Cocaine :: Illegal Drugs Narcotics Papers

CocaineCocaine is a drug derived from the turn over of the Erytroxylon cocoa bush, which grows primarily in Peru and Bolivia. Cocaine also known as coke, C, snow, flake, nose candy, blow, or crack is generally sold on the driveway as a hydrochloride salt( a water-soluble salt). Cocaine is a fine, duster crystalline powder often diluted with similar-looking substances such as talcum powder powder, sugar, or amphetamines. The powder can be snorted into the nostrils, also may be rubbed onto the mucous linings of the mouth, rectum, or vagina. To experience cocaines effects quickly, and to heighten their intensity, users whatevertimes mellow out it in water and injects into a vein. The drug may be smoked in a purified form through a water yell (freebassing) or in a concentrated form (crack) shaped into pellets or rocks and placed in special smoking gear. Despite todays abuse of the highly addictive drug, cocaine was intended for medical purposes. Pure cocaine was low extracted an d identified by the German chemist Albert Niemann in the mid-19thcentury, and was introduced as a tonic/elixir in patent medicines to treat a categorization of real or imagined illnesses. Later, it was used as a local anaesthetic for eye, ear, and throat surgery and continues today to have limited use in surgery. Cocaine is a powerful central nervous system stimulus that heightens alertness and provides intense feelings of pleasure. Because of its potent euphoric and energizing effects, mevery mountain in the advanced 19th century took cocaine, even though some physicians recognized that users quickly became dependent. In the 1880s, the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud created a sensation with a series of papers praising cocaine=s potential to restore depression, alcoholism, and morphine addiction. Skepticism soon replaced this excitement, however, when documented reports of fatal cocaine poisoning, solemn mental disturbances, and cocaine addiction began to circulate. In 1902, nine ty two percent of all cocaine sold in major cities in the fall in States was in the form of an ingredient in tonics and potions available from local pharmacies. In 1911, the Canadian government legally restricted cocaine use, and its popularity decreased. The 1920s and mid-thirties saw a decline in its use, especially after amphetamines became advantageously available. Cocaine=s popular return beginning in the late 1960s, coincided with the decreased use of amphetamines.Along with the feelings of pleasure comes negative effects. The effects of any drug depend on the amounts taken at one time, the user=s past drug experience, the manner in which the drug is taken, and the portion under which the drug is taken.