Cocaine

        "Recreational" users who take the drug under controlled
        conditions often cannot distinguish it from other drugs
        or even from a placebo. Yet huge probes have made
        cocaine a major international commodity

				by Craig Van Dyke and Robert Byck


A few hundredths of a gram of cocaine hydrochloride, chopped
  finely and arranged on a smooth surface into several lines, or
  rows of powder, can be snorted into the nose through a rolled
  piece of paper in a few seconds. The inhalation shortly gives
  rise to feelings of elation and a sense of clarity or power of
  thought, feelings that pass away for most people in about half
  an hour. Although the growing interest in cocaine in the U.S.
  and Western Europe is in part a consequence of this simple,
  hedonistic experience, the real importance of the drug derives
  from the interaction of social, economic and political factors:
  the current status of cocaine as a fashionable drug for
  "recreational" use, its artificially inflated price, the control
  of its distribution by criminal organizations, the stresses its
  barter and untaxed trade impose on the monetary and taxation
  systems, the strains it places on the resources of law
  enforcement, the threats to civil liberties posed by drug laws
  that are not based on a rational understanding of the drug's
  effects and the potential of the cocaine trade for corrupting
  officials and undermining respect for the law.

  Estimates of the cost and consumption of cocaine are subject to
  the biases of the reporting source and should therefore be
  viewed with skepticism. According to a 1979 report by the White
  House Strategy Council on Drug Abuse, some 10 million Americans
  had taken cocaine within the preceding 12 months, compared with
  10,000 people 20 years before. The National Narcotics
  Intelligence Consumers Committee (NNICC) has estimated that in
  1979 between 25,000 and 31,000 kilograms of cocaine entered the
  U.S. illegally. During 1980 U.S. cocaine imports are estimated
  to have been between 40,000 and 48,000 kilograms. These
  quantities are based on estimates of the refining capacity of
  clandestine laboratories, on estimates of the proportions of the
  refined product that are sold in the domestic and foreign
  markets and particularly on estimates of the production yields
  of raw coca leaves in the source countries. Perhaps not
  surprisingly, the estimates of crop yield made in the source
  countries are in many cases smaller than U.S. estimates by a
  factor of two or more.

  The illicit retail dealer can sell a white, crystalline
  substance consisting of from 10 to 85 percent cocaine and
  various other substances for between $100 and $140 per gram. The
  NNICC, from its estimate of 1980 cocaine imports, puts the
  retail value of the industry at between $27 and $32 billion. If
  the cocaine trade were included by Fortune in its list of the
  500 largest industrial corporations, cocaine would rank seventh
  in volume of domestic sales, between the Ford Motor Company and
  the Gulf Oil Corporation. Based on U.S. estimates, the monetary
  value of Bolivia's cocaine exports may now surpass the value of
  the country's largest legal industry, tin. Colombia's more
  highly refined cocaine exports total about $1 billion annually,
  half the value of the coffee crop.


It is all too easy to suppose the physiological and social
  consequences of the use of cocaine are commensurate with its
  popularity and economic importance. Actually the assessment of
  the medical and psychological implications of short- and long-
  term cocaine usage has only recently begun. In 1975 the National
  Institute on Drug Abuse began a research project intended to
  define the pharmacology of cocaine in man. A number of
  investigators have since been engaged in various aspects of
  cocaine-related research, including a detailed description of
  the effects of the drug in man, its distribution and metabolism
  in the body, its reinforcing properties and its potential for
  abuse.

  After six years of work on the problem our group at the Yale
  University School of Medicine has been able to describe with
  reasonable confidence the time course of the basic
  pharmacological effects that follow the introduction of cocaine
  into the body by various routes. We have also been able to
  associate the time course of cocaine concentration in the blood
  with replicatable measures of its psychological effects.
  Although cocaine is intensely pleasurable to some people, we
  have found that its ability to produce a unique "high" may be
  overrated: our subjects, all experienced cocaine users, could
  not distinguish a single dose of cocaine taken in-tranasally
  from the same quantity of the synthetic local anesthetic
  lidocaine. Investigators at the University of Chicago School of
  Medicine found that their subjects could not distinguish the
  immediate effects of intravenous cocaine from those of
  amphetamine, although at later times the differences between the
  drugs are apparent. Such results are the first steps toward
  distinguishing the almost overwhelming mythology that surrounds
  cocaine from reliable information about its effects.

  At the same time there has been renewed interest in
  understanding the history of cocaine consumption as well as its
  significance to the Indian cultures of the Andes, including
  parts of present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
  Of course, the Andean social and pharmacological experience with
  the coca leaf cannot be compared directly with the current
  social experience with the more potent substance cocaine
  hydrochloride, but one can still hope to gain a cultural
  perspective on the drug. Such a perspective is at least as
  important to informed public policy as knowledge of the
  biochemical and pharmacological action of cocaine is.


Cocaine is an alkaloid, a member of a broad group of plant
  substances that also includes nicotine, caffeine and morphine.
  In nature cocaine is found in significant quantities only in the
  leaves of two species of the coca shrub. Erythroxylum coca
  requires a moist, tropical climate. According to Timothy Plowman
  of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, E. coca may
  be native to the Peruvian Andes, although it now grows
  throughout the eastern highlands of the Andes in Ecuador, Peru
  and Bolivia. The concentration of alkaloidal cocaine in its
  leaves can be as high as 1.8 percent. E. coca was cultivated by
  the Incas, and it remains the primary source of cocaine for the
  illicit world trade.

E. novogranatense, the other cocaine-rich species of
  Erythroxylum, is cultivated in drier, mountainous regions of
  Colombia and along the Caribbean coast of South America. The
  truxillense, or "Trujillo," variety of the latter species is now
  grown on the northern coast of Peru and in the dry valley of the
  Marañón River, a tributary of the Amazon in northeastern Peru.
  Its leaves are harvested for legal export to the Stepan Chemical
  Company in Maywood, N.J., where the cocaine is extracted for
  controlled pharmaceutical purposes and the remaining leaf
  material is prepared as a flavoring for Coca-Cola.

  Recent archaeological findings in Ecuador indicate that human
  experience with cocaine dates back at least 5,000 years, long
  before the Inca empire was established. To the Incas coca was a
  plant of divine origin and a symbol of high social or political
  rank. According to one myth, the god Inti created coca to
  alleviate the hunger and thirst of the Incas, who believed
  themselves to be descendants of the gods. The Inca state
  controlled virtually every aspect of daily life, including the
  cultivation and use of coca. Coca was chewed primarily by the
  ruling classes, although on occasion it was disbursed to
  soldiers, workers or runners. Casual chewing of the leaves was
  considered a sacrilege.

  The first reports of coca chewing to reach Europe were almost
  coincident with the discovery of the New World. The letters of
  Amerigo Vespucci, published in 1507, mention the Indian practice
  of chewing leaves and adding ashes to the cud. A major component
  of the ash is carbonate of lime, or calcium carbonate (CaCO3),
  which intensifies the subjective effects of the coca leaves;
  among the Andean Indians the practice of adding lime continues
  today. Other European observers were first mystified, then
  repulsed and finally impressed by the Indian's use of coca. A
  manuscript completed in 1613 by Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala
  represents coca chewing as an unauthorized social activity
  engaged in by the Indians when they were expected to be working.

0ther accounts of coca chewing from explorers and chroniclers
  were more enthusiastic. Coca was reported to cause a striking
  increase in endurance, enabling men to do hard work with little
  food at high altitudes. By 1569 the Spanish entrepreneurs in
  South America had recognized the utility of coca in recruiting
  Indians for labor, and .....

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