cocaine -- 7/1/24

01 Jul 2024

cocaine -- 7/1/24

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Today's selection-- from When Crack Was King by Donovan X. Ramsey. The spread of cocaine in America in the 1800s:

“It’s a wonder that the coca plant ever caught anyone's eye. It isn't showy like the poppy, a plant with long stalks and colorful flowers that shoot up from earth in lush fields. The opium-producing poppy practically calls out for harvest. Coca, on the other hand, is unremarkable on its face.

“Erythroxylum coca, its scientific name, grows in shrubs, the kind someone might line a yard with if they don't have the patience to tend to something more delicate but still want curb appeal. Its branches sprout leaves resembling the common bay leaf, and tiny red berries. If you didn't know better, you might mistake it for a bush of Christmas holly.

“It was the indigenous people of the Andes who took note of coca and began cultivating it thousands of years ago. Throughout western South America—in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, where it grows—native people chewed coca leaves to increase their energy and endurance. They also used it for medicinal and religious purposes.

“When the Spanish began their conquest of the Andes in the 1500s, they paid little mind at first to Incan claims that the plant was the gift of the gods. In fact, Spanish officials banned coca as ‘an evil agent of the devil’ until they saw how it made the Incas, whom they'd enslaved, more productive. After that, the Spaniards began doling it out to the Incas three to four times a day to energize them for work in the mines and fields.

Coca leaf in Bolivia

“Coca eventually made its way to Europe, and over the next few hundred years, European scientists experimented with the plant in attempts to isolate the part of it responsible for the benefits noted by the Incas. In 1860, German chemist Albert Niemann finally succeeded in isolating the chemical compound, an alkaloid he named ‘cocaine’ from ‘coca,’ which was what the Incas called the plant in their language, and the Latin suffix ‘-ine,’ which means ‘made from.’

“Cocaine became popular throughout Europe and the United States in no time. It was administered in powdered form by doctors, as an anesthetic and to treat everything from fatigue and flatulence to morphine addiction. Sigmund Freud was a vocal proponent of cocaine. He experimented with it himself at the beginning of his career and in 1884 published a paper titled ‘über Coca’ based on his experiences. Freud described the work as a ‘song of praise to this magical substance.’

“Cocaine was also used recreationally. Powder cocaine was available for sale at pharmacies across the country and often mixed into sodas and cocktails at bars. Most notably, John Stith Pemberton's 1886 recipe for Coca-Cola called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup. It's estimated that a glass of the original Coca-Cola contained around nine milligrams of cocaine.

“Cocaine consumption increased fivefold between 1890 and 1903, according to some estimates, with nonmedical use accounting for much of the increase. As it became more accessible, the population of those who consumed cocaine grew to include the working poor.”