“A Scenario for Enlightened Drug Policy”

“A Scenario for Enlightened Drug Policy”
by Richard B. Karel, September 29, 1988,
U.S. Congress House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, as regards to Coca and cocaine

Coca, in the form of leaves or simple extracts of leaves, has far more in common with coffee than it does with granular cocaine (16). There is a long history of use with coca and coca-containing beverages without concurrent social problems. It is fair to say that the habit forming potential of coca is similar to that of coffee and tea (16a). Even daily use of what we would consider extraordinary large quantities of leaves by South American Indians is not correlated with social dysfunction or ill health (16b).

A recent article in The New York Times (“Drug Researchers Try to Treat A Nearly Unbreakable Habit”) on the phenomenon of crack addiction drew a sharp distinction between crack, cocaine and coca. The euphoria induced by crack, and by intranasal use of cocaine, stems from the abnormal stimulation of a pleasure center in the base of the brain. However, the sense of euphoria demands not only on blood levels of cocaine, but also the rate at which blood levels rise. Hence the faster the increase the greater the euphoria. Dr. Herbert Kleber of Yale, an expert in the field, observed that the slow absorption of cocaine as occurs through the Indian habit of leaf chewing would create high blood levels but no euphoria. “It would have an effect like caffeine.” Kleber wrote (17) ">It would not be unreasonable to allow simple coca tea to be sold as tea now is in a supermarket. The effects and risks are comparable.""> Extracts containing more than a designated amount of leaves might be regulated like alcoholic beverages."" It would also make sense to allow limited cultivation of coca for personal use. In addition to the original Coca-Cola, the rather colorful history of coca records use of a beverage called "Mariani’s Coca Wine Vin Mariani. It contained two ounces of fresh coca leaves to a pint of wine. Testimonials for the wine were recorded from than president of the United States William McKinley, patriotic composer John Phillip Sousa, inventor Thomas Edison, and Pope Leo XIII (19), (19a). Despite the widespread use of coca containing beverages, there is little evidence that social or medical problems ensued 19b). The jump form coca to cocaine and from cocaine to crack is a difference in kind, not merely in potency. Although crack is by far more addicting and dangerous than granular cocaine, the latter is highly addicting to a small but significant number of cocaine users. Accordingly, the legal restrictions must reflect the medical and social problems associated with its use.

Crack poses unreasonable risks, and I find it extremely difficult to justify any degree of legalization. The question arises, then, of what to do with crack addicts who prefer smoking to other forms of administration. There is no easy answer, and researchers feel that addiction to the crack form of cocaine is the hardest to kick (20). It is worth considering the plausibility of providing a less dangerous form of cocaine to the crack addict. The availability of other forms of cocaine, and of other legal drugs would in my opinion, minimize a black market in crack even if that form of the drug remained illegal. It would not eliminate the crack cocaine problem, however. There are no panaceas, only hard choices.

Cocaine, although problematic, has a lower addiction potential than crack (21). I do not believe that making granular cocaine available to the public would be wise policy. I suggest, however, that cocaine be made available to the public in the form of a chewing gum similar to that now used to treat nicotine addiction. The nicotine gum has proven quite effective, and there is no reason to doubt that a cocaine gum would be equally so. (22). Some years back, Weil suggested consideration of a coca chewing gum. In order to minimize the excessive use of the gum, and in order to send a signal that restraint must be exercised, a limited distribution system would be employed for this form of the drug. The gum would be available in packages of 20, each piece containing a small amount – 1/20 to 1/30 of a gram – of pharmaceutical cocaine. It would be almost impossible to overdose form this form of the drug, and intake would be limited by the physical limitations inherent in mastication. To further regulate use, however, a MOST style rationing card would be used, limiting purchase to one pack every 48 to 72 hours. If a purchase was attempted more frequently, the card would indicate that not enough time had elapsed. Undoubtedly, people would sometimes circumvent the system by having friends purchase gum for them. This would certainly be better than having someone become involved with a criminal subculture and granular cocaine or crack, however. A pharmacist would do the actual dispensing. The card would simply be an electronic time log. Further compliance with the system could be ensured by requiring presentation of corroborating photo identification at time of purchase. The system would only monitor most recent purchases, and not invade privacy by keeping a long term log. The treatment of the addicted user, either or crack or granular cocaine, presents other problems. I would suggest that addicts be supplied with the cocaine gum under a clinical distribution system separate and apart from regular pharmacies. I would also allow physicians operating through the clinics to use other approaches as they deem fit. This could include judicious use of other forms of cocaine or treatment with other drugs, such as anti-depressants (23). I stress, however, that abstinence should not be forced on addicts who have not made the psychological leap of wanting to quit. Such efforts are doomed to failure. Administration of cocaine to addicts though a clinical system would undermine any remaining black market and keep the addict in touch with an environment where his addiction is treated as a medical problem and not a crime. I do not believe this would legitimize use of granular cocaine or crack, any more than use of methadone has legitimized heroin addiction (24) … … Regulation of raw coca and opium would also be handled by the USDA, although once the coca went into the marketplace, it would be regulated, like coffee or tea, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a foodstuff. You will recall, that more concentrated coca extract would be regulated like alcohol, in which case purity and content would fall under the jurisdiction of BATF… It is important to remember that some forms of substance not create impairment. No one, for example, believes that a pilot is a menace following his morning cup of coffee. The use of coca tea or beverages would have to be viewed in the same light.

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How the Narcs Created Crack: Richard Cowan 1986

narcs created crack; a war against ourselves | National ...

National Review, Dec 5, 1986

More than seventy years after the Harrison Act began the federal prohibition of cocaine and opiates; almost fifty years since the beginning of federal marijuana prohibition; and almost six years into the Reagan Administration, America finds itself in the grip of a frenzy over the "drug crisis." How can this be, with all that has been done7 Some blame the "pushers." Others rightly point out that there is demand as well as supply, and also blame the users. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the government itself, for all that it has proclaimed yet another war on drugs, has been one of the most potent causes of the current crisis.

It is difficult to admit that the medicine we are prescribing might just be the poison that is causing the illness; yet the "energy crisis" was largely a creation of federal regulations meant to ensure adequate supplies at a reasonable cost. Infiation, a very real threat to any economy, is masked and then made worse by price controls. Forced busing, the statisticians now tell us, actually increased racial segregation, while wrecking many public-school systems.

In a similar way, government policy has aggravated our society's chronic problems with drugs by mounting a propaganda and enforcement campaign that erodes crucial distinctions between more and less dangerous drugs, makes the marketing of the more dangerous variety the preferred option for dealers, and increases health risks, crime, and corruption. These same tendencies have produced the crisis of the moment, the crack scare. Let's look at crack first, since that will help give us an overview of the economics and psychology of the drug war.

It is very important to remember that the laws of supply and demand work with contraband as with everything else. What happens when something that people want is made illegal?

1. The supply drops more than the demand, so the price goes up. (Indeed, drug demand has increased enormously under prohibition.)

2. Forcing the illegal product underground garbles the fiow of information necessary to an efficient market. Without an ef!;cient market, there is less price competition.

3. Lacking competition, dealers charge monopoly prices, and profit margins widen.

4. The big profits draw in people who would not otherwise break the law, spreading corruption among the police and disdain for the law among otherwise law-abiding citizens. (Of course, big probt margins also attract people who are very experienced at breaking the law. See item #6.)

5. Supply becomes conspicuous, marketing becomes more aggressive, the price falls, and demand rises, drawing the attention of the forces that got the substance outlawed in the first place.

6. The law cracks down on the supply, driving the amateurs out of business and leaving organized crime in control, now with even higher profit margins and with connections to corrupt law enforcement. At this point the illegal market has attracted the people capable of making it an institution, including some who wear badges. Henceforth it will be all but impossible to eliminate the suppliers. Greater enforcement can shake out the less skilled or the less daring but merely raises incentives for those who remain. Greater enforcement (i.e., more regulation) can also affect the market in perverse ways: The iron law of drug prohibition is that the more intense the law enforcement, the more potent the drugs will become. The latest stage of this cycle has brought us the crack epidemic. There are two inescapable reasons for this.

First, from the supply perspective, it is good business to minimize the bulk of contraband. Smuggling beer and wine was less profitable than "rum running." Tiny pieces of crack are easier to carry than cocaine powder, which in turn is far less bulky than the coca leaves that are used legally by the Andean Indians. Heroin replaced opium for similar reasons. Obviously, the bulkiest illegal drug, marijuana, will lose out in the supply channels to cocaine and heroin.

Marijuana remains the principal target of law-enforcement efforts, despite the current crack-generated headlines. One result is that the weed, which can be grown anywhere, is being cultivated in more potent strains to justify a higher price per pound. The price must rise to justify the risk of transportation.

The same considerations also encourage the substitution, for marijuana, of its concentrates, hashish and hash oil, which are many times more potent. It is even possible that marijuana enforcement, with its effects on price and availability, is pushing marijuana users toward cocaine and worse. The New York Times recently quoted a Los Angeles narcotics officer: "I hate to say it, but we, law enforcement, may be driving people into the arms of the coke dealers by taking away their grass. But we have got to enforce the law."

Second, from the demand perspective, the more potent forms of drugs offer the user the same convenience of transportation that is of value to the supplier. However, while it is impossible to overdose fatally on the marijuana derivatives, precise dosage is at once more critical and more difficult to achieve with any synthetic or concentrate like crack. This leads us to an essential point. Though the anti-drug crusaders, jD their self-righteousness, may imagine that most drug users are irrational and self-destructive, the reality is that most of them are People Like Us. Some drinkers drink to destroy themselves; the vast majority prefer to drink safely and happily and therefore moderate their drinking. The majority of recreational drug users would prefer to do the same.

Normal people have good instincts for self-preservation. Thus, without much pressure from the government, we have seen in recent years a powerful trend toward weaker versions of legal drugs_wine coolers in place of distilled spirits, filtered cigarettes low in tar and nicotine, even decaffeinated coffee and tea. To be sure, drunk-driving laws may have accelerated the trend; but, whatever their imperfections, the laws against drunk driving are far more rational than the drug laws in that they outlaw not substances but obviously reckless behavior. Just because drunk-driving laws are fairly rational, there is less rebellion against them. On the whole, the trend toward safer dosages of legal drugs gives massive testimony to the rationality of normal people.

Under current law. no such trend is possible for illegal drugs. The war on drugs is a war on rational behavior by drug users. With illegal drugs the trend is accelerating in the wrong direction, not because of the thrill-seeking or self-destructive minority, but because of the dynamics of the markets for contraband.

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Drug prohibition is a financial version of what lawyers call an 'attractive nuisance,' like an unfenced swimming pool in a neighborhood full of children. The profits are so huge they can tempt people normally beyond the reach of corruption

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Synthetic drugs to replace heroin are already available and are as much as a thousand times more potent than the real thing. Synthetic crack cannot be far behind. Not only are synthetics less bulky and easier to conceal, they can be made anywhere, eliminating the need to cross national borders with drugs made from foreign natural ingredients. The escalated drug war virtually guarantees their eventual dominance of the market. To be sure, high-dosage drugs can be "cut" by retailers and users, but it is easy to get a dosage fatally wrong.

These perversities of drug enforcement encouraged the crack craze. But it is important to remember that they are not accidental perversities. They are the natural outgrowth of two things: the world view of the anti-drug crusaders and the self-interest of the drug-enforcement establishment _the narcocracy. The anti-drug crusader would suffer a blow to his self-righteous rhetoric if he admitted that drug users and the drugs they use are a varied lot_that many drug users are rationally self-protective and that many of them use mild dosages of not very harmful substances. He could not then depict millions of Americans as either depraved criminals or helpless victims, or paint the country as being in the grip of a major crisis.

Similarly, if the narcocracy owned up to the truth, both its self-esteem and its budget would be seriously diminished. For beyond all the headlines about crack lies the truth about the narcocracy, which is that most of its law-enforcement activities and related propaganda are really aimed at marijuana. More than half of all drug arrests are for the simple possession of small quantities of marijuana. This is absurd.

Marijuana carries some health risks, but it is no more dangerous than many substances that are legal. Yet marijuana enforcement is the bread and butter of the drug-war biz.

The narcocracy's need to convince its funders in the government and the public at large that we face an undifferentiated "drug crisis" is what makes the war against drugs so damaging. Above all, it undermines drug education. Though it would be difficult to prove, it is probable that one of the reasons "the street" didn't accept warnings about crack is that the same people who are responsible for issuing those warnings are still claiming that marijuana is an extremely dangerous, or even "the most dangerous," drug. Why believe an obvious propaganda machine that is constantly making fiatly ludicrous claims, such as the wild assertion by White House drug advisor Carlton Turner that marijuana may cause homosexuality? Or how about the pronouncement by the head of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, Dr. Donald Macdonald, that marijuana causes AIDS, because most intravenous drug users used marijuana before they used intravenous drugs? Would any person of that level of intelligence say something so obviously stupid if he didn't have to beg money from Congress every year? Perhaps Macdonald just wanted to distract attention from the role drug prohibition has played in the spread of AIDS among heterosexuals by making it hard for intravenous drug users to get clean needles.

The narcocracy's obsession with marijuana has gone so far as to include proposals to withhold alcohol- and drug rehabilitation funds from states that decriminalize possession of pot. In Alaska this might not be a problem, but in New York the consequences would be disastrous. This sort of thinking makes credible drug education for children politically impossible. This is perhaps the most perverse of all the costs of this failed program. By trying to justify arresting adults, we undermine the efforts to keep children from using drugs. Billions of dollars aside, there are many other costs, both at home and abroad.

Drug prohibition is a financial version of what lawyers call an "attractive nuisance," like an unfenced swimming pool in a neighborhood full of children. The profits are so huge that they can tempt people who are normally beyond the reach of corruption. This is particularly true of the poor of Latin America. A peasant can let his family starve, or he can grow coca. An unemployed pilot can let his family live on the ragged edge of poverty, or he can make a few trips north. Even in the U.S. sometimes there is the motive of genuine need, especially in the slums, or among farmers and ranchers teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Over the last few years more than three hundred state and federal officials have been charged with drug-related corruption or actual trafficking, undoubtedly only a fraction of those actually involved at every level. So, when we scold Mexico and other Latin American countries about their corruption, they tend to regard us as hypocrites. However, the fact is that the atttractive nuisance of drug prohibition has greatly increased corruption in those countries as well, to the point where it is destabilizing their governments. In the case of Bolivia the narcotraficantes even took control of the country for a time_the so-called Cocaine Coup_but Bolivian governments usually don't last very long anyway. Mexico, on the other hand, is a situation that we must take very seriously, and Colombia is immediately south of the Panama Canal.

Throughout Latin America there has evolved a cynical but pragmatic alliance between smugglers and Communist terrorists. The more we increase the pressure, the closer this alliance will become, and the more the Communists will benefit from the profits. The ultimate outcome could be a complete Communist takeover of the drug business. The profits would far exceed Soviet expenditures on Nicaragua and even Cuba. Communist involvement is already being used as a justification for intensifying the drug war, but it is the very intensity of U.S. efforts that has put so much power in the hands of our committed enemies. As the narcocrats make the problem worse, they will demand ever more power to solve it.

The American criminal justice system, meanwhile, is on the verge of collapse because of drug prohibition. Even if expensive drug habits did not create criminals_and there is no doubt that they sometimes do_the cost of illegal drugs certainly increases the number of crimes that criminal addicts must commit. Drugs are without a doubt the most powerful corrupters of the police and the court system. For those who have not been corrupted, the failure of the drug laws to have a positive impact on the drug problem has caused great frustration. This has led to calls for more power to be given to the police, and even to cells for suspending the Constitution. There is no prospect of this happening on a wholesale basis, but our liberties are being incrementally eroded at a rapid pace. The existing and proposed laws constitute the basic elements of a socialist police state. There are already controls on cash and capital transfers, calls for the canceling of hundred dollar bills, violations of the long-standing principle of lawyer-client confidentiality, and the authority to seize the accused's property before a trial or even after acquittal.

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The tragicomical, degrading, dehumanizing invasion of private bodily functions is the perfect symbol of drug prohibition, the logical conclusion of the subordination of the individual to a failed policy. We are not going to be drug-free, just unfree

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Perhaps the greatest damage to the criminal justice system is done simply by making criminals out of the twenty to thirty million Americans who regularly use marijuana. As a social and health problem for adults and children, marijuana does not even begin to compare with alcohol. We have had almost twenty years of experience with the drug. Many children and some adults have problems with it, and many have quit using it (much more easily than alcohol or tobacco). It certainly is not harmless and should not be used by children, or by adults in the workplace or while driving, but where are the mortality tables? Where are the illnesses and/or social pathologies comparable to those which can be documented for every other widely used drug? Perhaps the absurdity and hypocrisy that dooms drug prohibition can be best summed up in a simple juxtaposition. Approximately one thousand Americans per day die alcohol- and tobacco-related deaths. Approximately the same number of Americans are arrested every day for the simple possession of marijuana.

Any realistic approach to the drug problem must begin with the legalization of small-scale cultivation and sale of marijuana to separate it from the other, more dangerous drugs. If we are going to continue to use force to try to suppress the stronger drugs, the resources currently being used on marijuana must be transferred to them. If we are going to find a controlled legal delivery system and safe packaging for the other drugs, obviously the same will apply to pot.

We need not fear that if we stop the Iying and the hypocrisy, the American people are going to destroy themselves with drugs. Any effective anti-drug program is going to have to recognize that alcohol abuse is the major American drug problem, and that most of the social problems associated with illegal drugs are primarily a function of their illegality, created by prohibition. A really drug-free America would necessarily be an alcohol-free America, and we know from experience that this is not possible. Consequently, any program that is aimed at keeping children away from drugs, instead of drugs away from adults, is going to have to deal honestly with legal drugs_alcohol, tobacco, etc._and with the differences between adults and children, a distinction unpopular with both adolescents and authoritarians of all ages.

In his anti-drug speech, President Reagan urged: "Please remember this when your courage is tested: You are Americans. You're the product of the freest society mankind has ever known. No one_ever_has the right to destroy your dreams and shatter your life." Precisely, Mr. President. And we should remember exactly the same thing when our urine is tested. This tragicomical, degrading, dehumanizing invasion of private bodily functions is the perfect symbol of drug prohibition, the logical conclusion of the subordination of the individual to a failed policy. We are not going to be drug-free, just unfree.

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it appears necessary to keep the alkaloid contained within the leaf as it naturally occurs and, like caffeine, use it orally and moderately

According to anthropologist Joseph Kennedy’s 1986 book Coca Exotica

"it appears necessary to keep the alkaloid contained within the leaf as it naturally occurs and, like caffeine, use it orally and moderately to achieve the desired effect. With these provisions, it would be difficult to make a moral or legal distinction between sipping a cup of coffee in New York City and chewing a handful of coca leaves in Cuzco."

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Coca leaf stands out among all the stimulants, as least likely to produce toxicity or dependency

According to U.C.L.A.'s professor of pharmacology, Dr. Ronald Siegel,
in his 1989 book Intoxication:

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.

Dr. Siegel was an expert wittness regarding the cocaine overdose of Len Bias that was used by the mass media to organize political reaction for a more punitive pharamacratic inquisition.

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little data to indicate coca beverages more damaging than coffee or tea

According to Consumer's Union's Licit and Illicit Drugs, by Edward Breecher at page 271:

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 than drinking of coffee or tea.* Nor are the physiological and physiological effects notably different; both coca and caffeine [or more accurately, coca and coffee or cocaine and caffeine, the former the plants, the latter the alkaloids] are primarily stimulants of the central nervous system.

This is accompanied by the footnote:

A leading [North] American authority on drugs of plant origin authority on drugs of plant origin used by primitive peoples -- Professor Richard Evans Schultes, Director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University -- reports that during his plant explorations in the Amazon Valley he chewed coca leaves daily for eight years, did not become addicted, and suffered no physical harm from the custom

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Coca May Be Therapeutically Valuable

According to Dr. Andrew T. Weil, Coca ought to be studied for:

treating G-I tract ailments,

motion sickness,

laryngeal fatigue,

as an adjunct in weight reduction and physical fitness,

as a substitute for stronger stimulants,

depression (infinitely safer than the trycyclines);

for diet control and physical fitness,

for convalescents,

possibly providing a new way of treating diabetes.

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Alternative Coca Reduction [Expansion] Strategies in the Andean Region

Commissioned by the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, this report, dedicated to the official line that Coca cultivation ought to be reduced, Alternative Coca Reduction Strategies in the Andean Region, adopted from a contractor report prepared for the OTA in July, 1991, ended up presenting findings that contradict this dogma of official policy:

...the utility of traditional coca consumption for Andean populations cannot be ignored. Three physiological benefits of coca use (for relief from altitude sickness, as a remedy to vitamin deficiencies, and in conserving body heat), are specifically appropriate to Andeans who must endure the stresses of high-altitude labor and a low protein diet. Evidence does not [emphasis added] support claims that traditional long-term traditional use is harmful. Rather, the multiple advantages of coca use indicate that it has a strong positive role in Andean health. [47]

Alternative Coca Reduction Strategies in the Andean Region, noted Coca's widespread medicinal/therapeutic/dietary importance as an:

Anesthetic/antiseptic: Indigens and non-indigens apply coca topically as a local anesthetic; coca also has antiseptic qualities. The cocaine alkaloid has been shown to exert a powerful bactericidal action on gram-negative and coccus organisms.

Curative/preventative remedy: Coca tea, consumed by indigenous and non-indigenous Andean people, alleviates the symptoms of altitude sickness; combats the effects of hypoglycemia; and helps prevent various lung ailments (an attribute of particular significance to the mining population). For example, chewing coca leaves is believed to limit inhalation of silicates that cause silicosis.

Dietary supplement: Coca leaves contain vitamin A and significant amounts of B, B, and C; they also contain calcium, iron, and phosphorus, in either the leaves or the calcium carbonate customarily taken with the leaves. Leaf chewing helps alleviate nutritional deficiencies of a diet consisting principally of potatoes.

Stimulant: Coca leaves give energy for work, reduces physical discomfort and fatigue, alleviates hunger, sharpens mental processes, and, at high altitudes, helps the chewer keep warm. [48]

Alternative Coca Reduction Strategies in the Andean Region additionally notes that "reports that Coca is bad are unfounded," and significantly, though deferring somewhat to political and economic realities, suggests that we consider re-legalizing Coca, and its potential benefits:

"Options [to reduce the coca supply for cocaine production] might include expanding the international market for legitimate coca products (e.g. coca tea, pharmaceuticals). However, the large amounts of coca produced are likely to overflow existing legitimate markets.

Alternatively, developing new products from coca may have some merit. Potential medicinal and therapeutic applications include:

1) treatment for spasmodic conditions of the gastro-intestinal tract, motion sickness, toothache and other mouth sores;

2) caffeine substitute;

3) anti-depressant; and

4) adjunct to weight reduction and physical fitness.

Examination of the other alkaloids found in coca might yield additional industrial possibilities. Although the research and development time required to bring new products to market may reduce the short term utility of this approach, it could be a useful component in an overall package of efforts to reduce illicit coca production."

I felt vindicated, having said a bit of this in my papers published in the D.P.F. conference paper compendium, particularly the latest of these three, “Coca Conversion: Onwards to Coca!”

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