Cocaine: An Unauthorized BiographyOn May 16th, 1499 Amerigo Vespucci set sail for the New World. Three months later, having navigated his way along the coastline of Brazil, he washed up on an idyllic desert island fifteen leagues from the mainland. There he was appalled to discover a tribe of hideous Indians, their mouths stuffed full of leaves "like beasts." The leaves were coca, source of the drug cocaine. Five hundred years later, the effects of the discovery are still felt. In 1999 South America produced 613,4000 tons of coca, with a potential yield of 765 tons of cocaine. Last year a United Nations report estimated that the global cocaine trade generated $92 billion per year - $20 billion more than the combined revenues of Microsoft, Kellogg's and McDonald's. For millennia, South Americans had used coca to cure everything from stomach maladies to snow blindness. Four hundred and fifty years before the civilized world discovered local anesthesia, the Incas were performing brain surgery using the numbing coca. For centuries conquistadors fed the Indians the leaves while they mined silver - fuelling the Spanish Empire while simultaneously decimating South America's population. And when cocaine hit Europe and North America it caught on there too. It was incorporated into drinks and tonics as a pick-me-up, including the most famous of all, Coca-Cola. The drug created waves of addicts around the world until it was banned in the early twentieth century. By the 1960s if was back, and has been creating all sorts of trouble ever since. Dominic Streatfeild examines the story of cocaine from its first medical uses to the worldwide chaos it causes today. His research takes him from the arcane reaches of the British Library to crack houses in New York to the jungles of Peru and Colombia. Along the way he speaks to some of the thousands involved in the trade: economists, scientists, botanists, lawmen, historians and traffickers, creating what is by far the most definitive history of a white powder worth more than its weight in gold. |
Contents
Introducing Coca | 1 |
De Jussieu Loses His Marbles | 37 |
From Coca to Cocaine | 55 |
The Third Scourge of Humanity | 66 |
Craving for and Fear of Sigmund Freud | 105 |
Patent Cures Snake Oils and Sex | 117 |
Blacks Chinks Coolies and Brits | 138 |
Down But Not Out | 174 |
Crack Man Bites Dog | 271 |
Sandinista | 324 |
The Horsemen of Cocaine | 345 |
Mexico | 362 |
Bolivia | 384 |
Peru | 409 |
Colombia | 431 |
Cocaine | 473 |
Comeback | 195 |
George Carlos and the Cocaine Explosion | 211 |
Pablo Roberto and the Fiancés of Death | 245 |
501 | |
503 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abuse American amphetamines arrested arrived asked became began Bolivia Cali Cali cartel called Carlos cartel cent Chapare chewing coca leaves coca production Coca-Cola cocaine addiction cocaine industry cocaine trade cocaine trafficking cocaine's cocaleros coke Colombia Contras couple crack dangerous DEA agent doctors dopamine effect Escobar eventually extradition fact freebase Freud fucking George George Jung going happened head heroin illicit Incas Indians jail Jorge killed kilo kilograms knew Lara Bonilla later leaf Lehder look Mariani marijuana Meanwhile Medellín Medellín cartel Mexican million months morphine narcotics never Noriega Norman's Cay Ochoa operation organisations Pablo Pablo Escobar perhaps Peru Peruvian picked plant police pretty problem realised reported Ricky Ross smoking someone South America Spanish started stop story Suárez thing tion told took United users Vin Mariani wanted War on Drugs