For this paper I chose to investigate the drug of cocaine and how it evolved and essentially lived its life as a drug. Cocaine caught my interest when reading the book Beyond Belief in which Josh Hamilton became addicted to cocaine in the late ninety’s. I found it very interesting that different drugs have had their famous era so to speak, like right now marijuana and heroin are the drugs you really hear about right now. Before this paper I really had no idea about cocaine other then you snort it and that there is a version that you can smoke. So first I am going to investigate the pharmacology of the drug to get a better understanding of how it works and why users continue to use it. Pharmacology is the science of how a …show more content…
This amendment banned the importation of cocaine completely and only allowed small batches of coca leaves. The allowance of leaves is due to the need for other medicines and legitimate uses. These amendments also made it the first time that cocaine was officially known as a narcotic by the government and had very strict penalties for breaking the act. These penalties were a minimum of $5,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. The government also looked at the amount of coca leaves needed in hospitals and only allowed that amount into the country. Also, if coca leaves were being used for anything other than medicine then they were federal monitored as the cocaine was extracted from …show more content…
As a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, cocaine is classified as a substance with accepted medical use and high potential for abuse that may lead to severe physical and psychological dependence (Rouse 2018). With cocaine being available in mostly for medical use in the early 1900’s it was being manufactured at high rates and the resources were readily accessible until around the 1930’s. in which amphetamines became popular and cocaine became less needed in the medical world. Eventually by 1970 cocaine was put on the highly dependent and appeals to the same crowd of people who were using heroin. At this point cocaine was gaining popularity in abusers and with it still being manufactured at a large rate for medical use it was easy to get hands on. By 1971 cocaine was finally being recognized as having addictive properties and when a survey was done with addicts and abusers, the only drug that abusers wanted more was heroin. 88% of the surveyors wanted heroin and 75% wanted cocaine. All of these abusers and user were 18 or older. While youth ages 12-17 were less addicted to cocaine compared to other