This collection of essays, written by academics and journalists, takes the reader from Asia to London and Latin America in what is a balanced, indepth account of the transformation of cocaine from miracle drug to global menace.
In 1885 an urgent cable reached US consular posts across the South American Andes, requesting full information "to assure quality Peruvian coca for growing demands in the United States." By the turn of the century, Peru - the home of the coca leaf - was the world's leading exporter of the drug, supplying a million kilos a year to world markets. Dutch producers built the Nederlandsche Cocainefabriek (NCF) in Amsterdam in 1900, soon producing 1,500 kilos of refined cocaine each year, while German rivals E. Merck purchased their own plantations in Java to meet growing demand. Japan got off to a slow start but eventually purchased 3,000 square kms around Tingo Maria, in the Peruvian jungle (currently used as a US anti-narcotics base), linking Peru to an Asian cocaine network.
The drug was sold in lozenge form or bottled as medicinal wine. One such product, Ryno's Hay Fever Remedy, contained nothing but cocaine, its packages recommending use at "two to ten times a day, or oftener if really necessary". Its presence was never identified on the package. Cocaine was one of the first scientific alkaloids developed on a commercial scale, an apparent cure-all for anxiety-ridden industrial societies undergoing rapid transformation. Like every other proclaimed cure, it reached the consumer from a pharmaceutical industry which operated with few restrictions. Nor were there limits on what the companies claimed about the drug, described as "valuable as a calmative in those nervous conditions peculiar to females."
Its regulation and eventual prohibition was led by the medical profession, anxious to control a drug which threatened to displace "professional" pharmacists with unlicensed street outlets. The reforms began with obligatory labelling of cocaine products, which practically eliminated the drug overnight as manufacturers were required to stamp the word "poison" on all cocaine-related products.
In England the drug was viewed as a threat to the individual rather than to society as a whole. The mass media dutifully generated the required moral panic needed to insure prohibition, associating the drug with actresses, nightclub dancers and "flappers", (women involved in prostitution), supplied by "men of colour".
It was formally banned under emergency legislation during the First World War, legislation which was then made permanent after the war ended.
THE coca leaf originated in Peru, where it was used for ceremonial purposes and peasant farmers chewed its leaves to stave off hunger. The Peruvian coca industry, through municipal taxes, was the engine for minimal rural development, including road-building and schools.
Cocaine ceased to play a significant role in the public mindset until the 1970s, when a return to mass consumption heralded the emergence of powerful cartels in Colombia and Mexico, two countries singled out for analysis in the final chapters of this book. The industry encountered feeble and corrupt state institutions in Colombia and Mexico, permitting traffickers to buy politicians, football teams, private armies and anti-narcotics investigators.
Paul Gootenburg, a professor of Latin American Studies, and the prime mover behind this book, wisely steers clear of moralistic judgments, yet the lessons of cocaine prohibition are implicit in the history itself. The city of Medellin, Colombia, home of Pablo Escobar, the world's most notorious trafficker, became addicted not to cocaine, but to the side-effects generated by cocaine - wealth, style, scandal and power. Escobar amassed such a fortune that he offered to pay off the nation's external debt in return for an amnesty against criminal prosecution. I have yet to meet a Colombian who disagreed with the proposition, but US government opposition killed off the prospect.
Just weeks ago thousands of elite US-trained troops massed on the border of Peru and Ecuador, as the Clinton administration considered armed intervention to prevent drug-financed guerrillas from seizing power in Colombia. But more guns and bloodshed are the last thing this troubled region needs. Alternative strategies suggested in this informative book include crop substitution, even decriminalisation. Let's hope that the sane voices of Paul Gootenburg and the other contributors manage to reach the ears of the powerful.
Michael McCaughan reports for The Irish Times from Mexico and Colombia