Cocaine Lecture

Cocaine Lecture I cocaine recreational or medicinal? Like marijuana in ambiguity 1) Latin American peasants largely use coca in religious ceremonies & by chewing leaves or drinking in tea – suppresses hunger & gives energy, euphoria -- anesthetic -- not so addictive But through processes Morales describes, can be purified in process involving lime, sodium carbonate, sulfuric acid & kerosene Then becomes powder to be snorted If freebased or turned to crack, can be smoked Weil warns purified substances more addictive, & snorting or smoking gives more powerful rush than eating Relatively short duration of high also dangerous Users get caught in seeking rush as good as first time & in taking more to avoid depressing crash It’s ultimate binge drug Rats will keep pressing lever & not eat til die Humans will take til nose bleeds, til crash in exhaustion Health hazards: heart attacks Damages nose Paranoia Social isolation & depression Addiction & ruin: very hard to treat 2) Archaeological evidence suggests coca used 2,000 years ago in Ecuador & Chile Also used in Peru before Spanish as anesthetic before trepanning (drilling hole in skull) 3) Spanish didn’t like coca, especially because offered to native deities. Saw it as pagan drug But found it increased efficiency of silver-miners at high altitudes So allowed its use out of colonial pragmatism (Compare Pamela Scully on South African farmers using wine to control workers) 4) European use: First reported 1570s by Spanish, but no interest in Europe Interesting question: why wasn’t it brought to Europe like tobacco, coffee, tea, sugar Largely because leaf loses potency as travels. 1859 Fredrich Wohler (German chemist) figured out how to extract & purify cocaine from leaves 1870s Angelo Mariana developed coca wine tonic, soon imitated in US „ endorsed by popes Leo XIII & Pius V & Pres. McKinley coca tonics popular at end of century When Atlanta banned alcohol 1885, Pemberton’s coca tonic (cocacola) became very popular „ cocaine removed from coca-cola 1903 Karl Koller in 1880s = German opthamologist who realized cocaine could be anesthetic American surgeon William Halsted had performed 2,000 operations with cocaine by 1887 „ but became addicted! „ Had to be removed from operating theater cos of shaking hands „ Cured cocaine addiction by becoming addicted to morphine! Cocaine is still used today as anesthetic in dentistry 1880s saw cocaine tooth drops, asthma cures & hemorrhoid remedies & cocaine bandaids Faced with demand, American chemist Henry Rusby figured out how to make paste – easily transportable 2 Victorians really popularized: Arthur Conan Doyle (a doctor) took it & had Sherlock Holmes use it Freud wrote an essay celebrating it as a miracle drug 5) You read Freud A few comments: a) Scientific discourse: tried it on himself & noted effects Like Leary in 60s, Shulgin in 80s b) Frequent pattern: early enchantment Æ later disillusion almost like cycle of a person’s drug addiction Freud represents early stage Sees as miraculous source of energy (“cost savings”) Weil: energy that is borrowed must be paid back: euphoria will be followed by crash c) Freud doesn’t see addiction as problem – though evidence that he was engaged in denial even presents cocaine as cure for morphine addiction Now our culture is at the opposite extreme: one puff of crack & you’re hooked 6) Outlawing As cocaine tonics spread, so did toxic side effects In midst of race scare (cocaine made blacks uncontrollable), 1914 Harrison Narcotic Act banned cocaine & opium, unless prescribed by doctor 7) 1980s Interesting question why US mass market for cocaine didn’t emerge til 1980s Crack/cocaine seized by DEA:1 1983: 4000,000 lbs 1986 12,000,000 lbs 1987 24,000,000 lbs 1989 36,000,000 lbs Increased migration of Latin Americans to US created human infrastructure for cocaine trade Absorption of Latin America to global markets That’s supply end On demand end, Lenson would argue emergence of certain kind of rampant shallow consumerism in the U.S. was also implicated 1 Isabel Wilkerson, “Crack’s Legacy of Guns and deaths lives on.” NYT 12/13/94:A1). Cocaine consumption as parody of Reaganism, consumerism As cocaine became fashionable drug, social emulation kicked in (as it had earlier in Europe for coffee and sugar) 8) By mid-80s: crack epidemic epidemic of violence in ghetto racial disparities in sentencing: 5-year mandatory minimum for 5 grams crack, 500 grams powder 110-1 sentencing disparity!! Blacks = 88% crack users, 23% powder users 1986 law codified this disparity 1997 Supreme Court denied the law was racially biased & upheld it. 9) In Latin America, cocaine transformed economies Peru, Bolivia, Colombia Roldan & Morales give sense: Most profitable cash crop for peasants Still most profitable, even with confiscations Arguably did more for development in these countries than IMF & World Bank New elites Roldan describes Often building schools & clinics Using diaspora in US But narco-states: Concentration of wealth Æ assassinations of politicians Corruption or assassination of judges Corruption of military & police (Morales) Insurgencies and paramilitaries fuelled by drug money In fact Reagan rumored to have used to help Contras (See Gary Webb’s controversial stories in the San Jose Mercury, as well as Alexander Cockburn, Whiteout) 9) Eradication Plan Colombia, developed under second Clinton Administration Funded at $1.3 billion smokescreen for counterinsurgency was under guise of war on drugs? Toxicity of crop eradication agents? Minimal effect on drug supply