cocaine

I don’t have anything against drugs – some of my best friends use them. There are some drugs I am blatantly for, such as marijuana (I actually share Bill Hicks view, I don’t think they should simply legalize it, I think they should make it mandatory). But there are some drugs I think this world would be a far better, healthier and loving place without, one of which is cocaine.

I have not had a pleasant history with Charlie.

Thankfully I have never been addicted to it, mostly because I think there are far better things to pay through the nose for (and with far less risk of losing your septum.) But I have lost many friends to the sound of the Peruvian drummer’s march, friends that eroded over time into egocentric and thoroughly paranoid shadows of their former selves. 

And so I refuse to be sold another line.

According to Wikipedia:“ Until recently Colombia was the world's leading producer of cocaine. Three-quarters of the world's annual yield of cocaine has been produced in Colombia, both from cocaine base imported from Peru (primarily the Huallaga Valley) and Bolivia, and from locally grown coca. Coca grown for traditional purposes by indigenous communities, a use which is still present and is permitted by Colombian laws, only makes up a small fragment of total coca production, most of which is used for the illegal drug trade.”

South American indigenous people have chewed the leaves of Erythroxylon coca, a plant that contains vital nutrients as well as numerous alkaloids including cocaine, for over a thousand years.  Wikipedia states, “The remains of coca leaves have been found with ancient Peruvian mummies, and pottery from the time period depicts humans with bulged cheeks, indicating the presence of something on which they are chewing.”

The rise in popularity of cocaine in the west is attributed to none other than Sigmund Freud, who, On April 24, 1884, ordered his first gram of cocaine from the local apothecary. It was not to be his last.

Freud had researched into the uses of Cocaine by the German Army to stave off exhaustion, and was believed to purchase the drug in order to help patients with nervous disorders. Like most people who purchase their first gram of coke it cost him a small fortune, one-tenth of his monthly salary. He developed a cocaine habit that he bragged about in letters to his lover and friends, one that would have shamed Elton John in his heydays.

It was through his acquaintance with an eye surgeon named Carl Koller that cocaine became widely used in the medical community. Koller and Freud became coke buddies (Freud pushed the drug on everyone, including his fiancés parents), and they dosed up regularly together doing a variety of medical experiments on themselves.

At the time Koller was looking for an aneasthetic to use on his patients during eye surgery, and found his answer when he realized the numbing effects the drug had.  After the first successful treatment of a patient using cocaine, Koller sent a buzz through the scientific community and by the late 1800s more than half the medical community had developed coke habits.

William Halstead, a founding father of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore developed a hefty two-gram a day habit injecting nerves, he eventually switched to morphine in an effort to cure his cocaine addiction and died an opiate junkie. And they say ignorance is bliss.

But it was not only the scientific community that found the addictive pull of cocaine too difficult to turn their noses up at. Cocaine products started flooding the market in the 1800’s in the form of lozenges and pastilles, elixirs and pills.

Cocaine wine was first sold in Europe under the name of Vin Mariani, named after its creator Angelo Mariani in 1860. In the US John Styth Pemberton brought out his own version of the drink in 1881. He was moderately successful, but in 1885, Atlanta banned the sale of alcohol. Pemberton changed the recipe, took out the alcohol, and sold his new drink under the name Coca-Cola.  He didn’t make a penny, so sold the entire operation to Asa Griggs Candler for $2,300

 Candler launched the new drink in 1886 as "a valuable brain-tonic and cure for all nervous afflictions" and promoted it as a temperance drink "offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol". The new beverage was invigorating and popular. Until 1903, a typical serving contained around 60mg of cocaine.

This may seem unbelievable, but according to cocaine.org, “until 1916, one could buy it at Harrods a kit labeled "A Welcome Present for Friends at the Front" which contained cocaine, morphine, syringes and spare needles. Prospective buyers were advised - in the words of pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis - that cocaine "could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to pain".” How times have changed.

In 1912 the US Government published a report stating that 5’000 people had died in one year due to opium and cocaine abuse. Three years later in March 1915, The Harrison Narcotic Tax Act was passed to regulate and tax opium, heroine, and cocaine. The act outlawed the sale and distribution of cocaine in the United States, however the sale and use of cocaine was still legal for registered companies and individuals. Cocaine was not considered a controlled substance in the United States until 1970, when it was listed in the Controlled Substances Act.

Today, America is by far the world’s largest consumer of cocaine, it was estimated that the market fetched $70 billion in street value in 1995 alone, far exceeding revenues of Starbucks that year.

There is a tremendous demand for cocaine in the west, it is rife in the party scene, synonymous with certain professions, and since the 80’s, has become the rich mans luxury. Cocaine is a symbol of expendable income, and therefore holds status. But there is one oxymoron I have always had trouble with; there is nothing pure about cocaine.

First, lets consider the process it has to go through to get from leaf to baggie.  An interview with a coca farmer published in 2003 described how cocaine was produced by acid-base extraction by methods that have changed little since 1905.

“Roughly 625 pounds of leaves were harvested per hectare, six times per year. The leaves were dried for half a day, then chopped into small pieces with a strimmer and sprinkled with a small amount of powdered cement (replacing sodium carbonate from former times). Several hundred pounds of this mixture was soaked in 50 US gallons (190 L) of gasoline for a day, then the gasoline was removed and the leaves were pressed for remaining liquid, after which they could be discarded. Then battery acid (weak sulfuric acid) was used, one bucket per 25 kilograms of leaves, to create a phase separation in which the cocaine free base in the gasoline was acidified and extracted into a few buckets of "murky-looking smelly liquid". Once powdered caustic soda was added to this, the cocaine precipitated and could be removed by filtration through a cloth.”

Is there anything pure about this process?

In 2010 Peru surpassed Columbia as the world’s foremost supplier of Cocaine.  Since Columbia was targeted as part of the US War on Drugs initiative, between 2000 and 2010 cocaine production was reduced by 60%. Coincidentally, the level of drug-related violence halved in those ten years, moving Columbia from being the most violent country in the world, to having a homicide rate that is inferior to Venezuela.

The countries of drug production have been seen as the worst affected by prohibition. “Ecuador is thought to have absorbed up to 300,000 refugees from Colombia who are still running from guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug lords,” says Linda Helfrich. “While some applied for asylum, others are still illegal, and the drugs that pass from Colombia through Ecuador to other parts of South America create economic and social problems.”

Is there anything pure about what the effect of purchasing cocaine does to others lives?

A report by the UK government's drug strategy unit stated that “due to the expensive price of highly addictive drugs heroin and cocaine, that drug use was responsible for the great majority of crime, including 85% for shoplifting, 70-80% of burglaries and 54% of robberies. The cost of crime committed to support illegal cocaine and heroin habits amounts to £16 billion a year in the UK.”

Is there anything pure about any of these statistics?

Let us just be honest. When we purchase cocaine we soil an ancient tradition, held sacred by our ancestors. We support one of the worst examples of fair trade ever known to man. We condone the brutality of organized crime, drug lords, and the displacement of thousands upon thousands of people who would have homes, if not for our need for luxury. Why? Because everyone falls for a line…

If this is purity, give me dirt.