What is Cocaine?

History of Cocaine

In 3,000 BC, natives of South America first started chewing on coca leaves as a stimulant. The effects of the leaves increase oxygen intake and breathing, which gave the native labourers more stamina to work in the thin air of high altitudes. Native Peruvians use to chew on coca leaves during religious ceremonies but that changed once Spanish soldiers invaded Peru in 1532. Forced Indian labourers who worked in Spanish silver mines were supplied coca leaves since it made it easier to exploit and control them.

Science eventually found out how to maximise the effect and strength of the drug found in the coca leaves. Albert Niemann, a German chemist, first extracted cocaine from coca leaves in 1859 but it only began to be popularised in the medical community in the 1880s.

Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychoanalyst, used cocaine and promoted it as a tonic to help with sexual impotence and depression. He published an article on the benefits of cocaine and even prescribed it to his girlfriend and close friends. Freud claimed, “For humans the toxic dose (of cocaine) is very high, and there seems to be no lethal dose.” One of his patients died from a high dosage that he prescribed.

Cocaine got another boost in popularity in 1885, when John Pemberton introduced coca leaves as an ingredient in a new soft drink called Coca-Cola. By the turn of the century, Coca-Cola’s popularity increased greatly due to its energising and euphoric effects.

Cocaine tonics, wines and elixirs were popular between the 1850s and early 1900s. Famous figures who endorsed the effects of cocaine included actress Sarah Bernhardt and inventor Thomas Edison.

The use of cocaine in society continued to increase and the dangers of the drug slowly became more evident. In 1903, Coca-Cola had to eliminate cocaine from its ingredients due to public pressure. Snorting cocaine had become popular by 1905, and by 1910 the medical community began to report cases of nasal damage caused by the use of the drug.

Cocaine was banned in the United States in 1922. It became a fashionable drug in the 1970s for businesspeople and entertainers. Columbian drug traffickers started to set up networks for smuggling cocaine in the late 1970s.

Smoking crack cocaine also started in the late 70’s. The method of smoking ‘rocks’ was originally used so that cocaine distributors could test the quality of the drug before purchasing it off the manufacturers.

While cocaine was considered a rich man’s habit, the late 1980s saw the beginning of easily accessible cocaine. Nowadays cocaine can be found across the globe. It is the second most trafficked illegal drug in the world.