Did Drug Prohibition Work?: Reflections on the End of the First Cocaine Experience in the United States, 1910-45

• NCJ Number: 173623
• Journal: Journal of Drug Issues Volume: 28 Issue: 2 Dated: Spring 1998 Pages: 517-538
• Author(s): J Spillane
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The use of cocaine in the United States began during the mid-1880s, reached a peak between 1900 and 1915, and then went into a period of sustained decline; this study examines several explanations for cocaine's decline, concluding that the start of legal prohibition was only partly responsible.

Abstract

Legal controls virtually eliminated the licit supply of cocaine and increased the costs of obtaining illicit supplies. These trends, however, had begun much earlier as a result of regulation and informal controls. Moreover, the "success" of legal prohibition depended on a number of unique historical circumstances, including the ready supply of cheap heroin for domestic drug markets. The conclusion of the first cocaine era was neither an inevitable end to a "cycle" of drug use, nor the outcome of a well-planned set of drug policies, but rather the product of a combination of national and international trends. The ability of social and professional disapproval to marginalize a legal drug suggests that the imposition of legal controls alone cannot account for historical patterns of sale and use. To those who may be tempted to idealize conditions of drug use under legalization, the historical experience serves as a reminder that the social sanction of drug use is not merely a product of legal status. The group of cocaine users whose actions apparently have been most critical were the so-called cocaine fiends, whose frequent use of large doses of cocaine accounted for most of the cocaine consumed in the United States. Further, the trend toward declining cocaine use in the United States must be placed in the context of the growth of consumption in other regions of the world. Cocaine may have become less available in the United States in part because both domestic and foreign manufacturers of the drug sought out newer, less regulated locations. 3 tables, 14 notes, and 42 references