When the leaves were chewed they would act as a mild stimulant and helped to relieve fatigue, stop pain, and suppress appetites. The Andean natives would also drink coca leaves by brewing them into a tea. The leaf in its natural form is harmless and is comparable to coffee. In 1859 a German chemist by the name of Albert Niemann isolated the active ingredient (an alkaloid) from the coca plant and created the drug known as cocaine. It wasn’t until the 1880s that cocaine began to be used in the medical community. Famous psychologist, Sigmund Freud was the first to promote cocaine as a cure to depression and sexual impotence. Freud regularly used the drug and even published an article titled “Über Coca” which promoted cocaine as the “magical
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Very quickly, Coca Cola became the most consumed soft drink in history because of the euphoric and energizing effects it produced. By the early 1990s, people of all social classes, including social elites in Hollywood, were using cocaine. The US Government reported as many as 5,000 cocaine related deaths each year. As the use of the drug increased, the dangers of the drug started to become more noticeable which eventually lead to a public outcry to ban the social use of cocaine. In 1903, Coca Cola was forced to remove cocaine from their recipe and was officially banned in 1922. Unfortunately, cocaine use and abuse didn’t stop there; it re-emerged in the 1970s as a fun and fashionable way to get high. The Colombian cartels were the main source of cocaine in the US, producing and exporting 500 to 800 tons of cocaine a year. With the excessive supply of cocaine being smuggled into the US; the price of the drug dropped by as much as 80%. Drug dealers began to convert cocaine powder into a solid form of cocaine that could be smoked, called “crack”. This form of cocaine became highly profitable for dealers. It was being sold in smaller quantities to more people at a …show more content…
Just like a majority of the countries around the world, the U.S. government demonstrated a laissez-fair approach to drugs; if the seller wanted to sell and the buyer wanted to buy, let them do it. Today, hundreds of drugs are considered federally controlled substances. Each year the U.S. government spends more than $12 billon trying to control the sale and use of drugs. If the government never had a problem with it before why did they feel it was necessary to establish restrictive regulations for drugs? What regulations were put in place pertaining to the sale and use of drugs? What is the government and criminal justice system doing to uphold these regulations and laws? The movement towards reformism was influenced by the public discussion of several drug-related problems. There were three main concerns that aroused public interest: (1) toxicity: drugs that were dangerous and contained toxic chemicals were being sold without appropriate labels and warnings. The sellers of these drugs were considered to be endangering the public health and victimizing individuals; (2) dependence: by selling habit-forming drugs without appropriate labels or warnings, sellers were seen as victimizing individuals and endangering their health; and (3) crime: the drug user began to be seen as a
Very quickly, Coca Cola became the most consumed soft drink in history because of the euphoric and energizing effects it produced. By the early 1990s, people of all social classes, including social elites in Hollywood, were using cocaine. The US Government reported as many as 5,000 cocaine related deaths each year. As the use of the drug increased, the dangers of the drug started to become more noticeable which eventually lead to a public outcry to ban the social use of cocaine. In 1903, Coca Cola was forced to remove cocaine from their recipe and was officially banned in 1922. Unfortunately, cocaine use and abuse didn’t stop there; it re-emerged in the 1970s as a fun and fashionable way to get high. The Colombian cartels were the main source of cocaine in the US, producing and exporting 500 to 800 tons of cocaine a year. With the excessive supply of cocaine being smuggled into the US; the price of the drug dropped by as much as 80%. Drug dealers began to convert cocaine powder into a solid form of cocaine that could be smoked, called “crack”. This form of cocaine became highly profitable for dealers. It was being sold in smaller quantities to more people at a …show more content…
Just like a majority of the countries around the world, the U.S. government demonstrated a laissez-fair approach to drugs; if the seller wanted to sell and the buyer wanted to buy, let them do it. Today, hundreds of drugs are considered federally controlled substances. Each year the U.S. government spends more than $12 billon trying to control the sale and use of drugs. If the government never had a problem with it before why did they feel it was necessary to establish restrictive regulations for drugs? What regulations were put in place pertaining to the sale and use of drugs? What is the government and criminal justice system doing to uphold these regulations and laws? The movement towards reformism was influenced by the public discussion of several drug-related problems. There were three main concerns that aroused public interest: (1) toxicity: drugs that were dangerous and contained toxic chemicals were being sold without appropriate labels and warnings. The sellers of these drugs were considered to be endangering the public health and victimizing individuals; (2) dependence: by selling habit-forming drugs without appropriate labels or warnings, sellers were seen as victimizing individuals and endangering their health; and (3) crime: the drug user began to be seen as a