America is not facing an inner city, crack addict, problem any longer. Crack is no longer an epidemic.

"Even drug addicts picked up on the idea that crack is enormously dangerous and enormously addictive. They have therefore settled back to the more normal use of drugs they had been used to."
Rudolph Gullianni, Mayor of New York City

Image and Text sources:
http://www.pbs.org
http://www.cocaine.org

As the United States furthers its War on Drugs, and recently, engages in a new War Against Iraq, the world continues to observe the failing policies of the federal government. Even after decades of flawed police action, little is done to educate users, or potential users, about the possible side effects of recreational drug use.

Politicians continue to employ fear as their preferred tool to "manipulate the masses." InfoImagination provides this review of cocaine, and methods to stem the flood of cocaine, to help educators gain a better understanding of this substance, the methods of interdiction and government control, and to encourage robust discussion of this "war against people."

Today, national estimates show there are approximately 5 million "hard core" regular users (defined as those who use an illicit drug at least once per week). Regular users account for two-thirds of the $60 billion annual expenditures for illicit drugs.

This "typical" drug user experiments with cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin. This group consists is primarily on White males who are employed. Less than one-quarter of hard core users are Black or Latino.

National estimates suggest there are another 10 million "occasional" illicit drug users.

AT RIGHT: IRS Special Agent Mike McDonald, "That population of hard core users generates the funds, they generate the dollars that go back to Mexico and go back to Colombia.

They generate those dollars that in Colombia and in Mexico are turned into power, turned into extortion, turned into homocides, turned into corupting the foreign governments, arms dealing and expanding criminal enterprise around the world."

In the early years of the cocaine trade, business was dominated by just a few men, the drug lords of Medellin, Colombia.

AT RIGHT: DEA Agent, International Operations, Robert Nieves, "By 1974, they (the Medellin drug lords) were moving 20, 30, 40 kilos of cocaine per week; by the late 70s, they were moving hundreds of kilos per week; by the early 80s, they were moving tons; by the 90s, they were moving plane loads. They had 727s going into Mexico with 5, 6, 7 tons of cocaine per shipment."

In 1993, the Colombian police gunned down and killed drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar (show at right). This virtually ended the reign of the Medellin Cartel and allowed the drug lords in Cali to take over.

A few years later, the Colobian police were successful breaking up the Cali Cartel. As a result, the drug business fragmented.

Today, there are over 300 Colombian drug gangs. They are responsible for moving 90 percent of America's cocaine and 70 percent of its heroin -- mainly through Mexico into the U.S. markets.

After 30 years of law enforcement effort, we now have a more compliated situtation and there is more cocaine available than ever before (see image at right). Juan David Ochoa, member of the Medellin Cartel (shown below), says, "Now days, you don't know who is involved. That's why it is more complex, it's more sophisticated. The proof of this is that the U.S. still has great quantities coming in."

Fragmentation of the drug business has been a boom for free lancers, many of whom are Mexican. From a trafficker named Steve, "It's a commodities business. You're not moving pork, you're not moving cows, you're not moving petroleum, you're moving coke... Everything's a contract, except it's verbal and it's signed with your blood."

What Is Cocaine?
Cocaine is an alkaloid found in leaves of the South American shrub Erythroxylon coca. It is a powerfully reinforcing psychostimulant. The drug induces a sense of exhilaration in the user primarily by blocking the reuptake of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the midbrain.

In pre-Columbian times, the coca leaf was reserved for Inca royalty. They used coca for mystical, religious, social, nutritional and medicinal purposes. They exploited its stimulant properties to ward off fatigue and hunger, enhance endurance and to promote a benign sense of well-being. It was initially banned by the Spanish. But the invaders discovered that without the Incan "gift of the gods," the natives could barely work the fields -- or mine gold. So it came to be cultivated by the Catholic Church. Coca leaves were distributed three or four times a day to the workers during brief rest-breaks.

Returning Spanish conquistadores introduced it to Europe. Coca was touted as "an elixir of life". In 1814, an editorial in Gentleman's Magazine urged researchers to begin experimentation so that coca could be used as "a substitute for food, so that people could live a month, now and then, without eating..."

The active ingredient of the coca plant was first isolated in the West around 1860. Freud described cocaine as a magical drug. He wrote a song of praise in its honour. He also practised extensive self-experimentation. To Sherlock Holmes, cocaine was "so transcendentally stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment." Doctors dispensed cocaine as an antidote to morphine addiction. Unfortunately, some patients made a habit of combining both.

Cocaine was soon sold over-the-counter. Until 1916, one could buy it at Harrods. It was widely used in tonics, toothache cures and patent medicines; and in chocolate cocaine tablets. Prospective buyers were advised -- in the words of pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis -- that cocaine "could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to pain."

When combined with alcohol, the cocaine alkaloid yields a further potently reinforcing compound, now known to be cocaethylene. Thus cocaine was a popular ingredient in wines, notably Vin Mariani. Coca wine received endorsement from prime-ministers, royalty and even the Pope. Frederick-Auguste Batholdi observed that if only he had used Vin Mariani earlier in his life, then he would have engineered the Statue of Liberty a few hundred meters higher.

Coca-cola was introduced in 1886 as as "a valuable brain-tonic and cure for all nervous afflictions." It was promoted as a temperance drink "offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol."

The new beverage was invigorating and popular. Until 1903, a typical serving contained around 60mg of cocaine. Sold today, it still contains an extract of coca leaves. Coca Cola imports eight tons from South America each year. Nowadays the leaves are used only for flavouring since the drug has been removed.

A coca leaf typically contains contains between 0.1 and 0.9 percent cocaine. If chewed in such form, it rarely presents the user with any social or medical problems. When the leaves are soaked and mashed, however, cocaine is extracted as a coca-paste. The paste is 60 to 80 percent pure. It is usually exported in the form of the salt, cocaine hydrochloride.

This is the powdered cocaine most common, until recently, in the West. Drug testing for cocaine aims to detect the presence of its major metabolite, the inactive benzoylecgonine. Benzoylecgonine can be detected for up to five days in casual users. In chronic users, urinary detection is possible for as long as three weeks.

American Capitalism Prevails: Better Cocaine...

AT RIGHT: Paul, former street crack dealer and user, "They don't cook crack in South America and send it here, even though it would be to their profit."

Robert Stutman, DEA Special Agent-in-Charge, '85-90: "I never saw a Colombian sell crack. I never heard of a Colombian selling crack."

Old-fashioned cocaine hydrochloride wasn't good enough. Sensation-hungry thrill-seekers sought the ultimate high from the ultimate "rush." They weren't satisfied with the enhanced mood, sexual interest, self-confidence, conversational prowess and intensified consciousness to be derived from just snorting cocaine.

Normally, only the intravenous route of administration could be expected to deliver the more potent and rapid hit they had been seeking. Yet there are very strong cultural prejudices against injecting recreational drugs. So a smokeable form was developed -- by Americans to poison Americans.

Since the hydrochloride salt decomposes at the temperature required to vaporise it, cocaine is instead converted to the liberated base form. Initially, "free-base" cocaine was typically produced using volatile solvents, usually ether. Unfortunately, this technique is physically dangerous. The solvent tends to ignite, i.e., Richard Pryor. Hence a more convenient method of producing smokeable free-base became popular. Its product is crack.

To obtain crack cocaine, ordinary cocaine hydrochloride is concentrated by heating the drug in a solution of baking soda until the water evaporates. This type of base-cocaine makes a cracking sound when heated; hence the name "crack." Base cocaine vaporises at a low temperature, so it can be easily inhaled via a heated pipe.

Crack cocaine delivers an intensity of pleasure completely outside the normal range of human experience. It offers the most wonderful state of consciousness, and the most intense sense of being alive, the user will ever enjoy. (S)he will access heightened states of being whose modes are unknown to chemically-naive contemporaries. Groping for adequate words, crack-takers sometimes speak of the rush in terms of a "whole-body orgasm."

AT RIGHT: David Allen, MD, Drug Treatment Clinic, Bahamas, "There was this one particular crack dealer as well as user. I remember sitting with him when he died. His last words to me where, 'Doc, when the world knows about this drug, there's going to be a lot of hell out there.' "

As a rule of thumb, it is profoundly unwise to take crack cocaine. The brain has evolved a truly vicious set of negative feedback mechanisms. Their functional effect is to stop us from being really happy for long. The initial short-lived euphoria of a reinforcer as powerful as crack will be followed by a "crash." This involves anxiety, depression, irritability, extreme fatigue and possibly paranoia. Physical health may deteriorate. An intense craving for more cocaine develops. In heavy users, stereotyped compulsive and repetitive patterns of behaviour may occur. So may tactile hallucinations of insects crawling underneath the skin ("formication"). Severe depressive conditions may follow; agitated delirium; and also a syndrome sometimes known as toxic paranoid psychosis.

The social consequences of heavy cocaine use can be equally unpleasant. Non-recreational users are likely eventually to alienate family and friends. They tend to become isolated and suspicious. Most of their money and time is spent thinking about how to get more of the drug. The compulsion may become utterly obsessive. The illusion of free-will is likely to disappear. During a "mission," essentially a 3-4 day crack-binge, users may consume up to 50 rocks a day. Whereas "empathogens" such as ecstasy -- which trigger the release of far more serotonin than dopamine -- will typically promote empathy, trust, compassionate love and sociability, mainly dopaminergic drugs, if taken on their own and to excess, can easily have the reverse effect. Simplistically, cocaine tends to be a "selfish" drug.

Maybe most important, crack cocaine has led to a new social order in the illegal drug markets. Gone are the major, and sophisticated, cartels from Colombia and Mexico. Crack dealers are plentiful. They are young. Many are still kids. The lure of fast, and big money, has re-invented our inner cities. Crack dealerships are associated with guns, gangs and violent activity as the rival gangs fight to protect their territories.

Yet the crack epidemic hasn't remained in the cities, it has spread rapidly to White, and generally affluent, suburban areas. Today, we have witnessed a decline in the crack crisis -- due not to our law enforcement efforts, but because of the growing awareness about the extraordinary danger of this drug. We cannot rely on hard working police and law enforcement to stamp out this problem. The solution, the only solution, is through education. Please, spread the message...

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