Cocaine and it’s exquisitely addictive influence stand as such powerful points of reference in American culture that when a 2013 study suggested that Oreo cookies were as addictive as cocaine, the findings made “thousands of headlines,” according to the Huffington Post.1, 2 Such claims are just another addition to the long, turbulent, and scandalous history of cocaine in America—an inevitable union of the world’s most powerful country and one of the world’s deadliest drugs.
The Roots of Cocaine
To better understand cocaine’s place in America, and how it got here, it’s important to see where it comes from, and how the development of various sciences and policies shaped its potency, reputation, and illegal status.
The coca plant grows in the jungles of Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and neighboring countries. Historically, people in these regions would chew the leaves of the plants in the coca family, partly for its nutritional value, but also because consuming the leaves would impart stimulant and analgesic effects. Such a custom provides the first glimpse into how cocaine became a household name across the world.
The primary psychoactive compound in the coca plant is cocaine; however, the cocaine content in the raw leaves is very low, below 1 percent. Chewing the leaves, grinding them into powder, and mixing them into tea, is unlikely to produce the infamous euphoria, or lead to potentially devastating physical and mental damage, as is the case when cocaine is injected or snorted.
The Medical Revolution
In Drugged: The Science and Culture Behind Psychotropic Drugs, author Richard J. Miller posits that European (primarily Spanish) explorers and colonists observed how the natives they conquered were rarely without the coca leaf in their mouths and, as a result, adopted the habit themselves.3 Word about how the coca leaves helped indigenous peoples stave off exhaustion and hunger made its way across the ocean to Europe, where the scientists of the early 19th century eventually extracted pure cocaine as a white, crystalline substance. A historian writes that this more concentrated cocaine extract was “tens to hundreds of times more powerful” than simply munching down on the coca leaf.
The numbing properties of cocaine caught the attention of an Austrian ophthalmologist, whose use of the substance as an anesthetic for eye surgery was met with success and praise across Europe. Prior to his intervention, eye surgery was considered all but impossible because of the minute and reflexive motions of the eyeball to the slightest stimuli. Cocaine as an anesthetic allowed a doctor fuller range of operation, piquing the interest of doctors of various fields (such as dentistry).
As cocaine’s medicinal fame spread, its recreational effects did not go unnoticed. A French chemist combined wine and cocaine to produce Vin Mariani. There were 6 milligrams of cocaine in each ounce and a full bottle of Vin Mariani contained around 200 milligrams of cocaine. Believing that the drink could improve health and vitality, as well as boost energy, the concoction was endorsed by high profile figures such as Thomas Edison, Ulysses S. Grant, and two popes.
Cocaine Reaches America
Two Americans took note of the European cocaine craze. One was a surgical pioneer by the name of William Stewart Halsted. Halsted, too, was taken with the idea of using cocaine as a painkiller and set about experimenting with the drug—on himself, his colleagues, and his friends. Even as Halsted himself fell under the spell of cocaine, and in the process becoming a mental and physical wreck, unable to control his addiction, cocaine enjoyed such a wave of popularity in the United States that the negative effects of the drug were largely ignored or buried.4
One man who cashed in on cocaine’s public appeal was John Pemberton, who was inspired by the commercial success of Vin Mariani and decided to try his own hand at creating a cocaine-based drink in the United States. Wounded in the Civil War and addicted to morphine, Pemberton attempted using cocaine as a form of treatment. One attempt utilized his knowledge of pharmacy to develop what he called “Pemberton’s French Wine Coca,” which he marketed as a cure-all for any number of ailments and even as an aphrodisiac (or, as he put it, “a most wonderful invigorator for the sexual organs”).5
However, Pemberton’s home state of Georgia enacted temperance legislation in 1885, outlawing the sale of alcohol. With his French Wine Coca now barred from actually having any wine in it, Pemberton replaced the wine with sugar and marketed the new product that would eventually be trademarked and known as Coca-Cola.6
The ‘Cocaine Fiend’
The effect that cocaine had on William Halsted, whom The New York Times calls both the founder of modern American surgery and a lifelong drug addict, heralded the end of the cocaine honeymoon.7 As cases of devastating addiction and mental health damage started to be connected to cocaine use, the drug fell out of favor with a once-enraptured American public. Sigmund Freud, who publicly advocated cocaine’s effectiveness in treating anxiety and depression, was similarly “nearly destroyed” by his use of the drug, and in the words of PBS’s Newshour, recanted his support of cocaine after he experienced frequent nosebleeds and irregular heartbeats.8, 9
What further drove cocaine from the public’s eye was the myth of the “Negro cocaine fiend.” The phrase, used in a New York Times headline in 1914, was used by the esteemed physician Edward Huntington Williams to describe the effects of cocaine on African Americans. The effects were outlined as auditory hallucinations, paranoia, murderous and violent rages, and making African Americans impervious to the effects of bullets. The Nation posits that such cases of hysteria are examples of how black Americans were scapegoated for shocking and appalling crimes. With the public turning on cocaine, associating the effects of the drug with sensationalized reports and descriptions of African Americans was a common practice for the turn of the century.10
For example, Williams wrote in 1914 that cocaine would change a “timid negro” into a “cocaine-doper” who would become a “constant menace” to local communities.11
The End of Cocaine in America – Illegal Status
The fear of the “Negro cocaine fiend” coincided with Congress’s debates about whether to pass the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. Unprecedented for its time, the law set out to regulate and tax the importation, manufacturing, and distribution of opiates and coca products, in part to mend relations with China by clamping down on the illicit opium trade. While some states saw the act as the federal government trying to involve itself in states’ rights, the tipping point came with newspapers, politicians, and even physicians stoking the fears of the “Negro cocaine fiend.” Claiming that white Southern women were in mortal danger of being attacked by cocaine-addled black men, the Harrison Act became law, one of the first pieces of American legislation on the issue of drug regulation.12
After the passage of the act in 1914, heralding its illegal status, cocaine remained largely dormant in the American psyche. Cocaine was mostly forgotten as one generation passed, and another took its place.
‘Go Ahead… You Deserve Cocaine!
But a substance as potent as cocaine never truly goes away. When the hippie movement of the 1960s started experimenting with mind-altering substances to fit the music and zeitgeist of the times, their first drug of choice was the relatively harmless marijuana.13 As the movement expanded, stronger drugs were brought in, such as the psychotropic LSD, DMT, and psilocybin.14
By the middle of the 1970s, the hippie movement was on the way out, but its impact had been made. Perhaps inspired or encouraged by the free-spirited approach to drug experimentation and sensory experiences (and more than a little hedonism), the rich and trendy adopted cocaine as their own, regardless of its illegal status.
Indeed, such was the popularity and attraction of cocaine that print ads for cocaine paraphernalia made using and sharing cocaine look fashionable, enviable, and even desirable. “Go ahead,” says one such ad, showing exotic straws, spoons, and vials next to a mound of coke, “you deserve it!” 15
The Perfect Storm
Cocaine’s return to prominence at the end of the 1970s set the stage for the era of “sex, drugs and rock and roll” in the 1980s. Rolling Stone magazine profiled the decade as being one of “extreme” sexual activity, drug use and, of course, rock music. A survey conducted by the magazine found that 20 percent of respondents admitted to trying cocaine.16 Furthermore, as the Civil Rights movement notched up victory after victory for black Americans, the negative association between race and cocaine eroded. Cocaine became a drug that rock stars and celebrities used to stay up all night, have unbridled fun, and be part of a scene that was irresistibly decadent and attractive, making it the ultimate social lubricant and status symbol. Disturbingly, this image still persists to this day.17
The decade also benefitted from what The New York Times referred to as “the greatest, [most] consistent burst of economic activity” the world had ever seen. From 1982 to 1989, there was the creation of 18.7 million new jobs, with $30 trillion worth of goods and services produced. A generation of young, ambitious men and women had a lot of money to burn.18 The era was infamously portrayed in the 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street, set in 1987, which The Daily Beast called an “outrageously depraved orgy of sex [and] cocaine”. Or “fun sexcapades and coke binges,” in the words of a female character depicted in the movie.19, 20 The movie was based on Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker who, according to Business Insider, crashed a helicopter, crashed his Mercedes, and sank a yacht while on a “cocaine diet.”21
The 1980s may have been a long time ago, but its days are fondly remembered by the financial industry that fueled itself with illegal cocaine use. At a screening for The Wolf of Wall Street, a scene where Jordan Belfort’s character rips apart a cushion to get to his cocaine stash, was cheered on by real-life Wall Street bankers.22
The Rise of Crack Cocaine
But cocaine couldn’t keep up with the rabid demand among the social elite. Towards the end of the 1980s, cocaine manufacturers found themselves with the peculiar problem of not having enough of the drug to satisfy their customers. Corners had to be cut. Suppliers used simple baking soda to dilute the powdered, pure cocaine, making it cheaper to make and buy. This newer, dirtier form of cocaine was no longer the purview of the rich and famous; now, even the disenfranchised and poverty-stricken could get their hands on the drug.
Creating this form of cocaine entails heating it until it produces a cracking sound, giving it its name: crack cocaine, freebase cocaine, or simply “crack.”23
When it hit the market, crack cocaine caught on in a big way. The Primary Care journal writes that hospitalizations for medical emergencies as a result of using crack cocaine increased by over 100 percent from 1985 to 1986, the time period in which inner cities and gangs started to distribute it.24 According to Gallup, cocaine abuse had gone from a celebrity problem into a “truly terrifying issue.” Gang warfare and the notion of “crack babies” (children exposed to crack cocaine as fetuses, causing premature birth and other infant developmental problems) led to 42 percent of Americans claiming that crack (and other forms of cocaine) was the “most serious problem for (American) society,” even though, says Gallup, there are far more alcoholics than crack cocaine addicts.25
There is a significant difference in how crack cocaine is perceived (vs. pure cocaine) in the United States, and how its use, possession, and distribution are punished by law enforcement. Numerous studies and examinations have shown that people arrested for crack cocaine-related reasons are given much more punitive charges than people who are arrested for charges related to the possession, use, or distribution of pure cocaine.
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
To illustrate this, the Washington Post uses the metric of mandatory minimum sentencing to highlight the disparity. A mandatory minimum jail term of five years would have been given to someone charged with possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine. On the other hand, a person would need to have 500 grams of pure cocaine to receive the same jail term. In other words, the threshold for minimum mandatory sentencing for pure cocaine is literally 100 times that of crack cocaine.26
One might assume that crack cocaine is more potent, more volatile than its powdered counterpart, hence why smaller amounts of crack receive the same punishments as larger amount of pure cocaine. The truth, however, is that there is no significant difference in the potential for addiction between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine and both are just as illegal. As US News & World Report explains, the difference is not in the chemistry or addictive potential of crack cocaine; rather, the difference is found in who uses crack cocaine (and who was punished for using it), and that answer is largely determined by race.27
Or, as put a little less subtly by the Huffington Post, white Americans do the crime of illicit drug use; black Americans get the time.28 The Post quotes a 2009 report by Human Rights Watch that points out that black Americans are three times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for drug possession, even though the difference between which racial groups use which drugs is minimal, at best.29
The United States Sentencing Commission says that no other drug has the same number of racially skewed offenses as crack cocaine. In 2009, of the 5,669 crack cocaine offenders who were sentenced, 79 percent were black, 10 percent were white, and 10 percent were Hispanic. When it came to pure cocaine, only 28 percent of the 6,020 offenders were black; 17 percent were white, and 53 percent were Hispanic.
Perhaps the most damning statistic of the mandatory minimum sentencing disparity is that people convicted of powdered cocaine-related charges spent an average of 87 months behind bars; on the other hand, people convicted of offenses related to crack cocaine were incarcerated for 115 months.
In writing that “it’s about time” that the law separating crack cocaine and powdered cocaine sentencing was closed, the Los Angeles Times says that the difference between the two was never rooted in science (the way a law might have lesser punishments for marijuana- vs. heroin-related offenses). Instead, the difference came down to how crack cocaine users were perceived by the American legal system, the media, and the general public. Since crack is easier for low-income people to obtain, says the Times, and since low-income people cannot afford high-quality legal teams and rehabilitation facilities, low-income offenders are prosecuted much more harshly and regularly than richer (potentially white) offenders who don’t bother with crack cocaine.
Incarceration Nation and the Fair Sentencing Act
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois pointed out that the uneven balance of the mandatory minimum sentencing practices between crack cocaine and pure cocaine have led to African Americans being imprisoned six times more than Caucasian Americans for the same illegal use, an ironic echo to the days when the “Negro cocaine fiend” pushed both cocaine and black Americans to the margins of society.30
The American Psychological Association chimed in, saying that the disparity contributes to making the United States the “incarceration nation.” The country has 5 percent of the global population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, largely consisting of low-income people of color who do not have an education.31
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, authored by Durbin, was signed into law by President Barack Obama to reduce the disparity between how much crack cocaine and how much powdered cocaine would be needed for federal criminal penalties to come into effect. From a 100:1 weight ratio, the difference was whittled down to an 18:1 weight ratio.32, 33
In supporting the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the previous system of mandatory minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses targeted African Americans, causing “vast racial disparities” in the length of prison sentences for similar crimes. Black Americans, says the ACLU, served an equal amount of time in prison for nonviolent legal offenses, as white Americans did for violent offences. The ACLU writes that the Fair Sentencing Act reduces not just the legal imbalance between sentencing for crack cocaine and powdered cocaine offenses, but also the racial imbalances created by a “draconian” system that turned people of color against the American justice system.
Even beyond that, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to retroactively extend the new Fair Sentencing Act guidelines to people sentenced to prison for disparate crack cocaine offenses, even before the date of the law’s enactment (August 3rd, 2010). As a result of that, 12,000 people (of whom 85 percent are African Americans) can have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge, with the possibility of those sentences being reduced by the terms of the Fair Sentencing Act.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission approved an amendment to the Fair Sentencing Act, increasing the amount of crack cocaine that would be necessary to trigger the five-year mandatory minimum sentence; instead of 5 grams of possession, a person would now have to be caught with 28 grams.34
Cocaine in America Today
The passage of the Fair Sentencing Act was a major step forward in the history of cocaine in America; but in a similar way that cocaine roared back into prominence in the latter half of the 20th century, even a milestone like the Fair Sentencing Act has only made a dent in cocaine’s presence in the United States. By the time the notorious drug lord Joaquin Guzman, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2016, it was estimated that he and his organization had distributed more than 500 tons of cocaine throughout the United States since the late 1980s.35
Furthermore, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2011 World Report put the global value of cocaine at $85 billion in 2009, of which $38 billion came from the United States alone.36 The CIA World Factbook states that the United States is the leading cocaine-consuming country in the world, with South American countries (in particular, Peru and Columbia) smuggling their product through Mexico and into the US.37, 38
Cocaine remains the second most popular drug in the world (behind marijuana), despite attempts by various South American governments to reclaim coca-producing territory from cartels, and regardless of its clear illegality in most countries.39 In 2016, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that nearly 5 million people 18 or older had used cocaine in the past year in the United States.40 The National Survey of Drug Use and Health reports that most cocaine users are between the ages of 18 to 25.41
Cocaine and Its Future in America
Cocaine in the United States has had a long, bumpy history. From being freely sold in grocery stores and by mail-order vendors, to being declared Public Enemy Number One by President William Taft; from being used to scapegoat African-Americans, to being the poison of choice for A-listers, celebrities, and rock stars who died young; from being reborn as crack cocaine to being part of a multibillion dollar drug trade in a War on Drugs that has seen millions of lives ruined or ended. In 1993, the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology estimated that 25 percent of Americans—50 million people at the time—had illegally used cocaine, with 6 million snorting or smoking it on a regular basis.42
While those numbers have changed since the article was published, the effect and presence of cocaine in America have not. It is not Public Enemy Number One anymore, as it was in the early 20th century, and neither is it the most serious problem in American society, as Gallup polled in 1986. However, it is always on the fringes, just under the radar, and there, perhaps, it is at its deadliest.
- “Cookies, Cocaine and Culture.” (October 2013). Huffington Post. Accessed January 11, 2016.
- “Oreos May Be As Addictive As Cocaine.” (October 2013). TIME. Accessed January 11, 2016.
- “A Brief History of Cocaine.” (December 2013). Salon. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Cocaine: The Evolution of the Once “Wonder” Drug.” (July 2011). CNN. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Why We Took Cocaine Out of Soda.” (January 2013). The Atlantic. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “Coca-Cola Television Advertisements: Dr. John S. Pemberton.” (February 1996). Memory.loc.gov. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “Traveling a Primeval Medical Landscape.” (April 2010). The New York Times. Accessed January 12, 2016.
- “Cocaine: How “Miracle Drug” Nearly Destroyed Sigmund Freud, William Halsted.” (October 2011). PBS Newshour. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “An Anatomy of Addiction — By Howard Markel — Book Review.” (July 2011). The New York Times. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Negro Cocaine “Fiends” Are a New Southern Menace.” (February 1914). The New York Times. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Why We Took Cocaine Out of Soda.” (January 2013). The Atlantic. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “How the Myth of the ‘Negro Cocaine Fiend’ Helped Shape American Drug Policy.” (January 2014). The Nation. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “Cannabis: Hippie Dream, Modern Nightmare.” (May 2008). The Guardian. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “LSD, Ecstasy and a Blast of Utopianism: How 1967’s “Summer of Love” All Began.” (June 2012). Vanity Fair. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “These Shameless Cocaine Ads Prove the ‘70s Were a Hell of a Time to Be Alive.” (September 2015). AdWeek. Accessed January 13, 2016.
- “The Rolling Stone Survey: On Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll.” (1988). Rolling Stone. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “When Cocaine Was Cool.” (July 2011). Dangerous Minds. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “The Reagan Boom — Greatest Ever.” (January 1990). The New York Times. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “The 21 Craziest Moments in “The Wolf of Wall Street”: Cocaine-Fueled Orgies and More.” (December 2013). The Daily Beast. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “Real-Life Wolf of Wall Street Says his Life of Debauchery “Even Worse” than in Film.” (February 2014). The Guardian. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “Cracked Tales of Cocaine on Wall Street.” (July 2012). Business Insider. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “We Saw “Wolf of Wall Street” With a Bunch of Wall Street Dudes and It Was Disturbing.” (December 2013). Business Insider. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “Cocaine vs. Crack.” (n.d.) Diffen. Accessed January 14, 2016.
- “Stimulant Abuse: Pharmacology, Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Treatment, Attempts at Pharmacotherapy.” (March 2012). Primary Care Journal. Accessed January 15, 2016.
- “Decades of Drug Use: The 80s and the 90s.” (July 2002). Gallup. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “The Fair Sentencing Act Corrects a Long-Time Wrong in Cocaine Cases.” (August 2010). Washington Post. Accessed January 15, 2016.
- “Data Show Racial Disparity in Crack Sentencing.” (August 2010). US News & World Report. Accessed January 15, 2016.
- “When It Comes To Illegal Drug Use, White America Does The Crime, Black America Gets The Time.” (September 2013). The Huffington Post. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Race, Drugs and Law Enforcement in the United States.” (2009). Human Rights Watch. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010: It’s About Time.” (July 2010). Los Angeles Times. Accessed January 15, 2016.
- “Incarceration Nation.” (October 2014). American Psychological Association. Accessed January 15, 2016.
- “Fair Sentencing Act.” (n.d.) American Civil Liberties Union. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Bill Targets Sentencing Rules for Crack, Powder Cocaine.” (October 2009). Washington Post. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “U.S. Sentencing Commission: Final Crack Retroactivity Data Report — Fair Sentencing Act.” (December 2014). United States Sentencing Commission. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “El Chapo Faces Array of Drug Charges in the United States.” (January 2016). The New York Times. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “World Drug Report, 2011.” (2011). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “The World Factbook.” (n.d.) Central Intelligence Agency. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “U.S.: Peru Overtakes Colombia as Top Cocaine Producer.” (July 2012). NBC. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “South America’s Cocaine Industry on the Decline, Impacting the International Drug Market.” (March 2015). Latin Post. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “What Is the Scope of Cocaine Use in the United States?” (September 2010). National Institute on Drug Abuse. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “National Survey of Drug Use and Health.” (n.d.) National Institute on Drug Abuse. Accessed January 16, 2016.
- “Cocaine Abuse in North America: A Milestone in History.” (April 1993). Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. Accessed January 16, 2016.