Cocaine

History

Cocaine is used, in an empirical way, very long time by the Indians of the the Andes which chew the sheets of Coca or consume them out of infusion to help them to resist tiredness and altitude. A specimen was brought back in Europe by Jussieu in 1750. In 1855, the German Chimiste Friedrich Gaedcke obtains crystals by distilling sheets of Coke, it names this substance erythroxyline .
In 1859, Carl Scherzer, a traveller, brings back to Vienna sheets of coke at the request of the chemist Friedrich Wöhler who entrusts the study of it to one of his students Albert Niemann.
Albert Niemann dies little of time afterwards and it is one of his/her colleagues, Wilhelm Lossen which finds the empirical formula in 1865, proving that it is indeed a Alcaloïde. Fleischl was to die six years later morphine addict and cocaïnomane.

It is the Ophtalmologue Carl Koller, which tested cocaine on the council of Freud, and the physiologist Leopold Königstein which apply the observations already made to the product and successfully practice a local anesthesia in human surgery. They present their work to the company of the doctors of Vienna , the October 17th 1884 in a context where the local anesthesia is unknown, cocaine is then presented like miraculous .

However as of 1885, the multiplication of the cases of cocainism starts to be denounced by other doctors (the psychiatrist Albrecht Erlenmeyer, the toxicologist Louis Lewin) and moves the German public opinion. The powder sold on the clandestine market as being cocaine would contain any in fact only 3 to 35%. With alcohol, this increases the Toxicité of the two products.

Effects and consequences

Cocaine crosses the barrier Placenta anger and exposes the Fœtus at the risks of delay of growth, vascular accidents, malformation.

Required effects

The use of cocaine causes:

strong a Euphoria

The tolerance relates to only some of the effects in particular the euphoria and is strongly related to the individual sensitivities.

The Colombia is the first producer country of cocaine, adding up with it-only 776 tons per annum (given 2005).

; Evaluation of the traffic According to a report/ratio of the central Office for the repression of the illicit traffic of the narcotics (OCRTIS) of October 18th, 2006, the seizures of cocaine of 2005 (5 tons) are in progression of 16% compared to 2004, which constituted already a record.

It should be noted that the Labor regulation prohibits the taking away urinary or blood in company to detect possible traces of drugs, apart from the stations known as “of safety”.

References

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