 In April of 2001, the Peruvian government, working in conjunction with the CIA, sent an A37B dragonfly after a plane suspected of smuggling cocaine from Peru into Colombia. According to the official report, when the plane failed to make contact, the dragonfly let loose a hell of a machine gun fire. The bullets ripped a hole in the fuel line. The pilot, Kevin Donaldson, was able to make a crash landing. He survived and would later testify that the government plane never tried to make contact. He also saved the lives of two of the passengers, Jim Bowers and a six-year-old son Corey, though Jim would not be able to walk for months due to his injuries. More tragic was the fate of the other two passengers. Jim's wife Veronica and their seven-month-old daughter Charity were killed in the crash. The United States government, which was funding and directly involving itself in the policy of shooting down planes in order to stop the cocaine trade, officially killed two American citizens. And these citizens were not drug smugglers. They were Christian missionaries returning home from a mission trip. When these policies of shooting down planes was first proposed in the 1980s, one of the few supporters of this kind of government action was Libertarian vice presidential candidate Bill Weld, by the way. This is the legacy of the cocaine laws in this country. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. Today we're going to talk about cocaine. So this means we will have covered the three major drugs, cannabis, opium and cocaine. And we should have a pretty good understanding of how these three drugs helped spur drug prohibition and the modern war on drugs. I think cocaine has some of the most interesting history from an economic point of view just because of its relationship with Coca-Cola. So this is going to be a great episode. The history of cocaine in many ways can really go back as far as we have records of people in Central and South America, but really only in its most natural form, of course. So this would be the Coca plant. And particularly in the Andean regions of South America, coca leaf chewing was ingrained in the culture. They actually have found artifacts like pottery that depict warriors carrying Coca bags known as chispas. Ande Peru has the oldest records of coca use, and their ancient folklore actually treated the coca plant religiously with their goddess of health, kukamama, or coca mother, who was the source of the first coca plant. It actually grew out of her severed body, if I remember the folklore correctly. And some of the Andean people even told fortunes with coca leaf. So like we have tea readings that we're familiar with, well, they had coca leaf readings. So it was a very, very religious product to people in the Andean region and still is in areas today, in fact. But the coca leaf culture wasn't just religious and it grew out of practical uses of the coca leaves. Predominantly, this revolved around chewing coca leaves, which is still in practice in these regions today. I feel like I've got pictures of people chewing coca leaf. It's like them having this giant wad of, like even larger than like a wad of tobacco in their mouth just puffed out on one side of their cheek. But it's very common. It's still very common to chew coca leaves down there. And it's important to understand that the cocaine alkaloid only exists in very small quantities in the coca leaf. So don't get the idea that these people chewing coca leaves were just walking around with cocaine highs all the time, because it's quite literally impossible to get high from coca leaves. But by chewing the leaves, Andean people realized that they could better tolerate the cold, they could better tolerate hunger. And more importantly, coca leaf chewing and coca drinks help people to adjust to high altitudes, which is very important in the Andean Mountains. In fact, if you visit Andean regions today and you stay in a hotel, the first thing most hotels will offer you is just a cup of coca tea. And this is partly because it's so helpful in adjusting people to these high altitudes. So when people were working as miners in the Andean Mountains, coca leaf chewing was practically a necessity. And of course, this was also have mildly energizing effects, kind of like caffeine does. So it was more like caffeine than actual cocaine. But for people, you know, working in these mountains, the coca leaves both helped give them energy and it helped them handle the high altitudes. So it's very important in these areas. It's still very important in these areas today. It wasn't until 1855 that the cocaine alkaloid was first isolated by a German chemist named Friedrich Geidke. And in 1856, the next year, a German doctoral student named Albert Niemen developed a better purification process, which he published in his dissertation. And he's the one who gave the alkaloid the name cocaine. Now we have two sources of the cocaine molecule. The original form is from the coca leaf, which contains the cocaine molecule, but it isn't isolated. So it really isn't possible to ingest enough to get high. And the other form is just pure cocaine, which is the drug we think of. This is what was isolated by Niemen in 1856. So the reason this distinction is important is because many of the original coca products, like Coca-Cola, were using the benign coca leaf form, which meant that they did technically have cocaine in them, as we're told. Everybody knows Coca-Cola used to have cocaine. They were they were actually trying to dispel the fact that they had cocaine as late as the 1980s, in fact. So they did have cocaine, but the description is misleading because we tend to think of cocaine only in this isolated drug form, like the cocaine powder that people snort. And this is also a distinction, as we will see, that the government largely ignored when it started moving against cocaine. So as I mentioned in the first episode, it was in the 1880s in which we saw the explosion of cocaine products, both in its patent and ethical forms, the ethical preparations, being the pharmaceutical products that were actually employing the isolated cocaine, alkaloid, they were substantially more powerful than the patent medicines, such as cocoa wine and soft drinks. I want to talk about the role that cocaine played in Coca-Cola first, because I think it's really the most interesting part of the history. And it tells us a great deal about the government's ridiculous views on cocaine in the years leading up to prohibition. Coca-Cola was actually invented by Confederate officer named John Pemberton, who developed a morphine addiction during the war, like we talked about in the opium episode. And he was seeking a product that would help him break his addiction. And he was motivated by the success of Vin Mariani's famous cocoa wine, which, if you'll remember, was what Ulysses S. Grant was drinking when he had throat cancer to help him power through his memoirs. And it was very, very popular drink in the 19th century, by far the most popular at the time. And it's interesting that his first product, Pemberton's first product in 1885 was just an alternative cocoa wine. So it wasn't Coca-Cola at first, but the year after he invented it, in 1856, Atlanta actually instituted alcohol prohibition. So this made his cocoa wine illegal, not because of the cocaine element, but because of the alcohol element. So keep in mind that this was all part of the temperance movement that was just exploding in the gilded age and into the progressive era. So Pemberton then invented Coca-Cola syrup as a non-alcoholic alternative. It was originally just sold as a fountain drink. They didn't start bottling it for several years. So he would just sell the syrup and then it would, just like in fountains today, they would mix it with water. And Coca-Cola didn't really start to be marketed until the 1890s. Of course, the cocaine content of the drink was a selling point for the marketing strategy of Coca-Cola as a medicinal product and an 1896 advertisement for the product read, reading from the advertisement. The Coca-Cola company of Atlanta, Georgia has achieved in their success in robbing both coca leaves and the cola nut of the exceedingly nauseous and disagreeable taste while retaining their wonderful medicinal properties and the power of restoring vitality and raising the spirits of the weary and debilitated. In fact, earlier in the advertiser's a lengthy advertisement and talked about how most medicine, you know, the worst they taste, the better they work. But Coca-Cola is the opposite. So it's this good tasting, but also medicinal use. And the cola nut, by the way, this is a source of caffeine. So caffeine didn't replace cocaine and Coca-Cola, as some people believe, because the original formula called for both coca leaves and caffeine and the name Coca-Cola is meant to signify both these ingredients, the coca leaf and the cola nut. The actual amount of cocaine and Coca-Cola is really difficult to determine, mostly because there were actually at one point three different products sold as Coca-Cola by three different companies. And the formulas were mildly different. They were similar, but they weren't identical. And it wasn't until 1892 when a guy named Asa Candler incorporated the Coca-Cola company. And this originally included Pemberton's son. And he died in 1894. So Candler is really the person that's associated with the Coca-Cola company rather than Pemberton. And Candler claimed that his formula for Coca-Cola called for significantly less cocaine than Pemberton's but actual amounts to the product of estimation and historical conjecture. We also know enough to say that the amount of cocaine in a glass of Coca-Cola was significantly less than what a typical line of snorted cocaine would be today. One estimate I think is like nine milligrams, but we don't know exactly how much was in there. And we also want to keep in mind that the cocaine would have been less potent when drinking it than it is when it's snorted. But some sources make it sound like the amount of cocaine was more significant because they ignore the differences in the method of ingestion. And because the historical records of the formulas speak in terms of coca leaves rather than milligrams of cocaine. So I think Pemberton's original formula called for like five ounces of coca leaf in a gallon of the syrup or something around there, which just sounds like the significant amount. I don't know how much syrup goes into a glass of Coca-Cola. I don't, but they, the rate of cocaine from coca leaves is pretty small. So it was certainly a much smaller dose that people would have been taking than a typical Coke head would get from a line of Coke. And of course, by drinking it, it was pretty mild. So the cocaine content sounds a lot more significant than it actually is when you look at some sources. As Coca-Cola moved into the 20th century, they started gradually shifting away from the focus on the medicinal properties and focused instead on the taste. But they continued to highlight the use of coca leaves. There's a 1907 advertisement worth looking at. And it published, it was published in the same journal as the one I just read from 1896. And it read, they know, too, that the slightly exhilarating effects are no more harmful than a cup of tea or coffee, but make Coca-Cola the ideal as well as the most popular of all beverages. In these days of strenuous methods in both work and play, to secure the properties used in genuine Coca-Cola, nature's choices gift to two hemispheres must be found and transported across both mountains and seas. High in the Andes, the Peruvians endure severest privations by chewing the coca leaf. Here's the kicker, though. Even though they were still advertising the coca leaf as the rejuvenating element in their drink, this really was no longer the case. By the turn of the century, social pressure was turning against cocaine. And Coca-Cola actually responded by having the cocaine alkaloid removed from the coca leaves in 1903. And in 1904, they started using dried out, decocanized coca leaves as a flavoring a great ingredient in their seven X formula. This was what they called their formula. Seven X referred to the seven ingredients in their formula. Caffeine, vanilla extract, aromatizing substances, citric acid, lemon juice, sugar, water, and ingredient X, which was the liquid coca extract. So much more complicated than Sprite, which you can make with just lemon and lime. We're told this had seven ingredients. So technically, Coca-Cola still had coca leaves, so the extract from coca leaves in their product. And in fact, this is still true today, but they took out the cocaine alkaloid three years before even the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. And they retained the benign coca extract as a flavoring ingredient only. It's also interesting to note, just because I know you all love examples of government absurdity, the federal government actually brought charges against Coca-Cola in 1911 in a case called United States v 40 barrels and 20 kegs of Coca-Cola. But it wasn't because they thought Coca-Cola had cocaine in it. It was because the Coca-Cola formula contained Kola nuts, the source of caffeine, and the government was trying to compel them to legally remove the caffeine. And I think I can speak for all of us when I say that this is the most important ingredient in Coca-Cola caffeine is. But the courts ruled in favor of Coca-Cola because caffeine was not listed in the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. So the government just amended this act in 1912 to include caffeine as a harmful substance requiring anything that had caffeine in it to list that it was caffeinated. But the history gets even more interesting. Now, obviously, we already know that cocaine was first restricted to medicinal use only in 1914, but that didn't really affect Coca-Cola. The more important law in this part of the story was the Jones Miller Narcotics Import Act of 1922, which banned cocaine imports in the country. And what this meant was that South American countries like Peru, whose economy largely subsisted by sending Coca and cocaine to US markets, was not able to actually refine the cocoa leaves into pure cocaine themselves, even for sell to legitimate pharmaceutical companies. So this naturally meant stifling the advancement of the Peruvian economy because it removed their incentive to invest in capital goods involved in refining cocaine. And again, this is all still true today. But but this law also affected Coca-Cola. The Jones Miller Act prevented any external coca refining. So all the cocaine in the country and the the flavoring used for Coca-Cola, all of that had to be done. All of it had to be refined and extracted in the United States. We could only import the leaves. But it also licensed coca importers so not just any company could legally purchase coca leaves. And in fact, licenses to purchase coca leaves were confined to only two companies. The first was Merkin Company, which imported coca leaves from Peru and a small Indonesian island called Java, which was just for some reason uniquely suited for growing the kinds of coca most useful in certain pharmaceuticals at the time. So this company was effectively granted a US monopoly on all coca-based pharmaceuticals by this time. Before then, of course, we had a whole lot of competitors with Merkin Company, but by 1922, they were just they were it. They were a US granted monopoly. The second company was Maywood Chemical Works, and they imported coca exclusively from Peru for the single purpose of removing the cocaine alkaloid, which they would destroy. And they created the non-narcotic flavoring extract, which was now called merchandise number five, which they supplied to Coca-Cola. In fact, in 1931, Harry Anzlinger and the Coca-Cola company, they lobbied for legal permission to do this in the Geneva Convention. And if that's not enough cronyism for you, Coca-Cola was the only company legally allowed to purchase the merchandise number five from Maywood. So now Coca-Cola had a US granted monopoly on coca leaf flavoring, despite the fact that there were originally a ton of different companies who made soft drinks using coca leaves back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As an aside, the company's friendship with Harry Anzlinger also allowed Coca-Cola to obtain an exception to the sugar rations that were imposed on its competitors during World War Two. Coca-Cola opened something like I think it was like 64 new bottling plants. I didn't put this in my notes, so I may be slightly wrong on the figure. But more than 60 new bottling plants were open during World War Two while their competitors could barely get their hands on the ingredients they need to produce at all. And it was because of their friendship with Harry Anzlinger and one of the executives even sat on the sugar rationing board. And so it was at least part of the reason that Coca-Cola was marketed in other countries with the help of the government as what I consider to be an ironic testament to American capitalism during the Cold War. Coca-Cola was part of the propaganda campaign during our containment strategy in the Cold War. Look how great capitalism is. We have Coca-Cola and that would all be true had it not been for the fact that Coca-Cola at this time was just incredibly benefited by government intervention in the economy. So when this was taking place, Portugal demanded proof from the US government that Coca-Cola did not contain any cocaine. And the government actually printed sales for Coca-Cola that said United States Treasury Department flavoring extract certified non-narcotic. And on the opposite end of this, Bolivia was also hostile to the importation of Coca-Cola after World War Two because they also believed that it contained cocaine, but they were upset because they didn't want it to compete with South American drinks like Coca cocktail, creme de coca and coca kiln, which were made with Bolivian coca. So remember Peru was the exporter to the United States. So Bolivia was a large grower of coca, but they were selling their coca to countries that weren't the United States. So from their perspective, by importing Coca-Cola, which was made with Peruvian coca, they're essentially seeding much of their market, you know, whatever is taken over by the popularity of Coca-Cola to Peruvian cocaine. So if Coca-Cola took off, Peru would would just crowd out some of Bolivia's export market. Also in World War Two, when Harry Ann Slinger was stockpiling cocaine based products for US allies in the war, he actually altered the license of Merck and Company. So they were only now allowed to produce cocaine based pharmaceuticals. And Maywood would still extract the cocaine alkaloid, but now instead of destroying it, they would sell the cocaine alkaloid to Merck and the non-narcotic merchandise number five to Coca-Cola. So now Maywood was the sole legal importer of coca leaves and it supplied its products to the sole producer of cocaine medical products being Merck and the sole producer of cocoa flavor beverages in the United States being Coca-Cola. And the story doesn't stop there either. Ever since the 1930s, other companies had been lobbying for Ann Slinger to grant them a license to purchase the non-narcotic coca flavoring from Maywood. The most significant of these companies was called S. B. Pinnock Company, which was another soft drink manufacturer. And Maywood incidentally was owned by a German named Louis Schaefer. And in 1949, the government seized his company. The government was seizing a lot of companies owned by Germans following World War Two. So Maywood was put up for auction by the Office of Alien Property. And the only person who placed a bid on the property was the S. B. Pinnock Company. So with their monopoly on coca flavoring threatened, the one Coca-Cola executive named Ralph Hayes wrote a personal letter to his friend, Harry Ann Slinger, asking for intervention on the matter. And Ann Slinger actually let Schaefer keep his company. So this was the right thing to do. Schaefer was not a Nazi. It was right for Ann Slinger to let him leave, keep his company. But Ann Slinger only did this to protect Coca-Cola from unwanted competition. So he did the right thing for very wrong reasons. And as a final point about Coca-Cola, Maywood Chemical Works was absorbed by the Staphan Company in 1959. And to this day, the Staphan Company retains the sole legal privilege of importing coca leaves and selling merchandise number five to Coca-Cola. In fact, if you look up, I was trying to look for pictures I've seen in the past, but the coca leaf imports, when they're when they're bringing the coca leaves into the factory, they have to be carried in by this just armed escort of uniformed men with guns. It's really just like a dystopian image of the the transport of coca leaves. It's kind of ridiculous. So going back to cocaine in the 1890s and early 20th century. The movement toward a snorted cocaine came through asthma and cold treatments. Some of these came in the form of cocaine sprays, but the cocaine snuff started to take over the sprays in popularity during the 1890s. And this is where people started seeking cocaine for non-medical uses. The first large movement of non-medical use of cocaine was from manual laborers who enjoyed it for its stimulating properties. And because a lot of these manual labor jobs were done by black people, this also led to the same racist themes we've already seen with marijuana and opiates, and this was particularly present in the South. Now, manual labor was done by both blacks and whites and cocaine was used by both blacks and whites. But as a percentage of the population of the race, it was disproportionately high for blacks because lower class manual laborers were disproportionately high for blacks, but the perception is nonetheless, it was just greatly exaggerated just as it was for cannabis and opium. And the use of cocaine to sustain labor began along the Mississippi River in the southern states. So the people who used cocaine for this purpose, they were known as roustabouts. And because most of the workers doing the jobs that incentivized cocaine use were black, cocaine began to be used to justify racism. And racism is used to justify anti-cocaine sentiment. So it was very much a circular argument against cocaine and against black people. And in some cases, it seems that plantation owners actually supplied their workers with cocaine. One report from the medical news stated that, and I'm reading a section here, one big planter is reported to keep the drug in stock among the plantation supplies and to issue regular rations of cocaine, just as he was accustomed in the past to issue rations of whiskey. As there is never enough labor to pick all the cotton, it is to the interest of the planners to have the Negroes work as much extra time as possible. And another report in the same publication claimed that workers on many plantations would refuse to work unless they were guaranteed access to cocaine. Now, how true these claims are, especially the last one is perfectly up to dispute. But the important thing is that this is the perception of cocaine that was being cultivated in the South. And this was also true in the West, where cocaine was sold in mining camps to stimulate the miners. And in fact, the first state bill passed to regulate cocaine cells was passed in La Plata County, Colorado in 1897. And even though you had the racial association being cultivated in the South, cocaine use was also growing more common among white factory workers in the New England States. Nonetheless, the wave of anti-cocaine sentiment grew out of the Southern racism, more than the actual effects of cocaine among laborers. The earliest and most widespread reports of cocaine epidemics came from Southern cities, starting with New Orleans in the 1890s. And again, it should be clear that the racial prejudices drove the anti-cocaine sentiments, but the drug use wasn't really race specific. One New Orleans police officer noted that, and I'm quoting him, he says that cocaine has always been confined to the immoral and lower classes of the community, both white and black, which basically just means that he sees it among people who are doing the harder manual jobs. But you also had people like E.H. Williams saying that, I'm quoting again, the cocaine habit has assumed the proportions of an epidemic among the colored people. And this really was the prevailing narrative. And since this was taking place at a time when people in the South were always looking for justifications for their racist views, cocaine gave them an easy culprit to point to. There was a drugist in Houston who said, as a way of informing people of the evils of cocaine, he said, little did the North know when freeing the Negro into what awful slavery they would lead him. Now, prior to the emancipation of the slaves, a popular justification of slavery was this idea of paternalism. That blacks were inferior and slavery was a way that benevolent whites could take care of helpless blacks. And this is the notion that this drugist was appealing to by saying, essentially, look, the North freed the slaves and now they're much worse off because they're all addicted to cocaine. So anti-cocaine sentiments were heavily driven by racist confirmation bias. But the racial narrative turned much more sinister as people started to exaggerate the effects of cocaine. Much like we saw with the anti-Chinese sentiments regarding opium, people were spreading the idea that cocaine was used to bring well to do white women into what they were calling white slavery during the Progressive Era, which meant prostitution. One newspaper article claimed that these so-called white slavers would, and I'm quoting, cunningly persuade young girls who have fallen into their power to take up cocaine, have a sniff of this. It won't hurt you and it will cheer you up, they say. And then the unhappy creature loses all desire to escape. This was also coupled with horror stories of dealers selling cocaine to schoolchildren, which, as always, there's essentially zero supporting evidence for this claim. But the real fear was driven by the images of the cocaine predator, the cocaine fiend who's driven to violence, who would get high on cocaine and just commit these horrible, horrible violent crimes while he's crazed. And the people who pedaled this theory argued that first cocaine addicts would suffer from a paranoid psychosis that would produce violent encounters. And then the cocaine would give them, in the words of Alexander Lambert, one of the expositors of these ideas, cocaine would give users a tremendous inflation of personality and it would give them herculean strength and stamina. And this would also stimulate violent impulses. And finally, the cocaine would cause a complete loss of control for the user, which would manifest in violent behavior. One drug addiction specialist argued that criminality and lawless conduct, and I'm pulling words directly from his own argument, but I am paraphrasing here. Criminality and lawless conduct were the natural results of cocaine use and it resulted in delusions of persecution, which is laughable in the case of blacks who used cocaine to think that their sense of persecution and the sounds was merely a delusion, but that's how the narrative was driven. And cocaine would cause the loss of all ethical sense of law and order. And anytime you saw a lower class person acting wildly and maniacally, they were probably suffering from cocaineism. There was a popular book published in 1915 that heavily entrenched the idea of cocaine driving people to crime. I'm going to read a passage from this book that I think is very telling, and in regards to the case of a boy, I assume this is the case of an actual person, but the accuracy of the account in the book is highly disputable, but the person is just referred to as case 29. So here's what the book said. Case 29 was reported to us as being certainly that of a cocaineist. This was a boy of distinctly inferior type, coming from a notoriously bad environment who had cocaine in his possession. He was an excessive thief and vagrant associating with the lowest companions. He glibly gave an account of the most miserable forms of life in the underworld. Already at 15, he had had two venereal diseases offered a helping hand by a manly police officer. He was so weak-willed that he could not lift himself out of the mire, although he steadily maintained that he wished to do better. His word was absolutely unreliable. In court, this boy took on the toughest attitudes and volubly insisted that he was being persecuted by the police. He had been already four times in the adult courts through always giving his wrong age. And although small in size had twice served terms in adult houses of correction, chiefly notable about him was his poor physical condition, his lack of willpower, his excessive lying in his attitude of boldness. And in this last paragraph is, I think, the most telling. It is well recognized that some criminals and rarely others take this drug to give them physical steadiness and temporarily heighten their mental capacity. Occasionally, a criminal will become so far influenced by it that he loses all foresight and self-control and is ready to shoot to kill upon the slightest provocation. If we saw the case cited above a few years later, we should probably find him a most dangerous fellow carrying weapons and willing to do anything desperate. This is a very ominous narrative, but there's actually no real evidence that this person, however true the account itself may be, was a cocaine addict. By this time, the narrative about cocaine crime in the lower class was so entrenched that a person who fits such a description was largely just assumed to be a cocaine addict. And the cocaine addicts who were able to continue their habit privately and maintain a normal life, they were ignored. So it made it easy to assume that all cocaine addicts were criminals and all or nearly all criminals were cocaine addicts. And furthermore, all of the criminal aspects of the person were the sole result of their cocaine use alone. The idea that cocaine gave criminals, essentially superpowers, along with the increased desire for deviant behavior was also being cultivated, especially again in the South and regarding blacks. A prominent Southern alcohol prohibitionist also took up the anti-cocaine crusade and told stories intended to inspire fear in Northern readers. This is actually E.H. Williams again. I mentioned him earlier and he wrote in what is probably the most famous article on the matter, which was a New York timepiece entitled Negro cocaine fiends are a new Southern menace and it was published in 1914. And in this article, Williams said that I'm quoting here from the from the article, cocaine transformed hitherto inoffensive law abiding Negroes into a constant menace to his community under the influence of cocaine, sexual desires are increased and perverted, peaceful Negroes become quarrelsome and timid Negroes develop a degree of Dutch courage that is sometimes almost incredible. And this resulted in, quote, a large proportion of the wholesale killings in the South during recent years, which have been the result of cocaine. Furthermore, Williams argued that blacks who used cocaine were absolutely beyond redemption. He went on to spread the idea of the superpowered cocaine user and said that the cocaine Negro is sure hard to kill, which he supported with an apocryphal story of a police chief DK Lyrely in Asheville, North Carolina, who was attempting to arrest a black man and he drew his gun on him and killed him. In the words of Lyrely, as quoted by Williams, he killed him for I knew I had to kill him quick because in Williams' narrative expanding on the story, quote, this bullet did not even stagger the crazed Negro and neither did a second bullet, which pierced the biceps muscle and entered the thorax. So the officer finally had to finish the man with a club. In fact, I mean, these stories, you still hear these today about meth heads and stuff like that that just like they're impervious to bullets and things of that nature. So these myths are literally more than a century old and they're not true for meth either, by the way. And this is the story that prompted the police, starting with Chief Lyrely, to trade in their 32 caliber guns for 38 caliber guns, which is really probably the first step we can identify in the militarization of the police, which has been the evolutionary process of police obtaining more powerful weaponry, almost exclusively justified by the war on drugs. Williams ended his demagogic story by saying that cocaine, besides making the habituate homicidal, adds to his ability to carry out the homicidal intent by improving his marksmanship. So cocaine even made murderers a better shot with a gun. And he also claimed, like the Houston drug, drugist, that ever since the emancipation of the slaves, the South has been confronted by a problem that does not exist in the North. This problem is the control of the Negro, particularly the low class Negro. This kind of narrative, though, was not new in the country. And so that was published, remember, in 1914. But it was it was based on fears that had already been started to cultivate by other stories and other narratives that misattributed cocaine to acts of violence. One of these was in 1900, a black man named Robert Charles went on a shooting spree in New Orleans, killing seven people and wounding 20 others. Now, this was a real shooting spree. But newspapers reported that police found a bottle of cocaine in his residence. And the story spread like wildfire that his cocaine use caused the shooting spree, though there's no proof that Charles was under the influence of cocaine during the shooting spree. So he's probably true that they found the bottle of cocaine, almost certainly true that he used it, but no evidence that he was under the influence of the time. And of course, we know today that cocaine does not have that effect to make him go out and commit a shooting spree that he wouldn't otherwise be inclined to do. Another event in a small town called Harrison, Mississippi, this time in 1913, just one year before the Harrison Narcotic Act, and it was used as justification for the Narcotic Act, it occurred in which two brothers, also Black, Will and Walter Jones were their names. They killed three white people, one of whom was a former sheriff of Jefferson County, Mississippi. And this actually prompted a race riot that was so large, it only ended because the National Guard was sent in to suppress it. And there was zero evidence that these two killers had used cocaine. Unlike the case of Robert Charles, they didn't even find evidence of their ever having used cocaine. But the narrative that this was a cocaine fueled race riot spread all the way up to New York with the New York Herald running an article with the headline 10 killed 35 hurt in race riot born of a cocaine jack. And it was this Mississippi riot that helped Senator Ben Tillman, whose nickname was Pitchfork Ben of South Carolina, to urge passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act that was passed less than a year afterwards. And if you're not familiar with Ben Tillman, by the way, this guy was just a violent racist, even by the standards of the late 19th century South. He was a proud member of the red shirts, which was kind of like the Ku Klux Klan, which they were a paramilitary force that would prevent blacks from voting. And they would outright murder blacks who tried to vote. I mean, hundreds of murders were committed by these people in the 19th century. And Tillman would literally stand on the Senate floor as late as the early 20th century. This was in 1907, when he told the story about his participation in the killing of black men to secure southern elections. So he was proud of his violence and proud of his racism. But one quote listed in his 1944 biography, reported him saying this is just one of the most remarkably disgusting quotes by him, I think he said, quote, I have three daughters, but so help me God, I had rather find either one of them killed by a tiger or a bear and die of virgin than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend. So openly racist, openly violent, proud of this, talked about it on the Senate floor. And he used this Hariston, Mississippi incident to drive animosity against cocaine. And I could go on for a while with all the things this guy did and said while he was senator, because I mean, it's a laundry list of things. But I don't want to get too far off the topic of cocaine, but you can imagine that this guy was pretty bad. And he sees the opportunity of the Mississippi race riots and the narrative that it was driven by cocaine to push for drug regulation. He was defending his position on drug prohibition to a physician friend of his. And he said, I'm quoting here again. I suppose you saw the papers some days ago where the two mulatto boys in Hariston, Mississippi, got crazed on cocaine and went on the war path with the result that eight people were killed and a large number wounded. And some of these stories about cocaine fueling violence were just arbitrary. One such story was a heavily circulated one. And it was spread by a physician from Louisville, Kentucky, who claimed that a male cocaine addict, a white guy in this story, and I'm quoting here. He was walking over a viaduct when a high viaduct when he met a little girl and her baby brother. And without any warning, he seized the little girl and hurled her over the railing to the rocks about 70 feet below. Another story from New Orleans reported the case of a man named Edward Ramey, who beat a jeweler to death while he was under the influence of cocaine. Now, some acts of violence, such as the one mentioned in Louisville, were defended in court by citing the use of cocaine. But the actual use of cocaine in these events is highly questionable. And furthermore, we know that although cocaine does have harmful effects, right? I don't want to defend cocaine use. It is very bad for you. There's really no evidence then or now that it actually alters one mind in such a way as to make them ethically willing to commit acts of violence that they would not have been willing to do while sober. There were reports of people committing robberies to get get money for cocaine. And these reports actually were happening even in the pre prohibition days when it was kind of getting harder to obtain cocaine and cocaine was expensive. So there there's violence fueled indirectly by cocaine based on the motivation for that. But not these like wanton acts of murder. These would just be like thefts, things, things of that nature. But the narrative of the violent cocaine fiend was becoming entrenched. And so people were using this as a defense in court saying, don't blame me, blame the drug. And because the government made no distinction between coca leaves and cocaine itself, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, this change in sentiment helped drive animosity against coca drinks such as Coca Cola. And so the government actually put more pressure on coca drinks than they did on the pharmaceuticals that were actually containing the isolated cocaine alkaloid. And it also helped drive cocaine use into what the historian John Splane has called the shadow markets, being where cocaine was wasn't really illegal. But it was starting to be sold in secret prior to the Harrison Narconic Act. One drugstore, for instance, would sell cocaine to people, but they used code saying the customers would say that they wanted to buy a box or a nail. And the clerks would ask, how far do you want to go? And the customer would say one block or two blocks to inform them of how much cocaine they wanted to buy. And this is all when cocaine was still technically legal. You also had state and city laws being passed against cocaine, particularly in New York, that helped drive the underground market. And so cocaine sting operations were where undercover agents tried to catch people in the act of selling cocaine for non medical uses started before the passage of the Harrison Narconic Act. And this was seen as very immoral behavior, even by physicians and pharmacists who supported the regulation of cocaine. One medical journal actually reported that while it is true that the indiscriminate cocaine sellers should be prosecuted, still it does seem as though less trickery on the part of the inspectors is desirable. So this was a journal that did want regulation of cocaine, but they didn't like the tactics that they were using in the sting operation to catch people. And of course, the modern drug warrior can't hardly imagine any other way that the police would catch people selling drugs other than these elaborate, expensive and now dangerous sting operations. So all this meant was that by the time cocaine was made a nationally regulated substance, you already had underground networks in place to keep the supply of cocaine to those who wanted to use it recreationally. So the drug laws really had little to nothing to do with the decline of cocaine. But by the 1920s, cocaine use did start waning on its own. And it remained a pretty minor recreational drug until the late 1960s and 1970s, when it started becoming widely popular again, which I'm going to discuss on later episodes on the war on drugs. So I'm going to wrap this up here. There's more I could say about cocaine if we wanted to get into like the 1980s, but I'll save those for later episodes and do subscribe to this podcast if you enjoy this because I've got a few more episodes on the war on drugs before we move on to other historical topics. And the next one I'm going to do is just going to be on the war on drugs before Richard Nixon. So a lot of the histories, most of the histories, in fact, really start the history with 1969. But there was a lot of interesting things that were going on before that. And I want to talk about them and how they deal with some of these drugs that we've already discussed prior to 1914. And then the episode after that, which I think is going to be my favorite, is going to be on LSD, which just has some of the most hilarious stories of both government and private LSD usually. I mean, I honestly was just looking forward to it for the entertaining aspects, but it's also going to demonstrate the absolute stupidity of the government on prohibiting LSD. So we definitely want to look forward to both of those episodes. And you're going to want to subscribe to the podcast. And until then, thank you for listening. For more content like this, visit mesus.org.