Freedom of Medicine and Diet: Opium and Coca Thrown Under The Bus

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Opium and Coca Thrown Under The Bus

Mis-regulated to continually kill- Tobacco-Pharma Protectionism Masquerading as a "War on Drugs"

Lets face it. Drug policy reformists had a bad idea of strictly focusing upon Cannabis, while saying nothing about any sort of legalization for Opium and Coca- the natural plant substances and products approximating their natural potency, simply resting upon fear of these substances select alkaloids in highly concentrated evermore problematic forms, even refusing to address ridiculous sentences, as a minimum of 1 year incarceration for possessing a dime bag with residue of cocaine/heroin etc.

The Drug Policy Alliance (previously the Drug Policy Foundation) started out as a great idea, especially for disseminating new ideas and perspectives, but was alas hobbled, particularly by tobacco industry connections, to with Ira Glasser and the Washington DC law firm of Covington & Burling. To wit, the D.P.F. Conference Paper Compendiums. Went from good to great 1989-1992, to subsequently crash and burn. To wit the D.P.F. conference itenery, like the panels.

Now consider that the D.P.F. was founded in 1986, having its initial international conference the following year in London, and then in 1988 in Washington, D.C.- the year that Covington & Burling announced its pro bono program was going to advise the D.P.F. on corporate and tax matters- according to a dated March 1990 letter by D.P.F.'s Kevin Zeese and Arnold Trebach in the 1988-1990 Biennial Report.

D.P.F. had been founded in response to the great 1986 mass media hyperbole over the substance "cocaine" - an alkaloid found in minute amounts in Coca leaves - as are caffeine and nicotine. Now, no one would expect to mess with powder caffeine rather than say drink Coffee or some other caffeine containing beverage, let alone the far deadlier nicotine. Yet the mass media acts under a dictate that discussing cocaine must always assume zero need to discuss the drug's form - a plant product or an ultra concentrate. So when a University of Maryland graduate who was accepted to play for the Boston Celtics, Len Bias, ODs from drinking a cup of tea laced with 1000 milligrams cocaine, the media simply reports that he died from cocaine (with zero mention of dosage), and the news industry starts singing in chorus the "need" to further increase cocaine prohibition statute violations. So, both establishment parties demand this new legislation. The 1986 Act, establishing the new mandatory minimum prison sentences for "crack" cocaine- a mass media coined term for cocaine sulfate (rather than cocaine hydrochloride), which the media sensationalized as the means for cocaine via the lungs- smoked or vaporized- for a far more toxic-alluring habit, though in fact is also the alternative means to take cocaine by inhalation (snorting), but in an infinitely more useful way, whereas snorting the hydrochloride yields a rapid absorption and subsequent crash, snorting the sulfate yields a considerably slower absorption, making it comparable indeed superior than drinking Coffee! So once again the mass media helps popularize more dangerous ways of taking cocaine while ignoring those considerably safer.

So, where was the D.P.F. in going beyond Cannabis/Marijuana? Kevin Zeese had come from NORML - National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws - so where and what would be the attention and focus regarding opiates, starting with good old Opium, and especially - given the Len Bias response - cocaine? With people in problematic user relationships with such substances in the artificially concentrated forms guaranteed by prohibition - the 1914 Harrison Act set the practice of banning both the key active alkaloids and the respective parent plan, thereby eliminating safe, measured dose retail products, in favor of a contraband market of ultra concentrated key alkaloids without quality assurance. So instead of things as the true original formula Coca-Cola (about 1 1/2 milligrams cocaine per fluid ounce), and Vin Mariani (7 milligrams cocaine per fluid ounce, sold in 17 ounce bottles made with an extract of 2 ounces of a variety of three types of Coca leaves), or ridiculous stuff as encouraged by trade-tax codes favoring Coca Wines that were "medicinal"- with that phrase being defined as a minimum of 30 milligrams of cocaine per fluid ounce! (and made instead with a coca alkaloid paste. A 1905 NYS Pharmacy Law draft shows support for the idea of limiting the allowable amounts of cocaine, at 1/8th a grain, about 9 milligrams per fluid ounce- the same amount the Harrison Act allowed for heroin content. Nevertheless, the U.S. government embarked upon a strident political campaign to absolutely ban cocaine (re: Coca), with zero allowable cocaine content. This came about 1904, with the deliberations leading up to the U.S. Food & Drugs Act. This was just after the pair of attempted shakedowns of Vin Mariani (the January 1898 & 1904 Papal Gold Medles to Vin Mariani inventor Angelo Francois Mariani (December 17, 1838 - April 1, 1914) as a benefactor to humanity for making quality Coca available around the world, and of the U.S. acquisition of the project to construct the Panama Canal, which was completed in 1914, year of the Harrison Act, in time to block the canal for easing Coca leaf shipments to north Atlantic markets. Research clearly shows how "medical" interests subverted any sane rational use of Coca, initially by marketing 30 milligram per fluid ounce "Coca" (chalk cocaine) Wines/Tonics", along with cocaine injection kits! Subsequently then by not really addressing the massive differences in potency and effects, indeed just the opposite. To wit The New York Times front page headline "Slaves to Cocaine Habit" about what ought to have been headlines "Victims to Cocaine INJECTIONS" - as if it were thus safe to inject caffeine or especially nicotine. Medical guilds as the the American Medical Association, American Phamaceutical Association all insisted that state legislatures pass legislation to ban cocaine. No mention of coca leaves, nor coca leaf extract, nor methods of preparation, storage, nor production. And zero interest in setting allowable/permissible amounts (like the 1905 NY Pharmacy proposal for up to 9 milligrams cocaine per fluid ounce, versus the 30+ seen starting during the mid 1880s. NO interest in any allowable amounts! With cocaine/Coca natural/agricultural stimulants, the matter was not about simply prohibiting products with increasingly problematic, especially injections, and with that, mainly the cathhrr sniffing powders.

Rather, the supposed "medical" lobby was working with the establishment of protecting key commodities, above all, Coffee, Tea, and most disgustingly, Tobacco. Coca as a stimulant had been examined and advocated as a substitute, even for alleviating the assumptions of nicotine withdrawal. And it is that use, Coca as a "Tobacco Habit Cure" that was clearly the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s concern. See their 1910 1910 USDA Farmers Bulletin article "Habit-Forming Agents- their sale and use a menace to the public welfare"

So given the relative health effects of Tobacco versus Coca, as well as the effects of prohibition and mis-regulation, we ought to have had an emerging political demand for stopping this criminal action of market subversion, starting with repealing the ban on cocaine, with restrictions based solely upon matters of content/potency. For instance, Coffee is legal. Caffeine powder is also legal, and can be sold on the internet to anyone, without any requirement of medical training. And people have killed themselves unwittingly by treating purified caffeine like say salt or sugar. Yet no one calls out in favoring a ban on caffeine. So where would be a movement to not simply just reduce penalties, but to re-legalize with a comparably safe, regulated formula/content retail products based upon Coca leaf?

I began attending the Drug Policy Foundation international conferences in 1989. Found nothing on Coca, though did find it included a pair of panels, each addressing opium/opiates, or cocaine. And the cocaine panel was inclusive, so panelists could talk about Coca leaf, as well as snortable or smokable white cocaine. And the November 1989; Drug Policy 1989-1990 A Reformer’s Catalog”,
“Coca: an Alternative to Cocaine?”by Anthony Richard Henman

The early 1990s Drug Policy Foundation was great opportunity for overlooked matters relating to the whole "war on drugs" modern day pharmacological inquisition. So for 1990 D.P.F. conference, I submit a paper, The Ever Changing Ever Confused Popular Conception of Cocaine, which they publish. For 1991 I submit a paper, and offer myself as a panelist, and am placed upon the cocaine panel. I do likewise for 1992, and am again placed upon the cocaine panel, plus a second panel "Is America Exporting Its Problems."

These were my own authored papers that I submitted to and which were published by the Drug Policy Foundation 1990, 1991, & 1992:

November 1990; “The Great Issues of Drug Policy”
“The Ever-Changing, Ever-Confused Popular Conception of Cocaine”, by Douglas A. Willinger

November 1991; “New Frontiers in Drug Policy”
“Cocaine Prohibition, Water or Gasoline…?” by Douglas A. Willinger

November 1992; “Strategies for Change”,
“Cocaine Conversion: Onwards to Coca” by Douglas A. Willinger

These were the panels were I was a panelist:

- 1991 "The Cocaine/Crack Scene” held Saturday, November 16, moderated by Bruce K. Alexander, Simon Fraser University; Patricia Erickson; Steven B. Karch, forensic drug abuse adviser, Berkeley, California; Randy Salekin, graduate student Simon Fraser University; Douglas Willinger, graduate student, School of Justice, Law and Society, American University.

- 1992 "Cocaine and Trade” Moderated by Craig Reinarman, University of California; Bertha K. Madra, PhD, Harvard Medical School; Douglas Willinger, graduate student, American University; John Lindsay-Poland, Fellowship of Reconciliation; and Bruce Alexander, Simon Fraser University; as well as “The Americas: Is the U.S. Exporting Its Problems” Moderated by Ethan Nadelmann, J.D., PhD., Princeton University; Christina Johns. Ph.D. Alabama State University; Julius A. Gylys, Ph.D., University of Toledo; Patricia Castana, Journalist, Columbia; Doug Willinger, graduate student, American University.

Yet things changed afterwards.

For 1993, I again submit paper proposals, and I am rebuffed.

Thank you for your interest in the Seventh International Conference on Drug Policy Reform. I have read your recently submitted proposals addressing coca. Unfortunately, due to the large volume of proposals received we cannot accept all of the quality topics suggested for this year’s conference. Fortunately, with your help, coca is one of the subject matters we have more then adequately educated our members on in years past. This year, we must make room in the manual and the panel discussions for the plethora of current issues affecting drug policy. We thank you for your interest and dedication to the reform of drug policy. I hope you will attend the conference in November and encourage you to submit a proposal to next year’s call for papers.

D.P.F. to Douglas Willinger, June 3, 1993, signed by Kendra Wright, Director of Development,

Notably that was the day the Wall Street Journal had a page one article about Bolivia's campaign to open up a legal market for coca leaf, “Bolivians Are High On a Toothpaste Made From Coca; Exporters Express Resentment That Kinship to Cocaine Is Blowing Their Business”. I send D.P.F.'s Kendra Wright a copy of that article, along with others from the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post about Coca tea drinkers urine testing positive for cocaine metabolites and the controversies about their loosing job eligibility. I also include an abstract of a study of the medicinal use of coca tea to wean users/abusers of concentrated forms of cocaine. All to no avail.

Things radically changed at the Drug Policy Foundation after 1992.

No more serious conference paper compendium (book) open original independent research. No more 428 or 391 page D.P.F. conference paper compendiums with over 100 original article. Whereas previously square bound, 270+ pages with dozens of original article, and now a spiral bound tome 1/2 the size with all articles previously published elsewhere.

And, get this, NO MORE REGULAR BROAD SPECTRUM COCAINE PANEL!

And any later cocaine panels are focused strictly upon the matter of crack smoking, so as to exclude any other modes of taking cocaine.

But we get this new panel as the substitution, on "Latin America"- for a while entirely or mainly female panelists - chaired by Colletta Youngers, who was later involved with Carter Center work on Coca.

For 1994, same refusal to place me on a panel, nor publish a paper.

With the sole exception in 1995, the organization refuses to hold any panels for coca, and only hold "cocaine" panels that are exclusively about "crack" cocaine. Arnold Trebach starts a "student paper competition" which is held 1996, 1997, 1999 and in 2000- its final year, which ended up being a paper on coca.

Zeese resigned October 1994, while Trebach would be removed by a D.P.F. Board of Directors at the 1997 conference, with Zeese involved in training new D.P.F. interns circa 1999.

D.P.F. becomes the D.P.A. via its merger with the Lindesmith Institute that Ethan Nadelmann founded circa 1992/3. In its first 15 years, the D.P.A. held zero panels on coca, only doing so for 2015& 2017. The panelists were all spanish speaking/if not bilingual. ALL were from South America. And the focus was specifically about the rights of the indigenous to chew coca leaves, but nothing much if at all about expanding licit markets. ALL the panelists were of course invited by the D.P.A. the George Soros "Open Society Institute", which held the same panel at its headquarters in Manhattan in 2018. The D.P.A. though would not hold this panel at their 2019 conference in St. Louis, and it does not appear in their 2023 conference schedule.

Over the years, your truly made various panel proposals to the D.P.F./D.P.A., including:

1994- “Coca- Turning Over a New Leaf in Reducing Health Care Costs.”

- Coca: powder cocaine and crack substitute: making their abuse obsolete.
- Medical Coca: a multitude of valuable therapeutic applications.
- Coca: the safer alternative to licit stimulants, particularly Tobacco.

Presenting Coca in this context is a potent antidote to popular misconceptions that drug prohibition somehow serves the general welfare. People support prohibition, generally viewing it favorably in inverse proportion to the degree they see illegal drugs as "bad." The story of Coca though is a powerful indictment of prohibition.

Here is something clearly good, useful for a variety of medical uses, and as a daily stimulant. Indeed, to a greater extent than medical Marijuana, drug war proponents acknowledge such medical uses of Coca as a remedy for high altitude sickness, other forms of nausea, and stomach aches; indeed recommendations for these uses of Coca are found in virtually any Andean tourist guide book. People in most parts of the world though are generally oblivious to this, focusing instead the situation with concentrated cocaine that prohibition created and sustains. As people have had the drug issue defined in such a convoluted way to misperceive the illicit market in powder cocaine and crack -- cocaine hydrochloride and sulfate -- as the natural situation that would exist without prohibition, ignorance of Coca is crucial towards maintaining popular support for the drug war!

The social importance of this panel is undeniably high. Let the following serve as but one example. The leaf's reported utility to the newly born --- as Coca is valuable to CNS stimulation and improves the blood count of oxygen, giving it to women in labor has immense potential towards reducing the instances of brain damage amongst new borns (see the Saturday newsletter from the 1993 DPF conference) -- alone could save millions of dollars in medical bills and lost productivity, to say nothing of the prevalence of these heart-breaking tragedies sustained by widespread ignorance of Coca's therapeutic benefits.

Given the President's concerns over reducing health care costs and Coca leaf's potential with this, is extremely valuable to the general welfare. Indeed, perhaps this is the drug policy reformists' most powerful approach towards dispelling the false utopic vision now clouding a clear perspective of the drug war, for nobody can dismiss (or ignore) it without appearing down right callous.

The Clintons ought to find this irresistible.

1996- COCA '96: Medical, Legal and Social Considerations for the Next Millennia, with the tentative Speakers: Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, Dr. Jorge Hurtado, Joseph Kennedy, Anthony Richard Henman.

Medically, economically and socially, the situation surrounding the Coca plant is unjustifiable. Respected medical researchers suggest that the leaves of Coca offer interesting medical benefits as an effective and relatively safe medicine and stimulant. Dr. Andrew T. Weil, a proponent of Coca as an alternative to Coffee, particularly for people suffering Gastro-intestinal tract problems, noted in a recent magazine interview that Coca is "very good for any type of stomach or intestinal disorder. It stabilizes blood sugar, treats motion sickness, [and] has a relaxing effect upon the larynx for people who are speakers or singers. It also could be used as an aid to weight loss, because you can chew coca instead of eating a meal and use the energy to exercise. I think it could definitely be useful as a treatment to get people off of cocaine [hydrochloride and sulfate].” Coca's use in treating cocaine addiction-- akin to the use of methadone with regard to heroin abuse - is advocated by specialists such as Dr. Jorge Hurtado of the International Coca Research Institute in Bolivia. (Dr. Hurtado spoke via video at the premier D.P.F. conference Coca workshop COCA ‘95: A Necessary Drug Policy Alternative from Abroad). As can be gathered from numerous readings, unrefined Coca is far safer than other substances -- prescription and over the counter preparations -- employed for similar purposes. Revelations such as these suggest that re-legalizing Coca's international trade would be immensely beneficial from a public health standpoint. Indeed, Coca's historic use as a Tobacco substitute or "cure", along with the government's interesting concerns about this, as illustrated by such government publications as the United States Department of Agriculture's 1910 Habit-forming Agents: their indiscriminate sale and use a threat to the public welfare, in conjunction with their relative health effects, make our "drug war" exceptionally galling.

Towards helping the public understand the Coca issue, this proposed Drug Policy Foundation Coca session shall address Coca leaf as medicine and stimulant, along with the current "war on drugs" now denying the world the myriad benefits of the natural leaf. Tentative speakers include Dr. Ronald Siegel [U.C.L.A.], Dr. Jorge Hurtado [International Coca Research Institute, in Bolivia], anthropologist Anthony Henman, [author, the 1978 book, MamaCoca] and archaeologist Joseph Kennedy [author, the 1985 book, Coca Exotica]. [All the speakers have been informed of this Proposal, and have responded favorably, conditional upon the Foundation providing their registration, travel and accommodation expenses.] As the audience participation and our speakers' lively presentations at the recent COCA '95 panel in Santa Monica suggest that COCA '96: Medical, Legal and Social Considerations for the Upcoming Millennia could be one of the 10th annual conference's more intriguing, if not important, events. It is also intended that the session will include discussion of new directions in drug policy reform advocacy. Discussion is intended to include the effects of the last (almost) one hundred years of government drug policies as well as identifying the policies likely to promote drug abuse by creating more potent drugs such as crack, i.e. banning the unrefined herb Coca and at the same time basing the penalties visited for its possession or sale upon the gross weights of the product. By shifting the entire "coca derivatives" market from Coca tea and Coca Wine "" towards crack, the war on drugs cruelly betrays the public's concerns over the problems of crime and drug abuse.

This proposal is best approved as a plenary panel with a workshop afterwards, perhaps accompanied by a special session for speakers from South America. It is further suggested that this proposal serve as one for the Foundation to include the Coca issue as a part of its mission towards educating the public about drug policy alternatives, via forums on Capital Hill, as we approach the upcoming millennia.

Douglas A. Willinger; (914) 636-8214 (fax)
COCA '96, Joep Oomen; 011 322 733 5708 (fax)

1997- “Tinctures of Opium, Wines of Coca, etc: Popular, Pre-prohibition Uses of Natural Plants Perverted by Drug Prohibition into today’s “Hard” Drug Plague":

"Hard" drugs - e.g. "heroin" and "cocaine" -- have evoked great fears, leading people to advocate or acquiesce to more repressive and expensive drug laws and drug law enforcement, as if these molecules were necessarily pernicious.

Yet prior to prohibition, opiates and cocaine were widely used as safely as aspirin and caffeine are now. Because we are so conditioned to react to the powder forms of these drugs, we forget that these more direct modes of ingestion -- sniffing, smoking and injecting -- were formerly a relatively rare phenomenon.

Prior to the twentieth century's "war on drugs," most people using these drugs took them in dilute form, whether as raw plant material, or plant preparation of comparable potency. Such plants and their popular preparations, were widely recognized medicinal agents, worldwide.

These substances have long and positive histories predating their criminalization by U.S. federal statute via the 1914 Harrison "Tax" Act and successive laws, and were used throughout the medical community as effective, cheap, and safe treatments for a variety of ailments.

Opium poppies have been taken medicinally for thousands of years, taken topically, smoked and even brewed as a tea, as suggested in Hogshire's "Opium for the Masses.""Cocaine" -- or more accurately, Coca just had many uses. The Extra Pharmacopoeia (the British counterpart to the U.S. Pharmacopoeia) cited Coca as a "nervine andmuscular tonic, preventing waste of tissue, appeasing hunger and thirst, relieving fatigue, and aiding free respiration ... useful in various diseases of the digestive and respiratory organs.... "

Meanwhile, the Wine of Coca, became the most widely praised plant preparation of the time. ’s creator, Angelo Francois Mariani was hailed by Pope Leo XIII as a "benefactor of humanity" for making Coca available around the world- after 40 years of Coca wine distribution."

All of this of course, prior to prohibition. Any honest program of harm reduction in drug use must go beyond the narrow-minded discussion of today's "hard drug problems": heroin and cocaine HCI, to look at Opium and Coca, to reveal the drug war's most intense effects upon drug abuse -- shifting markets to the infinitely more dangerous concentrated substances, while the natural forms are virtually forgotten.

Meanwhile the Drug Policy Alliance failed to truly address the growing drug war threat from the mis-regulation of opiates. Prior to 2010, opiates became more available with the release of oxycodin and oxycontin- all good and useful pain pills that were oversupplied insofar as their prescribing for continual daily use. Every single day. Even if the patient felt no need. Also, the prescribed dosages may have been or were most definitely excessive. Such as prescribing a 30 milligram, when 10 would suffice. This sort of use would of course result in higher rates of problems. But as can be expected, the dopy authorities make matters considerably worse. First they replace normal pills that may be sectioned or ground, with hard shell "anti-abuse" formulas, that so end up resulting in a higher dosage administration when people attempt making a smaller dose.

Then they interfere with the patient-client privilege.

As they have done with the initial 1914 Harrison Act, where they claimed to allow prescribed medical use "within the course of professional medicine only"- with the definition of that crafted by the regulations made by un-elected bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Treasury. Meaning the functionaries selected by and essentially through Georgetown University- of the society of jesus - jesuit order, strategic wing of the Catholic Church.

What the government does to consumers of opiates is despicable, and a violation of due process and equal protection under the law. Imagine placing Tobacco-nicotine regular users under such restrictions.

It has made thing increasingly worse. They reduce and cut off the pills. They embark upon harassment suits, even suing Walgreens for simply filling prescriptions. And upon the manufacturers for simply producing them.

So with licit prescribed pills unavailable, the underground market response by manufacturing its own pills, which lack the quality assurance of the legal manufactured pills.

And fatal ODs have increased on a curve resembling the sales graph chart of tobacco cigarette production following the 1906 U.S. Food & Drugs Act. As can be expected when the government "drug warriors" attack licit supplies, spawning the inevitable contraband pills of sadly inadequate quality assurance. Yet what has Ira Glasser and Ethan Nadelmann done to combat such evil policies?

D.P.A. as set under the mismanagement of the likes of Ethan Nadelmann, and Tobacco lobby fund connected Ira Glasser, has undermined its support of "harm reduction" with their continual deference to the entire crony capitalist- mercantilist political order. All they can talk about is clean needles, crack pipes, and "safe injection rooms (for cocaine?!). But dare not even mention coca leaves, coca teas, coca wines and other sensibly formulated retail retail products. As that would conflict with above all perhaps, Tobacco.

This is a clear, text book example of a beneficial substance being denied a legal market, upon behalf of entities in control of the government.

D.P.A. touts "harm reduction" as a slogan, though alas guts it with their continual deference to the entire crony capitalist- mercantilist political order. Though they claim to be working to carry forward drug policy reform, while actually working to considerably slow the pace of reform.

Just like the phony reformist smiley faces like Jimmy Carter, alas, who hid behind the made up excuse of the Jack Anderson - Peter Bourne affair to end even any talk of even just penalty reductions.

They are just being faithful to the 1914 Harrison Act ban on any detectable content of cocaine in retail Coca leaf products, in conformance to a Theodore Roosevelt administration period political pact to block Coca leaf in order to facilitate the mass growth in Tobacco cigarettes, post 1906. The U.S. had acquired control of the construction project for the Panama Canal in 1903. It would have potentially improved market access for Coca leaves via the considerably shorter shipping distances from the coast of Peru, to north Atlantic markets. And it would be completed and open to marine traffic in 1914, same year of the Harrison Act.