A Chronicle Of Cocaine

Richard J. Miller describes how the drug took off:

In 1859 an Italian neurologist named Paolo Mantegazza visited Peru and performed a great deal of self-experimentation with coca, ranging from low to extremely high doses. He reported his experiences in a paper entitled “On the hygienic and medical values of Coca,” which discussed the drug’s ability to reduce hunger and fatigue, as well as to produce a mad mental “rush” at higher doses. … Large drug companies such as Parke-Davis in Detroit also got into the cocaine game. They developed processes for the mass production of easily crystallizable and soluble salts like hydrochloride, which could be accurately measured and dispensed. Finely powdered “lines” of cocaine could easily be “snorted” through a cut straw or rolled up banknote and would enter the well-vascularized mucous membranes in the nose and move from there into the blood and then the brain relatively quickly.

Naturally, the most efficient way of taking cocaine, just like morphine, was to inject it intravenously. To satisfy this portion of the cocaine market, drug companies like Parke-Davis also came up with drug-taking paraphernalia such as nifty little boxes that contained syringes, needles, and supplies of cocaine all packaged together as a fashion accessory for the smart set. According to Parke-Davis’ own ads, cocaine “could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to pain.” As we have seen with other powerful and potentially dangerous drugs, the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century was a time when these things were generally available and not illegal. In fact, cocaine could be purchased over the counter in the United States until 1916.