Cocaine
Cocaine is a potent and highly addictive narcotic derived from the leaves of the coca plant, native to South America. Historically, indigenous cultures in the Andes have consumed coca leaves for thousands of years, often in religious contexts. The substance was introduced to Europe during the Spanish conquest and gained popularity as a "miracle drug" in the late 19th century, praised for its anesthetic properties and perceived minimal risks. However, concerns about its dangers surfaced in the early 20th century, leading to its prohibition in the United States in 1914, although it continued to be used medically.
Cocaine exists in two main forms: a white powder and a solid form known as crack cocaine, which emerged in the late 1970s. The 1980s saw a significant rise in cocaine use, particularly among lower-income communities due to the affordability of crack. By the mid-1990s, use had peaked and subsequently declined, yet cocaine continues to be a significant public health concern. Recent surveys indicate a resurgence in cocaine use, with millions of Americans reportedly using the drug in 2023. The complex social and health implications of cocaine use highlight the ongoing challenges in addressing addiction and substance abuse in diverse communities.
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Cocaine
Cocaine is a highly addictive narcotic and is the second-most widely distributed narcotic in the world, second only to marijuana. Cocaine has only been illegal in the United States for about a hundred years. Cocaine exists in two primary forms—as a powder or a hard, crystallized rock—and can be consumed in a variety of ways, including snorting, smoking, or through injection. Once cocaine enters the bloodstream, it triggers a nervous reaction that causes the brain to release a high level of dopamine, which produces a euphoric sensation in users that typically lasts from 15 to 30 minutes. However, with repeated use of cocaine, the body builds a greater tolerance for the substance, which often leads users to increase their level of cocaine consumption in order to trigger a "high." As such, addiction to cocaine can develop quickly and can be very difficult to break.
Brief History
Cocaine derives from the leaves of the coca plant, a tree that is native to South America. Historians claim that the Incas and other indigenous cultures of the Andes Mountains region have consumed these leaves for at least 3,000 to 5,000 years, although archaeological evidence seems to indicate that the substance held special significance and that its use was limited to religious ceremonies and highly important figures within society, such as rulers and warriors. Although the native South Americans were the first to encounter the coca plant, the leaves they chewed on are not identical to processed cocaine. The ancient indigenous populations did not have the technology to extract the white, powdery granules from the leaves in which they were contained. During the age of Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas in the sixteenth century, coca leaves were introduced to Europe and gradually made their way to other areas of the world.
In 1860, a German chemistry student named Albert Niemann isolated and extracted the psychoactive ingredient from coca leaves. He named the raw, purified ingredient cocaine and earned his doctorate degree by writing about its properties. Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud, one of the leading intellectuals of the late nineteenth century, was especially fond of cocaine and also wrote about what, he believed, were the positive qualities of the substance—namely its ability to trigger a euphoria and his assumption (now known to be incorrect) that cocaine posed little-to-no risk to its users. By the late 1800s, cocaine was highly popular in the United States and throughout Europe. The medical community praised cocaine as a "miracle drug" for its practical use in anesthesia to numb patients for surgery, along with its use as an alternative substance to treat patients with addictions to morphine. John S. Pemberton, the founder of Coca-Cola, even used cocaine as a primary ingredient in his famous soft drink beginning in 1886. Several of the most prominent public figures of the late Victorian and Gilded Ages, including inventor Thomas Edison, actress Sarah Bernhardt, novelists Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, and President William McKinley, were avid consumers of cocaine.
However, by the early 1900s, officials in the United States began to notice the dangers posed by cocaine to society. In 1912, approximately five thousand cocaine related deaths were documented, and newspapers frequently reported on crime and antisocial behavior committed by persons addicted to cocaine. Coca-Cola stopped using cocaine as an ingredient in 1903, and in 1914 the Harrison Narcotic Act prohibited cocaine, with an exception for medical use.
Overview
Once declared illegal, cocaine use in the United States plummeted until the 1970s, when a growing number of Americans began experimenting with the drug. At the time of its resurgence in the United States, cocaine was popularly considered a "safe" and "nonaddictive" alternative to drugs such as heroin and LSD. This perception, along with a dramatic increase in cocaine production and exportation by cartels in Bolivia, Peru, and especially Colombia, resulted in an explosion in cocaine users and addicts in the United States in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. As cocaine became easier to obtain through increased supplies, its street price dropped considerably, making it affordable for middle-class and lower-income persons. By 1982, an estimated 10 million Americans used cocaine annually, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.
Also around this time, a new form of cocaine—known as freebase cocaine or, more commonly, "crack" cocaine—began to hit the underground market in the United States and other nations. Crack was produced by converting powdered cocaine into a solid, crystallized rock that could be broken into small individual pieces, which users heated and smoked. This represented an even more purified form of cocaine, which produced an even stronger high in users. The slang term "crack" refers to the sound of the crystal crackling while it is being heated. Crack cocaine actually dates to the late 1970s, but it was first reported on by the US media in 1984, when Los Angeles’s inner-city neighborhoods were described as suffering from a crack epidemic. Because of its relatively inexpensive price (a single rock of crack could cost anywhere from $5–$15), the crack trade and its accompanying addiction became particularly entrenched in the nation’s lower-income, inner-city communities from coast to coast. By 1987, crack was available in forty-six states. While crack became the major drug afflicting urban, inner-city America during the 1980s, the use of powdered cocaine was more heavily concentrated among affluent suburban communities. Nearly 6 million Americans routinely used cocaine in 1985, making the substance the primary target of the nation’s War on Drugs and First Lady Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No antidrug campaign.
The "crack epidemic" in the United States peaked between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Since that time, the number of crack users—as well as the number of cocaine users—has steadily declined, although both crack and powdered cocaine remain major targets of antidrug resistance and educational outreach efforts to prevent drug use. In 2007, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported that the number of cocaine users in the United States had declined to 2.1 million, however, in 2023, the same survey reported that 5 million people had used cocaine or crack in the past year.
Household surveys showed that the number of people who had tried cocaine for the first time rose from 601,000 in 2013 to 968,000 in 2015, and that the number of people who had used the drug in the previous month grew from 1.5 million in 2014 to 1.9 million in 2015. In addition, the amount of land used to cultivate coca in Colombia, the main source of cocaine used in the United States, nearly doubled between 2013 and 2015. However, the majority of cocaine is consumed by a relatively small number of heavy users, and it is difficult to tell whether the number of such users or total consumption has increased, as many of the programs that were previously tracking this data have been defunded in the 2010s. In 2023, it was reported that 1.8 million people aged twelve or older had used cocaine in the past month.
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