this mode of coca use: Angelo Francois Mariani, with his wine of Coca Vin Tonique Mariani ala Coca de la Perou. Introduced to the enthusiastic approval of the vocal performers and their vocal instructors of the nearby Opera in 1863, Angelo Mariani and Vin Mariani ultimately became popular around the world. A one pint bottle of red wine from the south of France along the Garonne river, blended with an extract of two ounces of Mariani’s select blend of coca leaves, Vin Mariani not only enjoyed a spectacular sales success through the latter 1800s and into the early 1900s, but was highly regarded by the doctors who employed it. Indeed, for more then 30 years, Vin Mariani was the most widely prescribed medical preparation in the world. Soon followed by a host of imitators, including what later became today’s – albeit decocainized – Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola products. Coca products, most notably Vin Mariani, enjoyed perhaps their greatest sales growth in the United States, particularly in the humid South East where coca was especially appreciated by laborers. Asides from laymen, doctors familiar with quality coca products, most notably Mariani’s highly regarded them. Recent scientific study suggest that once again we should take a serious look at coca. According to Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, in his book Intoxication, coca is what researchers have found

“more controllable, hence safer … least likely to produce toxicity or dependence than all the other plants or synthetics in … [its] category.”

Reckoning with Perception

If cocaine itself – as opposed to its white powder/rock manifestation today is a “bad” drug that must be strictly illegal, then why does it appear that conventional wisdom is wrong whenever we look at the drug in contexts similar drugs are accepted? Likewise, if prohibition’s main aim is to thwart or at least discourage drug abuse, then why does this appear to be a non-truth when we look at history prior to prohibition? Such are the contradictions that the prohibitionists can no longer ignore.

According to the prohibitionists, cocaine must be strictly illegal regardless of the form mainly because people are naturally inclined to favor concentrated white powers over natural plants. [!] According to Gabriel Nahas, man has always extracted from medicinal plants the biologically active molecules they contain, because they are easier to standardize, to store, to transport, and to apply for their specific and pharmacological properties. When it comes to plants which contain substances having an abuse potential, such as cocaine, the desire and power of man to extract the [targeted] psychoactive ingredient of the plant is considerably reinforced. Cocaine, which is contained in the coca leaf, affords the best example of the natural propensity of man to use and abuse any medicine containing this alkaloid. 8

Nonetheless, like Dr. Nahas’s assurances that tobacco and caffeine do not possess neuropsycho-toxicity, 9 none of this is borne out by the drug’s history.

Throughout 3,000 years of use in a climate where coca leaves were in great supply, no one was inclined to refine the leaves into pure cocaine base, let alone putting such a substance up their noses or into their veins. 10 This only occurred a little more then a century ago when some doctors and pharmacologists, in the mistaken belief that cocaine represented the entire range of coca’s desired effects, ignored the leaves [and the orally consumed whole leaf liquid extracts] in favor of that modern, shiny white powder, cocaine hydrochloride, that would be widely promoted during the 1880s in both intranasal and injectable forms respectively as a hay fever remedy or to calm hysterical women. As indicated by the various sales records, the problematic practices of sniffing, injecting, or smoking isolated cocaine was the choice of only a small minority of people before the coming of what is now called the regulatory era [of the post 1914 “war on [some] drugs”.

Indeed, there can be no doubt what brought about the changeover. Because it occurred against the backdrop of prohibition, some can attempt to argue that the crack epidemic was not spurred by prohibition, but rather contained by it. However because of the break between the time when the drug was legal and the time that it was not, it is plainly clear that the policies of the U.S. federal government were the crucial factor during the early 1900s responsible for switching over the bulk of cocaine use from harmless products as Vin Mariani and true original formula Coca-Cola to the concentrated hard drug. Perhaps nothing else better illustrates the before and after effects of Uncle Sam’s bureaucratic intervention. This started with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which illegalized the interstate shipment of many coca products under a clause prohibiting food and beverages containing any amount of the cocaine alkaloid, through the efforts of the American Medical Association and Harvey Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Under the frame work of the “model legislation” these groups proposed, laws were enacted in many states further restricting if not prohibiting the availability of coca products. At the time, such products were still legal medicinally. However this as a situation which was soon to change. Within the first year of the government crack down on coca, during which the USDA claimed the leaf to be a “menace to [the] public welfare,” coca leaf imports into the U.S. were down by 50%. With cocaine completely illegal in the United States by 1915 (outside its use via a non-refillable prescription), the sale and use of contraband cocaine powder became quite widespread in the wake of coca’s absence, Mariani’s April 1, 1914 death, drug prohibition (the U.S. Harrison Act being signed into law December 17, 1914: Mariani’s 1^st post death birthday anniversary), and the disappearance of his Wine.

So why is cocaine illegal? Combating drug abuse is supposedly the goal of drug prohibition, and is indeed the main reason the many support it. But since doing so replaced coca with crack, can such a policy by any stretch of the imagination be deemed as discouraging drug abuse? Nonetheless, while things do not work a they are supposed to in theory, people still act is if it does. Like a still committed communist, drug war proponents continue to call for the masses support, exhorting us to remain faithful to their faith. All we had to do, according to this popular 20^th century mythology, was to let the state intervene in the natural affairs of people, all for everyone’s benefit- supposedly. However, such ventures were destined to fail because of their very nature. Given the broad view of cocaine’s history from coca to crack, is there really any valid reason why the beloved dogmas of Jack Lawn, Mark S. Gold, Gabriel Nahas and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency should remain so sacred and unchallenged?

Endnotes

1 Transcripts of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control Hearings on Drug Legalization, September 28-29, 1988, p. 13

2 ibid, p. 149

3 Insight, “How America Lost its First Drug War”

4 Gold, Mark S. 800 COCAINE, 1984, pp. ix-x

5 Ronald K. Siegel, Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise, 1989, pp. 308-310

6 Goulart, Frances Sheridan, The Caffeine Book: A User’s and Abuser’s Guide, 1984, p. 80

7 Intoxication, p. 299-300

8 Cocaine: The Great White Plague, Nahas, Gabiel G., p. 282

9 Ibid, p.277

10 Reid, William A., Pan American Bulletin, “Coca – The Wonder Plant of the Andes,” 1914, p.653

See also by the same author published by the Drug Policy Foundation:

The Ever Changing Ever Confused Popular Conception of Cocaine

Cocaine Conversion: Onwards to Coca!

Read more ►

The Ever Changing Ever Confused Popular Conception of Cocaine

Originally published in the
1990 conference compendium of the
Washington, D.C. based "Drug Policy Foundation"

The Ever Changing, Ever Confused Popular Conception of Cocaine

Douglas A. Willinger

1990 Drug Policy Foundation International Conference

Edited January 2008

The recipient of the most vehement of praise and damnation, cocaine’s reputation has been inconsistent as no [perhaps] other drug. During the past century, cocaine has attracted much public interest, yet most historians shy away from explaining the reasons behind its ever-changing reputation. This is because most people chose to remain faithful to the dominant sentiment of the day – something few dare question.

“Cocaine”- Good drug or Bad Drug?

During the 1980s, one drug was routinely condemned as no other. This drug is cocaine, an alkaloid found in the leaves of the South American Coca plant. Cocaine serves as both a potent central nervous stimulant and as a local anesthetic. Regardless of how it made the news, cocaine was always presented by the mass media in a negative light—the #1 “bad” public enemy drug.

Many will recall that cocaine had not always been so relentlessly condemned. Only a decade and a half ago “cocaine” was perceived differently. Although medical authorities are now publicly critical of the drug – it is deemed harmful, addictive, or deadly – the orthodoxy of the mid 1970s was hardly so damning, Perhaps this contrast in perception is best illustrated by the following 1974 statement of a White House drug abuse prevention adviser under the Ford and Carter administrations:

Cocaine … is probably the most benign of illicit drugs currently in widespread use.

Try comparing this to anything publicly said now about any illicit drug by William Bennett & Company. It seems that ”cocaine” was viewed by some as a “good:” drug. Those drug authorities featured by the mass media like to simply say our nation’s recent experiences with the drug – especially the crack epidemic – have rendered the earlier belief obsolete.

With the narrow focus of concern upon the contraband drug’s abuse, virtually everything written about cocaine has focused upon its abuse. Consequently, this all makes it easy to view it strictly as a “bad” drug and create the popular presumption that the positive view of the drug was based only upon an illusion.

Although universally accepted, this presumption requires one to ignore much history. As one might note in the type of articles featured in Readers’ Digest, notably the essay which appeared in the April 1990 issue, “America’s Forgotten Drug War,” supporters of prohibition prefer simple explanations. According to their commonly repeated account: first the drug was viewed as good, until its dangers appeared and subsequently it was banished from respectable society and medicine. However, as the drug’s reputation has fluctuated for over a century, this standard explanation is inadequate for several reasons. It is true that as the drug was praised before being condemned. And, yes, as the drug is now abused, much of the condemnation is firmly rooted in reality. Yet why has the positive view of the drug kept reappearing, disappearing and reappearing?

For more then ten decades, varied opinions of the drug were championed by those inside and outside of the medical profession. Some condemned it – n the words of one 1880s era physician “as the third scourge of humanity” (after alcohol and morphine). Yet popular sentient towards the drug generally remained positive or ambivalent. Public opinion polls about this matter where not taken during the latter 1800s and the early 1900s, yet it is generally agreed that cocaine was not a drug that spurred any universal support for its total prohibition then; even though alcohol, tobacco, and to some extent opium, attracted their share of grassroots political support for temperance, restriction or prohibition. Thirty years passed between cocaine’s first negative accounts and total prohibition’s signing into U.S. law on December 17, 1914; for the uncompromising sentiment against cocaine only coalesced with the rising number of press accounts of then tales of abuse than the number of times the isolated drug was abused that spurred public support for total cocaine prohibition. This was, of course, the result of the popularization of the belief that cocaine itself was an inherently bad drug. Undeniably, our policies towards given drugs have been shaped by our attitudes toward them.

Three quarter of a century later, all of this has led Congress to appropriate millions upon millions of dollars for research into fighting cocaine abuse. This has produced many studies, each presenting one of several officially approved approaches – from the chemical defoliation of the Coca growing regions of the Andes, to a variety of ill defined “drug treatment” programs. Regardless of any merit these studies may possess, all fail to even attempt to question why one drug has evoked the most vehement of damnation and praise. For most contemporary drug researchers have adopted the prevailing attitude of the day: cocaine is strictly a bad drug. Ye does this attitude really serve to help the pubic truly understand “Cocaine” or how we can avoid the situation where it became a problem?

The Forgotten Factor- Context

With today’s deplorable situation with cocaine it may seem unfathomable that the positive view of the drug ever held any validity. The thing one must remember, is not only have so many varied opinions been held of this one drug, but that cocaine has been judged in contexts as varied as these opinions. As the German pharmacologist and toxicologist Lewin Lewis noted in his 1924 book Phantastica:

There is no other substance which has so many modes of applications. It may be injected subcutaneously, drunk as a beverage in the form of coca wine, cocaine wines or champagne, smoked in cigarettes, thrust into the nose with a brush or employed as snuff, rubbed into the gums or the anus…

Regrettably, Lewin choose to dismiss the importance of context, namely the vastly different ways of putting a drug into the body; that it didn’t really matter, for instance, if one drank the original Coca Cola, or mainlined pure cocaine. On this matter, Lewin was most unequivocal:

The method of its introduction into the body is of no importance…the use of the leaves and of [the pure drug] cocaine produces very similar results as regards the actual symptoms and final form of the cocaine evil.

Stated authoritatively as he was wrong, Lewin chose to blind himself to the indisputable fact that South American Indians have been using Coca leaves for at least three thousand years with no none of the problems that came about with the purified powdered drug. As this had been known, acknowledged and stressed, notably by Dr. William Golden Mortimer’s classic Peru: A History of Coca, Lewin failed to make a distinction between the use of Coca and the white powder, cocaine hydrochloride because he viewed certain drugs into a strictly bad light. Perhaps the best clue to this attitude was his essay’s title: Cocainism. It was written about both the use of Coca leaf and cocaine hydrochloride. Yet terms as this, a substance’s name followed by an “ism”, notably alcoholism, generally refer tp the morbid undesirable states which are the consequences of a drug’s abuse. Thus to Lewin, cocaine was a substance of abuse. In the context the drug now occupies, this is not a very inaccurate portrayal. Yet to merely speak of the drug in the abstract as such, is a perception that only covers one dimension.

The Three Dimensions of Perception

Breaking the cycles of confusion by fully understanding the ways the drug has been viewed requires one to look at the entire matter in a sharply defined three dimensional perspective: whole herbal Coca, cocaine as an ingredient of Coca leaf, and cocaine as am unnaturally refined white power. Although much has been said about “cocaine”, that word has been in fact been used to describe a number of things that have been used in a multiple of different ways.

Herbal Coca

As we have noted earlier, Coca leaf has been used since antiquity by millions of South Americans. This leaf is a product of the South American Coca plant, Erythroxlum Coca. Four basic varieties exist: E. coca var coca (Andean), E. coca var ipuda (Amazonian), E. novograntatense var novograntatense (Columbian), and E. novogranatense var truxillense (Trujillo) . Almost always, it is said that Coca leaves are chewed, though this practice is more accurately described as the suckling of a quid of leaves. This is often done with the addition of ash or lime – the mineral, not the fruit – to help facilitate the release of what Dr. Andrew T. Weil, Adjunct Professor of Addiction Studies at the University of Arizona describes as Coca leave’s virtues, in a personal account of its use recounted in Cocaine, A Drug and Its Social Evolution, the 1975 book by Lester Girinspoon and James B. Bakalar.

Without a doubt, Coca is viewed as being full of virtue by South Americans, primarily by the Indian populations of Peru and Bolivia who either use it as described above or drink it as a tea. Most often, Coca is utilized as other natural commodities of its category including coffee, tea, tobacco, betel and qat are elsewhere. Yet there is more. Aside from its use as a mild stimulant, Coca has long been employed for a variety of medicinal purposes. These have included its use for treating fatigue, hunger, nausea, dizziness, headaches, toothache, rheumatic pains, malaria, general debilitation and stomachaches. For this latter use and other gastrointestinal tract including ulcers, diarrhea and cramps; as a tea sweetened with sugar – a hot water infusion known as agua de coca – herbal Coca is an excellent remedy: one that for a time became widespread amongst non-Indians.

Europeans though only first came into contact with Coca at the time of the 15^th and 16^th centuries with the Spanish exploration and conquest of South America. Quite ironically -- given cocaine’s reoccurring characterization as the great American drug – it was Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian navigator whose name ultimately was affixed to these two continents then known as the New World, whom was the first European to observe Coca’s use there. In a letter, dated September 4, 1504, Vespucci wrote:

The customs and manners of the tribe are of this sort. In looks and behavior they were very repulsive and each had his cheeks bulging with a certain green herb which they chewed like cattle so that they could hardly speak, and each carried from his neck two dried gourds, one which was full of this herb he kept in his mouth, the other full of a certain white flour-like powdered chalk. Frequently each put a small powdered stick (which had been moistened and chewed in his mouth) into the gourd filed with flour. Each they drew forth and put it in both sides of his cheeks thus mixing the flour with the herb their mouths contained. They did this frequently and a little at a time, and marveling at such a thing, we could not guess the secret nor for what purpose they did so.

Doubtlessly. Many of Pizarro’s conquistadors pondered the reasons for this strange – to them – South American custom. Perhaps some of them personally experimented with the leaves. Soon after seizing control of Peru, the Spanish set up a monopoly on Coca: outlawing the peaceful competition of others in all commerce with Coca. Amongst other purposes, this monopoly was deemed economically useful, as it was useful to dominate the supply of the leaves fed to the Indians enslaved for the purpose of working the gold mines – its beneficial effects upon working performance already recognized.

Yet two factors conspired to thwart Coca’s entry back to Europe: its volatility and a strident campaign by the Roman Catholic Church. The first factor made it utterly unprofitable at the time to ship. Fresh Coca loaded in Peru always became stale Coca unloaded in south European ports. Unlike other drug plants, notably tobacco, harvested Coca was far more volatile, decaying relatively rapidly. Because of this, resulting with the evaporation of a number of its active ingredients, Coca leaves which were experimented with in Europe were generally inert. Understandably, this led to the belief that Coca was inert, and thus those who felt any effect were deluded. The subsequent Church campaign against Coca was initiated shortly after consolidating its control of Peru when a number of Bishops acted to suppress what they publicly deemed an Indian vice. The reasons for this campaign may have been obscure, yet Coca was officially condemned in 1551 and 1569 at the Ecclesiastical Council of Lima. In the words of that city’s Bishop, Coca was “un delusion del demonio” : a delusion of the devil. The Church soon propagated this conception of Coca widely. Whether Europeans perceived it as inert or as the Bishop wanted them to, Coca was fated to remain a botanical curiosity outside of its American homeland.

Three and a half centuries passed between the time Coca was first discovered by Europeans and its Old World debut. This task was destined for one man born in Europe. During the 1850s he was a pharmacist’s apprentice working near that city’s great opera houses. He became interested in a certain South American plant, named for the legendary she-spirit MamaCoca. (2) In 1863, after a few years of experimentation with her volatile essence, he bottled an extract of the plant Coca, with a pint of Bordeaux. Named for this man, the Corsican Angelo Francois Mariani, Vin Mariani became immensely popular throughout the years leading to 1914: the year of Mariani’s death and Coca’s criminalization.

Vin Mariani was the result of several years of testing and experimentation – an effort done with the assistance of Mariani’s close friend, Dr. Chas Fauvel. Mariani and Fauvel first prescribed Vin Mariani as a larynx tonic for a female opera performer. For this purpose Coca was naturally appropriate. Under the rigorous discipline of their singing engagements and their vocal instructor, over-stressed performers became fatigued, both in body and spirit. The profession was torture for vocal tracts and those lacking in what the belle époque philosopher Henri Berson termed élan vital: humanity’s essential life force. For a multitude of performers there was no substitute. According to Sarah Bernhardt:

“Vin Mariani” is indispensable to dramatic and lyric artists. I owe it to the solidity and suppleness of my voice; also my vital forces resist through it the emotions and fatigues of the stage. I would be unable to go on without it. A few drops of “Vin Mariani” carries me through and restores me. Therefore without hesitation, I proclaim it the “King of all tonics”.

Whether one called the qualities demanded – motivation, vitality, the strive to succeed, or plain old spunk – actors and singers who drank Vin Mariani found Coca induced all of those qualities; helping them endure as it did for the Incas. Vin Mariani’s use spread rapidly throughout the Parisian Opera community, both through word of mouth and the effects of Fauvel. A doctor of laryngology and rhinology who maintained his practice at 13 Avenue de l’Opera, Fauvel introduced Coca to doctors abroad, for whom he demonstrated Vin Mariani’s virtues.

From the start, Vin Mariani ultimately circled the globe, earning the endorsements and good will of the influential, the rich and the famous. Celebrities throughout the arts used it. Thomas Edison – a virulent critic of Tobacco cigarettes who refused to hire smokers – praised it, as did the political leaders in many nations. Thankfully Angelo Mariani chose to record this for posterity. For thirty years, he filled his volumes, Figures Contemperaines with the testimonials of heads of State, royalty and Church hierarchy. From France, to the United States, to Russia, Brazil, and Abyssinia, government officials personally wrote Mariani of their praise for Vin Mariani. Czar Nicholas II, whose regime forbad the import of virtually anything else of a medicinal nature – including alcoholic beverages under his stringent health regulations ordered cased of the Coca wine. So did the U.S., Surgeon General of the Navy, who found Vin Mariani especially useful for its ability to thwart the spread of contagious disease, notably influenza. B the turn of the century, endorsements came from places as high as the White House and the Vatican. President William McKinley endorsed it in 1898, and soon Angelo Mariani himself was to reach his pinnacle of praise- personally. In January of 1898, Mariani was summoned by Pope Leo XIII and awarded a gold Vatican medal. Round and featuring the Pope’s likeness on one side, this award cited Angelo Francois Mariani as a Benefactor of Humanity in “testimony of benefits derived from Vin Mariani.” After Leo XIII’s death at the age of 97, his successor Pope Pius X, issued a second such medal to Mariani in 1904. [This was immediately prior to the political situation with in the US turning against Coca through the yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst and the campaigns of KOM Harvey Washington Wiley/AMA/AphA/USDA.]

Indeed for a period of fifty years, Coca leaf beverages were employed throughout the world, primarily in Europe and North America. Naturally, Mariani had more then his share of competitors. These included tonics with names as:

Café Cola Compound

Cleary Cola,

Coca Cola

Doctor Don’s Kola

Delicious Dopeless Koca Nola

Kola Ade

Kos Kola

Pepsi Cola

AL Pillsbury’s Coke Extract,

Vani Kola

Rococola, and

Wiseola!

Toady’s Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola (apparently named after the GI disorder dyspepsia, which Coca and cocaine based tonics were used in the treatment of) and many of their later imitators are descended from this lineage.

Considering the totality of the government’s condemnation of cocaine, one today might suppose the widespread use of Coca beverages – which it has been noted had much of their sharpest growth in popularity in the South Eastern part of the U.S. – would have attracted the attention of those who concern themselves with the consumption habits of others. Alcohol, tobacco, morphine and even opium drew their share of criticism, as the abuse of these drugs inspired some to even advocate the intervention of the criminal justice system. Alcoholism was already a noted social problem which spurred an entire political movement not only for temperance but for prohibition. And like others who traditionally call for coercion to propagate their agendas, some anti-alcohol crusaders were hardly non-violent, notably the axe swinging Carie Nation. And unfortunately, in light of Friedrich von Hayek’s observation that “ It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil,” such tactics struck a certain chord of public support and sympathy.

Of course not all drugs drew the same criticism. Indeed, some drew no criticism for concerns of abuse, even though their use was widespread, or though they contained components which have earned their respective notorious components which have earned their respective notorious reputations in certain contexts, such as alcohol or cocaine. As free base and crack cocaine are correctly perceived as more of a problem then intranasal cocaine, (which itself is properly viewed with a concern that would be inappropriate for marijuana or hashish), one alcoholic concoction more then others was viewed with an especially heightened concern, that bluish green liquid, absinthe.

For its critics who witnessed its over-use/abuse absinthe was a scourge which promoted psychotic reactions with some who abused it. As absinthe and Vin Mariani were simultaneously available for several decades, medical opinion took the opportunity to speak of the turquoise and the burgundy:

Down with bitters, absinthe etc, but long life to “Vin Mariani”

Dr. H. Richardiers, medial consultant

Absinth kills man, “Coca Mariani” will kill the absinthe.

Dr. A. Calmette

Perhaps the following statements of Dr Louis Ombrededanne and G Mesureur – the French Director of Hygiene and Public Heath who approved a number of strict government measures against alcoholism – best represent the prevailing professional opinion of Coca beverages. Remember, this was at the turn of the century – after Mariani’s wine was on the market for nearly forty years.

Vin Mariani seems to be the happy median between the apostles of alcohol a poison and the feverant believers of alcohol a food.

The dangers of alcoholism would be avoided if no other stimulant were taken for mental or physical trials than that offered by the generous Vin Mariani.

Thus, as shown by a half century of commercialized use, in sharp contrast to isolated cocaine, the use of Coca was not viewed as a social or health problem. As Edward M. Brecher noted in his landmark 1972 Consumers Union publication Licit and Illicit Drugs:

A search of the medical literature has turned up little data to indicate that the chewing of Coca leaves or the imbibing of beverages containing small amounts of coca is more damaging to mind or body than the drinking of coffee or tea. Nor are the physiological effects notably different; both coca and caffeine are primarily stimulants of the central nervous system.

More recent research strongly suggest Brecher was overly conservative. From a point of view of more recent scientific study, Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, associate research professor at UCLA, of whom Omni magazine wrote “probably knows more about how drugs work than anyone else alive” describes Coca, in his 1989 book Intoxication as what researchers have found

More controllable, hence safer .. least likely to produce toxicity or dependency … than all the other plants or synthetics in …[its] category.

Why then did Coca fall into dis-use? Ultimately it was prohibition, which took effect in the U.S. on March 1, 1915, coming in the wake of the uncompromising crusade against cocaine. That crusade would embody the pharmacologically non-truth of Lewis Lewin that the dosage did not matter, altogether disregarding that a range of doses produced a range of effects. Yet not only are concentrated and dilute cocaine different, so are cocaine and Coca, as cocaine is not its sole active ingredient; its unique therapeutic effects not the result merely of one alkaloid – cocaine – highly diluted, but rather the synergic action of all of the leaf’s elements in their proper amounts: a complex action that can be viewed with the analogy of a complex mathematical formula. If one factor is changed, than so is the net result. Including 14 alkaloids, a mixture of ecognines, tropines and hygrines; Coca was described by the late Dr. Timothy Plowman of the Botany Department of the Field Museum of Natural History at the University if Chicago as

A complex mixture of chemicals, including alkaloids, essential oils, flavonoids, vitamins and minerals, and other natural leaf constituents, many of which have still never been examined.

Certainly this is something discriminating users of other drug plants can appreciate. Connoisseurs of coffee, tea, tobacco and marijuana commonly note the distinctiveness of their favorite varieties. And this is hardly limited to a substance’s strength, as illustrated by nearly any advertisement for coffee or cigarettes, or the discussions cannabis and hashish smokers have concerning each other’s subtleties – both in taste and effect.

Yet many, as W.G. Mortimer noted in his 1901 book Peru: A History of Coca, assumed that cocaine was merely Coca abet in a more concentrate form. In time though even the concentration factor became ignore as physicians fell into the trap of debating whether cocain was a god drug or a bad drug. Accounts of remarks that surrounded William Alexander Hamond’s advocacy of cocaine (the Civil War era U.S. Army General who became a proponent of cocaine wine) and William Martindale, the author of The Extra Pharmacopeia who was elected president of the Pharmacological Society of great Britain, who advised his fellow Britons to substitute coffee and tea with coca, show the influence of this type of thought with its disregard of the context.

This was traceable directly to the warm subjectivity of Sigmund Freud.

Presenting himself as an advocate of Coca, Freud wrote and released in 1884, his essay Uber Coca (On Coca). This widely read paper was important, for Freud listed many of the leaf’s traditional therapeutic uses. Based upon Coca’s history of successes, Freud’s view of Coca was quite positive- so much so that his writings of the topic displayed a warm subjectivity that is even noted by his students.

This subjectivity was predestined to turn either way. While Sigmund Freud extolled “Coca”, he actually used that destined to be infamous white power, cocaine hydrochloride. Freud did this because he believed that cocaine was the sole active agent of the coca effect. He was especially notorious for he loose use of the terms Coca and cocaine. Unfortunately this oversimplification was only his first sin; the next was his apparent delusion that directly administered drugs were necessarily better. Thus, if Freud noted someone else’s beneficial use of Coca, he attempted to improve this by following up with cocaine injections. Little did he know that he was presenting the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Of the therapeutic uses of Coca then known, Freud’s main fascination was its use, in helping persons physically addicted to opiates, endure withdrawal. Dr. Bentley of Kentucky had recently presided over a number of case studies, recounted in the September 15, 1880 issue of the Detroit Therapeutic Gazette. Possibly hoping to be the first to demonstrate with this drug that a more potent preparation would be more effective (greater potency meaning greater effectiveness), Freud prescribed cocaine injections for his colleague Dr. von Fleischl-Marxow: a morphine addict.

Any hopes that Freud’s treatment would prove beneficial were soon shattered. Within a short tuime, Fleischl developed a fierce compulsion for his injections. While Coca gave a long lasting moderate yet noticeable herbal effect, cocaine injections gave a short and highly intense rush as the alkaloid rapidly hit the brain in ultra-concentrated pulses. Within the course of a year, Fleischl was in a terrible state, in both body and mind. The first individual in the world to suffer the toxic effects of the egregious abuse of directly administered cocaine, (including the “bugs under the skin phenomenon” known as formication), Fleischl suffered, making Sigmund Freud with his Uber Coca a lightening rod for criticism.

The ensuing confusion from Freud’s failure to properly define Coca and cocaine led to both substances drawing a storm of critics. As the Fleischl episode prompted attacks as Dr. Erlenmeyer’s statement that cocaine was the third scourge of humanity, others, notably Louis Lewin, chose to condemn cocaine and Coca! Subsequently, Coca’s reputation as a beneficial substance was forgotten as it became confused with an abused refined chemical.

Certainly much of this was due to the debate whether cocaine was a “good” drug or a “bad” drug: namely the confusion between Coca and cocaine, and cocaine as an ingredient of Coca, or cocaine as a pure drug which was abused. Yet one must not ignore the influence of certain attitudes within the medical profession. The late 1800s not only brought about Coca and cocaine’s introduction in the industrialized nations,but that of refined drugs as welll. Like Coca or coaine, the debut of chemically pure drugs and the more direct modes of of administration as the hypodermic syringe induced a number of men to dstake their reputayions upon what they promoted. Often, as with Freud, docyors sometimes became more subjective and less objective. Many adapted the notion, later popularized by the American Medical Association and the American Medical Association, that green medicinal plants were old fashioned: the choice of alchemists, witch doctors and quacks. With the consolidation of political control these guilds obtained by 1910, modern Western medical science accepted the erroneous belief that the use of refined white powders was necessarily superior. Against this backdrop, it becomes easier to understand the diversion of criiism away from the crude misuse of needlessly refined drugs and soley towards “cocaine.”

As a consequence of this mode of thought, which was mindlessly reflected in popular press accounts of cocaine, only a few could discern whether cocaine itself was intrinsically bad (and by extension Coca), or if cocaine was merely bad as a concentrated drug taken to excess. The likelihood that Coca would be smeared by cocaine’s damnation only became more likely when Coca’s advocates – indeed if anyone – failed to make this following proper defense of cocaine.

Cocaine: The Delightful Substitute for Caffeine and Nicotine

A view of cocaine in the context as it naturally occurs – as an ingredient of Coca comprising 0.5 % of the leaf’s weight and interacting with the other leaf’s components – would bear little to any resemblance to what is aid now of the drug. As George Andrews and David Soloman pointed out in their 1974 book The Coca Leaf and Cocaine Papers:

The various alkaloids present in Coca – including cocaine – are both harmless and life enhancing if taken orally and in moderation. For twenty or thirty minutes the Indian chews, or more correctly, sucks coca leaves containing only very small amounts of cocaine, perhaps only one percent. Dr. Martindale and other nineteenth century proponents of coca sipped mild infusions that were slowly absorbed causing no shock or damage to the nervous or digestive systems.

Cocaine was this way viewed during the period between the introduction of Coca leaf beverages and straight, isolated cocaine. Since the former but not the latter was employed during the 1860s, 70s and the early 1880s, remarks about cocaine strictly referred to this conceptualization. This letter from Dr. George W. Major of McGill University to Angelo Mariani provides one such example

I have used Vin Mariani for the past three years, and have much pleasure in testifying to its many excellent qualities, combining … the well known constitutional effects of cocaine with that of a mild stimulant [the term was then used to describe alcohol] exhibited in an acceptable form. Among the many conditions in which I have found it of valuable service, I may mention in the debility occurring after prolonged service in the slow convalescence after diphtheria, and especially in Grave’s disease, in which latter it not only acts as a cardiac sedative, but also diminishes the accompanying exophthaimos and laryngeal congestion.

In Vin Mariani, the cocaine alkaloid was administered highly diluted in a liquid. As one drank Coca, the small amounts of cocaine, taken with the rest of the components of Coca, was slowly assimilated into the bloodstream – a use of the drug proven harmless by centuries of use.

Apparently, little to nothing has been written during the 20^th century about this mode of administration for cocaine. A search of medical literature about cocaine, including one with the promising sounding of Cocaine and Other Stimulants, only turns up views based upon the conception of cocaine as a directly administrated (intrinsically or injected) white power drug (or a vaporized sulfate- “crack). Yet the conception and judgment of cocaine as something taken indirectly through the use of its parent substance really is not so bizarre or strange for a drug of cocaine’s category.

For if the way the general public now views cocaine was truly consistent with the norm, then people would shun all other drugs similar to it. Yet society views two of the best known other drugs of cocaine’s category – alkaloids which are potent central (CNS) stimulants found in small amounts within plants – most differently. These are caffeine and nicotine. Found respectively in coffee, tea, kola, chocolate and tobacco, caffein and nicotine possess lethal toxicity: an overdose can cause death. In pure form both are potent poisons – especially nicotine – the most potent of these three which is so powerful that Tobacco leaves themselves are toxic. Animals accidentally feeding off of Tobacco often die; the ingestion of a single Tobacco seed can kill a bird.. Form this one can understand why Tobacco never developed a tradition of use as a tea; soaking a cigar in a glass of water can produce a brew toxic enough to kill several people.

In sharp contrast to cocaine though, caffein and nicotine aren’t generally viewed as dangerous drugs. To many they are not even drugs – that term being reserved for the illegal substances [and perhaps the prescribed pharanecuticles]. Yet are massive does of any of these drugs in purified form, even if cut with mannitol truly as “safe as Coffee?” Every box of No Doz carries this claim, which he label will say is substantiated by government appointed experts. Yet try grinding up a box of NoDOz or vivarin caffein pills, cut and chop the residue into white lines on a mirror and snort. Do this every time you have the urge to imbibe Coffee or your other habitual caffeineated beverage. Tobacco users could do this with purified nicotine sulfate which is sold as a plant insecticide. Are these convoluted uses of caffeine and nicotine the same as that of caffeine containing beverages or Tobacco? Does the legal status of an alkaloid negate the reality that any stimulant chemical could produce a wide range of horrible toxic effects, including those only attributed to cocaine such as psychosis and fornication?! Should we ignore such inconsistencies in perception and trust government-guild drug researchers whom choose to completely ignore this gross double standard to which they so single mindedly follow

This is why caffeine and nicotine are viewed differently than cocaine. Cocaine has a history of use as a purified drug while caffeine and nicotine really don’t. All nicotine and most caffeine is consumed indirectly through the use of their respective parent substances. Tobacco smokers ingest under one milligram of nicotine per cigarettes. The average caffeinated beverage contains roughly fifty milligrams of that alkaloid.

In the amount taken into the body with the use of parent substances as Coffee and tea, these stimulant alkaloids are not [acutely] toxic – due to the fact that these are dilute preparations. With thus type of dosage, these alkaloids are said to increase the heart rate, stimulate awareness and mental acuity: facts noted by proponents of Coffee and cigarettes. Cocaine though became perceived differently. Because Coca was correctly viewed as therapeutically superior to Coffee, tea or Tobacco, and because cocaine was incorrectly viewed as Coca’s “sole active ingredient”, enthusiasts for refined drugs promoted chemically pure cocaine but not chemically pure caffein or nicotine, thus leading to a chain of events which did not occur for Coffee and caffeine or for Tobacco and nicotine.

By the 1890s, widespread experimentation with the refined drug cocaine hydrochloride had done much to alter the way “cocaine” was viewed. To many, that word still conjured up the idea of what one would now calla caffein or nicotine substitute. Americans were traditional users of natural stimulants, a custom that had been done exclusively with the natural plant forms: coffee, tea and Tobacco. As Coca’s popularity grew rapidly in the U.S., notably in the relatively temperate South East – a region where one may have attempted its commercial cultivation – this conception of cocaine as a replacement for caffeine or nicotine logically would have developed. However, with the emergence of such twentieth century “anti-drug” crusaders as Harvey Wiley, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Hamilton Wright, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, and later Harvey Anslinger, this perception was destined to change. For a movement emerged in favor of the social and legal polices destined to ensure not that “cocaine” or “nicotine”, but as a black market white powder that for too many would be a poison of abuse.

The Consequences of the Path Chosen- Cocaine Today the #1 Seductive Contraband Poison of Abuse

Much has been said about drug prohibition, both by its defenders and its critics. Yet asides from prohibition’s many effects, notably the increase in crime, drug prices and government corruption, one thing is utterly undeniable. What the Harrison Act and all subsequent “narcotic” control laws directed towards cocaine did was to ensure the replacement of licit, non-troublesome Coca was illicit cocaine hydrochloride.

Today the use if the powder or rock promotes many concerns.. In contrast to those heard about marijuana from “anti-drug” groups, these concerns may be justified. As a refined stimulant, cocaine is toxic. Excessive amounts can cause a painful death. Intranasal use can easily lead to a compulsive habit with dire consequences – depending upon the extent of over is, while the more direct modes of use, intravenous use, freebase and crack smoking are best described a alluring poisons.

As one of the most reinforcing drugs known to man, concentrate cocaine has what pharmacologists call a very high potential for abuse. In laymans’ terms this means this is the type of drug that adapts itself well to abuse with ultra concentrated does that give a breath pleasurable rush that many have described as better then sex. The crack phenomenon demonstrates this. Most intranasal users do not fall into compulsive habits, yet statistically, it is more likely to develop a psychological compulsion about cocaine then most other drugs. No this does not mean that one will necessarily fall into a patter of destructive abuse. “Millions of Americans,” notes Steven Wisotsky in the preface of his 1986 book Breaking the Impass in the War on Drugs, “consume billions of lines or puffs of cocaine [hydrochloride] each year, with little or no long term damage to their physical or emotional well being.” Even the government knows of this. A paper for the National Institute on Drug Abuse by Dr. Ronald Seigel concludes that “the hypothesis that long term use of cocaine is inevitably associated with escalating dependency marked by more frequent patterns of use is not supported by these findings”

The fact that people can and do quit cocaine easier than cigarettes or heroin is due to one highly desirable favorable quality of cocaine- its lack of of a physical withdrawal: a feature allowing even the regular user to do without the drug. This is so, because, in contrast to heroin – and yes, caffeine and nicotine – cocaine is not physically addictive; though for one caught up wit the refined drug’s compulsive abuse, the toxic effects are a far more relevant focus of concern.

In recent years, the toxic effects of cocaine’s abuse have received much attention. Much has been said and written of the consequences of cocaine abuse. For reasons of space and redundancy, these consequences will not be discussed in detail here. One can read of the effects of cocaine abuse in nearly any newspaper or magazine. The author of this paper does not dispute the reality of today’s problems with cocaine, nor is it the purpose of this paper to mitigate the horrors; the purpose instead being to promote thought about how and why we got ourselves into our current situation with this drugs, and how we can get ourselves out of it.

Conclusion

As things often mimic one another throughout history in ways few understand, we can follow either a path leading to delight or disaster. One leading to a booming market in Coca tea, wine or cola – the other has lead us to the white grief – pricy toot and deadly crack. The reason the public unwittingly chooses the latter path is because many simply are not conscious of the relative effects of our social and legal policies towards the different stimulant alkaloids. Instead most have allowed others to shape their conceptions so totally, never daring to look at the drug in a three dimensional manner or realizing the drastic extent our drug policies are shaped by our popular conception of a certain drug. It’s your choice America: cocaine as our #1 illicit drug problem, or cocaine as our delightful replacement for caffein and nicotine.

Footnotes

1) For the purpose of illustrating the different ways history is viewed and to provoke thought, the author of this paper suggests that it be read back to back with articles like the one recently appearing in Reader’s Digest.

2) Anthony Richard Henman, under the pseudonym Antonil, wrote a fascinating book about South American Coca Tradition. Titled MamaCoca, it provides some of the background behind the legendary South American figure of MamaCoca. Representative of the earth mother figure described by religion and lore around the globe, MamaCoca has traditionally been revered as the Mother of Coca by millions of South American Indians. Even today, many there view the leaf and its properties as the essence of her very spirit.

3) Hammond incorrectly believed that the associate components of Coca hindered its desirable effects which he was inclined to credit merely to the cocaine content. In fact the disagreeable effects he experienced from Coca were the product of inferior grade extracts- a problem noted with many of Vin Mariani’s competitors.

4) Tobacco smokers don’t immediately succumb from their habit; most of the nicotine is destroyed as the Tobacco is burned.

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The Pharmacratic Inquisition: Deceiving the Masses

Tricks the general public, largely via confusing cause and effect

In the example of the “FOX ‘Friends” broadcast of January 25, 2008, the talking faces exploit confusion over Coca leaves versus Coca paste- a highly concentrated refined derivative, over a misspeaking or perhaps mistranslation of Venezualean President Hugo Chaves remarks of what he receives from Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Its false theological basis:

Certain drugs are simply “bad” with little or no known acceptable use.

Its what you hear from the likes of people as William Bennett.

Its whats used to thus justify doing bad things to people with the bad drugs.

The reality:

No objective standardized criteria. What objective criteria did the US Congress adopt in selecting to prohibit Opiates, Coca, cocaine, Marijuana and other substances? How long did the US Congress debate Marijuana in 1937 when they then banned it?

Double Standards galore: where’s the concern over plastic foods? It’s not anti-pleasure, just look at the example of Viagra.

Nor is it against just certain pleasures- e.g the double standard with the relative highs of alcohol and marijuana

The drugs that were made illegal were no more dangerous then those that remained legal in comparable forms, with the law completely disregarding the considerably different pharamkenectics of dilute and concentrated drugs.

Prohibition ensured that they would not be in comparable forms.

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BBC Betrays Freedom of Medicine: Deletes Info on alternatives

Complementary Medicine

BBC Health Website Deletes Complementary Medicine

http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1254

Last week the controllers of BBC Health (HYPERLINK "http://www.bbc. co.uk/health"www.bbc.co. uk/health
HYPERLINK "http://www.bbc. co.uk/health"http://www.bbc. co.uk/health , the health section on one of the most accessed websites in the world, decided to remove all coverage of complementary medicine!

They used to have substantial coverage with over 40 pages on this subject covering all the major therapies, their pros and cons, evidence for their effectiveness, how to find a qualified practitioner, etc.

However the site has in recent months been sent a deluge of letters and emails claiming that complementary therapies such as homeopathy and cranial osteopathy should be removed. As a result large chunks of this part of the site were simply removed overnight and now, following recent cutbacks, it was decided that, rather than update this part of the site, it should simply be removed altogether!

It may seem incredible that a public service site this prominent can deem complementary medicine so insignificant that it no longer warrants any coverage other than the odd news story. This is despite the fact that complementary medicine is used favorably by a significant proportion of the population (recent surveys have estimated that around 1 in 5 Britons use it at some point or other) and that increasing numbers of people are now seeking to train in these therapies.

However, as the 'quack busters' become more organised and active, evidence of the backlash against complementary medicine is appearing all over the place - such as the removal of PCT funding for homeopathy, the threatened closure of the homeopathic hospitals, many negative news stories in the press and so on.

Rather than taking a reasoned view and considering the evidence from good research studies on complementary medicine some groups seem simply hell bent on trying to 'stamp out' complementary medicine in any way possible. The BBCi removal of complementary medicine coverage (which has been in place for almost 15 years!) is one example.

If you believe information pages on it should be returned to BBCi, please, please take just a minute to express your views using their online comment form to make your view known

at: http://www.bbc. co.uk/feedback/

As a public service company they have to listen to your views so your email will make a difference. Apparently for all the many letters and emails that they received that were against complementary medicine they only received a handful in support. Therefore if you are in support please let them know so they may revise their thinking on this subject.
Please act as soon as possible and pass on these details to anyone else you know who may also be willing to write in support of complementary medicine.
...
Mary O'Meara
Complementary & Alternative Medicine Researcher's Network (CAMRN)
Research Council for Complementary Medicine
The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital,
UCLH NHS Foundation Trust
60 Great Ormond Street
London
WC1 3HR
Email: camrn@rccm.org. uk Website: www.rccm.org. uk

This is all part of the pharmacratic inquisition system of drug market control (criminal mercantilism).

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Criminal Apostate Dubai Kidnapps, Imprisions Human for 4 Years for Speck of Cannabis on Shoe Soul

Perhaps those running this country have no soul?

Dubai has sufficient oil revenues to pay off its transgressions as those below

Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe

Keith Brown

Jailed: Keith Brown had a speck of cannabis on his shoe
A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.

Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.

A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

Dubai International Airport is a major hub for the Middle East and thousands of Britons pass through it every year to holiday in the glamorous beach and shopping haven.

But many of those tourists and business travellers are likely to be unaware of the strict zero-tolerance drugs policy in the UAE.

One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.

If suspicious of a traveller, customs officials can use high-tech equipment to uncover even the slightest trace of drugs.

Mr Brown was detained and arrested in September last year and has been held in a cell with three other men in the city prison ever since.

This week the youth worker, who has two young children and a partner at home in Smethwick, West Midlands, was sentenced to four years in prison.

A 25-year-old Briton who was found with a similar speck in one pocket as he arrived on holiday has been awaiting sentence since November.

Meanwhile a Big Brother TV executive has so far been held without charge for five days after being arrested for possessing the health supplement melatonin.

The authorities claim to have discovered 0.01g of hashish in his luggage.

Last night Mr Brown's brother Lee said his case "defied belief".

"For that sort of amount common sense should prevail, from where it was found it was obviously something that had been crushed on the floor - it could have come from anywhere."

Rastafarian Mr Brown had been returning from a short trip to Ethiopia, where one of his children lives and where he owns property.

He was travelling with his partner Imani, who was also stopped and detained for more than a week.

Normally he flew direct to and from the UK, but decided to stop off in Dubai.

"He was incensed when he called me," said driving instructor Lee, 57. "It would be funny if the circumstances weren't so unpleasant.

"Bugs are crawling out of his mattress when he's sleeping. His family are frantic with worry and can't call him."

Last night campaign group Fair Trials International advised visitors to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to "take extreme caution".

Chief Executive Catherine Wolthuizen said: "We have seen a steep increase in such cases over the last 18 months.

"Customs authorities are using highly sensitive new equipment to conduct extremely thorough searches on travellers and if they find any amount - no matter how minute - it will be enough to attract a mandatory four-year prison sentence."

Mrs Wolthuizen added: "We even have reports of the imprisonment of a Swiss man for 'possession' of three poppy seeds on his clothing after he ate a bread roll at Heathrow.

Cat Le-Huy

Held: A campaign is underway to secure the release of Cat Le-Huy from a Dubai jail

"What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person."

Only two months after Mr Brown was stopped economics graduate Robert Dalton was detained in almost identical circumstances.

Mr Dalton, from Gravesend, on Kent was with two friends when he was stopped and asked to empty his pockets.

Officials found 0.03g of cannabis in a small amount of fluff. He is currently on trial and if convicted, is likely receive a four-year prison sentence.

Last night his brother Peter, 26, told how it took 24 hours to find out why he had been stopped.

"As we understand, the amount of cannabis was barely visible to the human eye and was at the bottom of the pocket of an old pair of jeans.

"He's not a drug user, but he goes clubbing and the speck was so small."

Last week Cat Le-Huy, a London-based German national, was arrested on arrival at the airport.

Mr Le-Huy, 31, head of technology with Big Brother production company Endemol, was arrested on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs after customs officers found melatonin, a health supplement used for jet lag available over the counter both in Dubai and in the US.

Authorities also claim they discovered fragments in one of his bags which they believe to be hashish. Fair Trials International said the amount was 0.01g.

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FOX "Friends" Brandish Drug Policy Dopiness

Feigning Confusion

FOX “Friends” Dopes Confuse Highly concentrated “coca” paste with natural coca leaves confusing a toxic-mania concentrate with an extremely safe and effective herb

FOX “Friends” with Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson, and Brian Kilmeade

“What A Dope”- a substance, or those they are selling this conception to: you!

Confusing An Herb with an ultra concentrated, chemically refined substance

This thing, aired January 25, 2008, was the FOX News response to reports of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s recent pro- Coca statements during a speech he gave to the Venezuelan National Assembly, stated in the January 20, 2008 Miami Herald:

“I chew Coca every day in the morning … and look how I am (while gesturing to his biceps) … [and, Bolivian President Evo Morales “sends me Coca paste.”

FOX though spins this to confuse the viewer- as typified by its caption “What A Dope” --

This starts with Gretchen Carlson – the woman in the middle – simultaneously confessing her own ignorance while encouraging it for her viewers:

"Alright, something I never knew, that, I know there were some dictators around the world, but did you know, but you know that some of the dictators are apparently allegedly are “drug addicts” as well, that might explain a few things..."

HC now admitting in his speech which went widely undocumented btw that he chews coca every morning and he also eats something called coca paste btw which is addictive And that he gets it from Bolivia's 'dictator'.

"I don’t know my narcotics very well. "

Indeed. Especially when Coca is not a narcotic; it’s a stimulant.

Nor does she know her stimulants, nor their different forms very well, apparently, for though she tags Coca as bad for being addictive cocaine, she fails to note the huge pharmacological differences between Coca leaves, which generally contains 0.5-1% cocaine versus Coca paste, which is a highly concentrated substance made by processing Coca leaves in various petro chemicals.

Neither does the guy on the right saying little, followed by the guy on the left

“They take the plant, ground it up and make the paste.”

No mention of concentration. Ground up Coca is simply the green powder contained in Coca tea bags that are customarily sold in Peru and Bolivia and over the internet. Coca paste is a yellowish, off white paste, made by taking ground up Coca leaves and then wash this in various chemicals that may include kerosene and or gasoline, as part of a refining process resulting in a significantly higher cocaine content. Whereas Coca leaves (whole or ground up) contain about 0.5 to 1 % cocaine, Coca paste contains much much more, perhaps 80% cocaine.

Gretchen Carlson
Graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1990 and later studied at Oxford

Steve Doocy
Knights of Columbus

Brian Kilmeade

Gretchen is obviously too stupid or uncaring to google “Coca” and educate herself about a topic of televised discussion.

All three are obviously too stupid-- or too unethical in pretending to be so stupid -- in altogether dismissing concentration-potency, as if coffee and tea were the same thing as chemically refined concentrated caffeine.

It’s the sort of stupidly of college students owing from alcohol because its legal who would be too afraid to try marijuana because it was illegal and hence somehow more dangerous then alcohol.

Beware when they use the term “DOPE”.

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