From: bell@beethoven.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell)
Date: 9 Mar 92 18:35:46 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,misc.legal,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Legal Cocaine? (WAS Re: Drug
legalization)
In article <1992Mar5.660665.6F0o5@infopls.chi.il.us>
zane@infopls.chi.il.us (Sameer Parekh) writes:
> I read in _Licit + Illicit Drugs_ that the
people living in the
>Andes who chewed coca leaves to deal with the thin air had no
trouble
>stopping use once they moved to a more airy clime.
People interested
in checking further into this might be interested in
a couple of articles about coca leaf
chewing:
——-
A. Barnett, R. Hawks, and R. Resnick. "Cocaine
Pharmacokinetics in Humans."
The Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 3 (1981) 353-366.
"Therefore, on the basis of this new information that has come as a result
of
technological development we can conclude with a pratical observation.
The size of the quid of
coca leaves that can be comfortably accomodated by
a person is such that it is unlikely that
coca chewing, as practiced for
centuries in places like Macchu Piccu, presents the dangers
that may result
from the modern forms of recreational use."
Particularly
interesting about this article is that the report came out of
the Division of Research of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse.
——-
A. Weil. "The Therapeutic
Value of Coca in Contemporary Medicine."
The Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 3 (1981)
367-376.
"I have lived among coca-using Indians of the Andes and the Amazon
basin
in Columbia and Peru and have not seen any signs of physical deterioration
attributable to the leaf. I have never seen an instance of coca toxicity.
Nor have I observed
physiological or psychological dependence on coca.
Even life-long chewers seem able to get the
effect they want from the
same dose over time; there is no development of tolerance and
certainly
no withdrawal syndrome upon sudden discontinuance of use."
——-
-Andrew Bell
bell@cs.unc.edu
=============================================================================
From:
cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: uk.misc,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re:
Druggies - so they die, who cares (was: Must restaurants provide water?)
Message-ID:
<37266@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 14 Jun 93 21:38:49 GMT
In article
<1993Jun14.134030.385@sco.com> charless@sco.COM (charless) writes:
>the
interesting factoids about who the addicts were back in the
>1920’s, when heroin use for
recreational purposes was still
>legal.
My grandfather, like many medical
doctors of his time (and like Freud)
was a cocaine addict. It caused him no problems at all as
far as we
could see, or he reported, and he always claimed that without the
cocaine he
would have been an alcoholic. He died at the age of 96,
shortly after his third wife had died
on him, and it would seem
because he was fed up with living so long. In those days in
Britain
addicts could register with the NHS, and thus there were no black
market profits
to be made on illegal drugs, and no pushers. The drug
problems all started when we became
sanctimonious about these addicts
on the NHS, kicked them off, and just like the US before us,
created
the whole apalling modern drug scene of criminality, pushers, and drug
barons.
—
Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of
Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK DoD
#205
=============================================================================
From: dolphin@ziggys.cts.com (Rex Kahler) 619/262-6384
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Winston Churchill and Cocaine Gum….
Message-ID:
<3VB6Lc7w165w@ziggys.cts.com>
Date: Tue, 10 May 94 22:32:01 PDT
(from the
8may94 san diego union-tribune)
(xscribed wholly w/o permission)
Experts push legalization of cocaine gum to wean addicts
By DAN FREEDMAN
Hearst
News Service
WASHINGTON — Quenn Victoria did it. Winston Churchill in his
youth
did it, and millions of peasant farmers in South America
do it. So why not allow it in
America?
Why not let people chew on low-potency cocaine lozenges or
gum?
"Millions have used these products, and we have no evidence
of harm associated with
it," says Ethan Nadelmann, a professor
at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of
International
and Public Affairs.
"It may be less addictive than coffee."
zero-tolerance approach to
drugs want to create a weakened
version of cocaine that could be sold over the counter as a
Then potential consumers would have an alternative to
crack
cocaine, which is smoked, and high-purity regular cocaine,
which is snorted, the
way beer and wine are alternatives to
high-proof vodka.
The idea of marketing
cocaine-lite is not making much head-
way at a time when the American public is fearful of
crime and
when the crime bill moving through Congress is promising more
prisons and
punishment for drug offenders.
But raising the possibility of such a product goes to the
enterprises.
Nadelmann
and others argue that low-potency cocaine might
draw potential customers away from
drug-trafficking organiza-
tions smuggling tons of cocaine from South America and violent
"If some people want to distill those products down to
something more potent, let them," Nadelmann wrote in an edi-
torial with _Rolling
Stone_ Publisher Jann Wenner in the May 5
issue of the magazine. "But most people won’t
want to buy it."
However, Herbert Kleber, a psychiatrist and a White House
anti-drug official in the Bush administration, says low-potency
cocaine would not undercut
criminal drug gangs because no one
would use it as an alternative.
Now a vice president
of Columbia University’s Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse, Kleber calls the idea of
a
cocaine substitute "scientifically naive," adding that it
"totally
misunderstands the reason why people use and misuse
drugs."
Kleber compares the
temptation of low-potency cocaine for
the uninitiated or the recovering addict with his
experience
in quitting smoking.
"I smoked for 25 years and if i have just one, I’m
back to
two packs a day," he said. "It’s the same with low-dose co-
caine."
Dr. Andrew Weil of the University of Arizona medical school
disagrees.
peasants suggests that, in low
dosages, cocaine is not addic-
tive.
Weil also says that the product is good for
treating stomach
ailments and motion sickness.
"It’s a shame that we’ve made
disappear from our world a
form of a drug that has a whole bunch of benefits," Weil
says.
Watered-down cocaine was common in turn-of-the-century Amer-
ica and Europe.
Recently uncovered records in Scotland suggest
that Queen Victoria and her young house guest,
Winston Churchill,
consumed cocaine-filled lozenges for sore throats and other
maladies
contracted while staying at Balmoral Castle.
At the same time, cocaine was an ingredient of
Coca-Cola and
several varieties of patent medicines sold in America. All that
changed in
1914 with the Harrison Act, which banned cocaine
without a prescription.
Drug-law
defenders say cocaine was banned because it is
dangerously addictive.
"There are
some genies you can’t let out of teh bottle,"
Kleber says.
Low-potency cocaine
differs from regular cocaine powder and
crack in terms of its purity level, and how fast and
thoroughly
it alters brain chemistry.
According to Weil, the coca leaf chewed by peasant
farmers
in Bolivia and Peru is half of 1 percent pure cocaine. By con-
trast, cocaine
smuggled in by traffickers is 50 percent to 60
percent pure.
The effect of crack is even
more intense because it is
smoked and its chemicals reach the brain in seconds. Cocaine
inhaled through the nose takes 30 minutes to be fully effec-
tive. Orally ingested cocaine in
lozenges or gum takes an hour,
according to Kleber.
John Gregich of the White House
Office of National Drug
Control Policy argues that "the notion you can create a safe
match our experience."
of tough law enforcement
measures against drug traffickers and
dealers have "made worse what we want to make
better, destroying
the peasant society of South America and creating the crack
culture
in American cities."
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
back beneath the waves
D o l p h i n R e x
/s\
=============================================================================
From:
Anonymous <nobody@nowhere>
Subject: Intranasal Cocaine Administration
insofar as cocaine use is concerned, i have - after many years of
foolishly self-destructive
behavior - discovered a very nice way
to do coke. take a nasal decongestant sprayer bottle,
empty it.
take a small amount of powdered cocaine - 1/4 to 1/2 a gram - and
dissolve it
in maybe a cubic inch of water. add a drop or two of
vodka or other ethanol. stir it. the
cocaine dissolves into the
water, leaving the cut(s) on the bottom, a side benefit i didn’t
offer a nickname - into
yon vile vial, and apply to your nasal
cavities, judiciously.
if overfilled, you
will get a jet of solution. otherwise, you get a
nice mix of solution and air in a mist that
dissolves easily into
your nasal passages, with consequent bodily effects approximately
equivalent to a cup of coffee. this is advantageous for many, many
reasons …
(a) no waste. you get exactly what your body can absorb, and
no crumbs clinging to your nasal
passages and falling down
your front. you don’t get so much that the effect borders
on
toxicity, as you do when doing lines. and you can make
a 1/2 gram last up to a week, in this
fashion.
(b) no paraphernalia. this fits nicely into a night bag with
toothbrush
or toothpaste, and is bust-free, in the car, on
one’s person, at one’s desk, or crossing
international
borders. no razors, no straws, no mirrors, no ‘bullets’ or
little brown
vials waiting to fall out of your pocket.
(c) no addictive sequence. it’s much easier
to forego tooting
when using at this level, and put it aside for the night,
instead of
staying up ’til the wee hours. and it combines
with being productive about the same way that
coffee does.
( i have also applied small amounts of methamphetamine in
this fashion,
with similar low-impact effects. )
It’s really a shame that the Establishment doesn’t
apply itself to teaching
people how to use drugs intelligently and creatively, since, clearly,
such
paths to competence and maturity exist. If I had known ten years ago what I
have
learned through much reading and thinking, I would have saved myself a
lot of money, and, more
importantly, a lot of grief and self-destructive
behavior which I have, fortunately,
survived.
Please perpetuate this information as widely as possible, the better to
teach
people how to avoid addictive behavioral sequences while continuing to explore
the
realms of awareness in a mature and thoughtful manner.
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