Cocaine's variable past(s)

Paul Gootenberg

Chapter 8 in Research Handbook on Drugs and Society, 2026, pp 85-96 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter shows the malleability of cocaine's profile across a long series of stages in the drug's history, and in its variable entwined relationship with its far older botanical source, Andean coca leaf. Such changes are registered in multiple legal regimes around the drug, in cocaine's shifting prestige and legitimacy, in its forms of licit and illicit use, the degree of cocaine's social harm and the impacts of the drug's prohibition on global consuming, producing and trafficking zones. Cocaine's transformations are traced from its origins as a legal medicinal commodity (1850–1910); restrictions on cocaine and its global spread and decline (1910–45); global prohibitions and the birth of illicit cocaine (1945–75); the age of and war on cocaine (1975–2000); and cocaine's global shift south and expansive presence in the twenty-first century. Cocaine is far more mutable than a mere chemical, a stimulant, a habit, or a pleasure. This variable past may suggest new ways of thinking about and dealing with the drug.

Keywords: Cocaine; Coca leaf; Stimulants; Andean region; Crack cocaine; War on drugs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781802209136
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