The US is gradually moving towards legalizing recreational use of marijuana. It has taken a long time and there is still a long way to go, but it seems it is going to happen. And the nation moves on with no dire consequences. Nevertheless, it was still a bit startling for the relatively conservative magazine, The Economist, to declare the time has come to legalize Cocaine. A compelling argument is made that the efforts to wipe out the cocaine economy are only making matters worse. Before considering that perspective, a brief diversion into the history of recreational drugs and the motivations behind their illegalization is useful.
David F. Musto has written the definitive history of anti-drug legislation in the United States: The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. Drugs such as opium, morphine, and cocaine were freely available throughout the nineteenth century. The drugs were regularly used by physicians as medications and were widely available in commercial formulations generically referred to as “patent medicines.” Cocaine could even be purchased in a syringe for self-injection. Until 1903, Coca Cola contained cocaine. Afterward, the cocaine was replaced with a new stimulant: caffeine. Children were subjected to narcotics as a remedy for crankiness and sleeping difficulties.
“In the United States the exhilarating properties of cocaine made it a favorite ingredient of medicine, soda pop, wines and so on. The Parke Davis Company, an exceptionally enthusiastic producer of cocaine, even sold coca-leaf cigarettes and coca cheroots to accompany their other products, which provided cocaine in a variety of media and routes such as a liquor-like alcohol mixture called Coca Cordial, tablets, hypodermic injections, ointments, and sprays.”
The addictive properties of these drugs were known and the personal and societal disruption they could cause were recognized. There were movements to restrict or eliminate their use. These actions were always countered by those who made money from the drug usage. All legislative attempts at drug restrictions were ultimately driven by politics rather than science. Legislation restricting cocaine provided the prime example.
This use of a targeted minority to focus popular disgust in order to obtain desired legislation was effective and became the normal approach with respect to criminalizing drug usage.
“The most passionate support for legal prohibition of narcotics has been associated with fear of a given drug’s effect on a specific minority. Certain drugs were dreaded because they seemed to undermine essential social restrictions which kept these groups under control: cocaine was supposed to enable blacks to withstand bullets which would kill normal persons and to stimulate sexual assault. Fear that smoking opium facilitated sexual contact between Chinese and white Americans was also a factor in its total prohibition. Chicanos in the Southwest were believed to be incited to violence by smoking marijuana. Heroin was linked in the 1920s with a turbulent age group: adolescents in reckless and promiscuous urban gangs. Alcohol was associated with immigrants crowding into large and corrupt cities.”
The association of cocaine with blacks was intimately tied to the repressive conditions that the South believed were necessary to keep blacks in their “place.” First their guns were taken away, then their civil rights, followed by prohibition of alcohol and a call to stop the selling of something called “Coca Cola.” As usual, the Southern bloc of legislators was needed to get laws passed. To obtain their votes, the fear mongering they engaged in by relating blacks to cocaine became an important part of the political dialogue.
“The fear of the cocainized black coincided with the peak of lynchings, legal segregation, and voting laws all designed to remove political and social power from him. Fear of cocaine might have contributed to the dread that the black would rise above ‘his place,’ as well as reflecting the extent to which cocaine may have released defiance and retribution. So far, evidence does not suggest that cocaine caused a crime wave but rather that anticipation of black rebellion inspired white alarm. Anecdotes often told of superhuman strength, cunning, and efficiency resulting from cocaine. One of the most terrifying beliefs about cocaine was that it actually improved pistol marksmanship. Another myth, that cocaine made blacks almost unaffected by mere .32 caliber bullets, is said to have caused southern police departments to switch to .38 caliber revolvers. These fantasies characterized white fear, not the reality of cocaine’s effects, and gave one more reason for the repression of blacks.”
Cocaine and opiate products would become illegal in 1914, but racial politics did not go dormant. Fears of black usage of the drug would arise anew during the 1970s and 1980s. Extremely severe sentences for drug possession or sale came after a period of high crime rate and urban rioting. In circumstances eerily reminiscent of the post-Reconstruction-era South, whites feared that the blacks, in their segregated urban sectors, might be getting out of control. Drugs were already prohibited but, nevertheless, were widely available. The goal of legislation then turned to pouring more resources into crime/drug control. Can it possibly surprise anyone that the tried-and-true tactic of scaring people with suggestions of cocaine-crazed blacks on a crime spree was resurrected?
Carl Hart has also written a book for a general readership: High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society. In it he provides a perspective on addiction that is counter to conventional wisdom. He suggests all our favorite addictive drugs, including alcohol and nicotine, can be categorized similarly.
“…more than 75 percent of drug users—whether they use alcohol, prescription medications, or illegal drugs—do not have this problem [harmful addiction]. Indeed, research shows repeatedly that such issues affect only 10-25 percent of those who try even the most stigmatized drugs, like heroin and crack.”
Even the person who becomes a regular user of the drug continues to maintain the ability to choose to take the drug or not depending on the given circumstances. The image of the addict being driven mad with desire for his drug just doesn’t happen. Hart suggests that the desire for the drug is more closely analogous to the desire humans feel for sex and food—both being cravings difficult but possible to control.
If the more prevalent and more damage-producing drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, and legal psychotropic drugs are not destroying societies, why are we so concerned with cocaine?
In The Economist, the political realities of the failure of “wars on drugs” are detailed to make a case for legalization. The relevant article is Booming cocaine production suggests the war on drugs has failed.
“When Richard Nixon, then America’s president, launched his “war on drugs” in 1971, the flow of cocaine into America was a trickle. Despite billions of dollars spent every year on arrests, asset seizures and destroying coca bushes, it has become a flood. About 2% of North Americans—roughly 6m people—are thought to use the stuff. New shipping routes are bringing the drug to consumers in Africa, Asia and Europe…”
The number of people using cocaine thought to have a serious addiction is about 20% or about 0.4% of the population.
The issue is supply and demand. The supply is in relatively poor South American countries, the demand is in the relatively wealthy countries of the world.
“According to Jeremy McDermott of InSight Crime, a website that analyses organised crime, Mexican gangs can buy a kilo of cocaine for $3,000 in Colombia. He estimates that a kilo is worth between $8,000 and $12,000 in Central America, $20,000 in the United States, $35,000 in Europe, $50,000 in China and $100,000 in Australia.”
Much of the “warfare” has taken place in the producing countries. They are beginning to be more aggressive in propagating the notion that the effort has failed and something new must be done.
“Plenty of Latin American presidents have said the war is not working—though as Jonathan Caulkins, a drug expert at Carnegie Mellon University, points out, they tend to do so only once they have safely left office. Now some of those in power are beginning to speak up, too. In an interview with The Economist, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s new president, talked of leniency for repentant gang members, decriminalising coca-leaf production and creating places where Colombians could consume cocaine in a supervised environment. Felipe Tascón, a member of Mr Petro’s campaign team who had been tipped for a role as his drug ‘tsar’, has flirted with the possibility of outright legalisation, and has talked of collaborating with other Andean countries which produce the drug.”
Even if producing countries legalized production successfully, that would have little impact on demand. As Carl Hart points out in his book, drug use and addiction are only partly explained by the nature of the drug, they also depend on the needs of the members of the society. Animals, including humans, are less likely to need to seek satisfaction from drugs if they have stable social and economic standing in their community.
“’The problem is in consumption, not production,’ says Mr Petro. His view is that ‘the competitive society…the ideology of the last few decades…is the one that generates addiction. And it is what generates widespread drug use.’ Mr Petro’s explanation is dubious. But his diagnosis is surely correct. So long as cocaine remains illegal in the rich countries that consume it, then legalising it in the poorer places that produce it will have only a small effect.”
Is there any hope that legalization could come to a country like the US?
“Full-on decriminalisation, let alone legalisation, is not about to happen in the West. But attitudes have shifted notably in the past few years. In 2020 the state of Oregon decriminalised the possession of all drugs, cocaine included. Portugal has had a similar policy since 2001. On October 7th Femke Halsema, Amsterdam’s mayor, told a meeting of European justice ministers that she thought that the war on drugs had failed, and that cocaine should be decriminalised. If decriminalisation happens in Latin America, it could put more momentum behind such ideas.”
There is another factor to consider. It has become common for drug gangs to improve their profit margins by diluting their product with cheaper drugs.
“These days much of the cocaine that is shipped north to the United States comes mixed with fentanyl, a powerful and addictive opioid painkiller. The UNODC reckons that toxic combination is the main reason why cocaine-related deaths in America have risen fivefold since 2010…”
Many lives could be saved with a regulated and safe source
of cocaine.
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