When was crack discovered

Abuse of these drugs may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence. For more information on illicit drugs check out our web site at: www. Call to request NDIC products. N ational Drug Intelligence Center.

Product No. April What is crack cocaine? How is it produced? What does it look like? The Villabona conversation suggests that Blandon was simply charging Ross prevailing rates for cocaine, not fantastically discounted rates as was alleged by the Mercury News.

But, contrary to the suggestion of the Mercury News , there is no evidence that they were singularly or primarily responsible for it. First, the timing of Ross' ascension as a cocaine dealer makes it improbable that he was a pivotal factor in the explosive growth of cocaine in South Central Los Angeles.

It appears that sometime between and , crack became a concern among law enforcement and medical health experts in South Central Los Angeles. Los Angeles Police Detective Ben Gonzalez of the South Bureau juvenile narcotics division reported that juveniles were arrested on cocaine-related charges from January to November In contrast, 34 were arrested during all of An interview with a year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who spent the early s working in South Central Los Angeles revealed a similar story.

Detective Richard Ginelli became a supervisor of the South Bureau's narcotics squads in He recalled that PCP was still prevalent then and, while crack cocaine may have existed, it did not have a significant presence. Detective Ginelli recalled that starting in he began seeing "rock" cocaine with greater frequency, although it had not yet become a significant problem. Detective Alfonse Kotero, who was an LAPD policeman on the streets of South Central in , also recalled hearing about rock cocaine for the first time in During or , he recalled receiving training on rock cocaine during roll call and recalled hearing that there was freebase that was created with cocaine and rum.

Press accounts also set South Central Los Angeles' crack crisis as beginning in or about The press did not begin reporting on the issue of crack cocaine until , but those articles suggested that the mounting crack problem had existed prior to that time. According to OIG estimates, Ross began dealing small quantities of cocaine in and did not graduate to larger quantities until mid to late By the time Ross' operation reached its peak -- in , according to Ross -- crack was prevalent in South Central Los Angeles, and many other dealers were vying for a share of the lucrative market.

Thus, by the time Ross was buying and selling cocaine in large quantities, the crack crisis was well underway in South Central Los Angeles. But I wouldn't have been Freeway Rick. Blandon was certainly a major supplier, but there were plenty of others. Ross was an ambitious entrepreneur who thrived in optimal market conditions: the Colombian cocaine glut had reduced cocaine prices, and crack was well-suited for cheap, easy production and simple, ready-to-use distribution.

But crack's effects and affordability made it extremely popular among drug users and accessible to the poor. These factors were more responsible than anything else for the rise of crack cocaine. And they were not a creation of Ricky Ross, Danilo Blandon, or any other individual.

The Mercury News series suggested that Ross and Blandon were responsible for the spread of crack cocaine across the country. This claim is dubious and may be discounted for several reasons. First, it presupposes that crack first appeared in Los Angeles and spread nationwide from there. Drug experts still do not agree on the path charted by crack across the country. Some do indeed believe that crack was created on the West Coast.

Klein reported during an OIG interview that his review of Los Angeles police reports indicated the seizure of rock-like narcotic substances in glassine bags that were identified as cocaine. These, in all likelihood, were crack cocaine. Moreover, a researcher in the area of cocaine use, Dr. However, many believe that crack was created independently on the East Coast. One theory posits that crack developed on the East Coast as the result of coca paste smoking.

In the early s, drug users rediscovered cocaine just as heroin waned in popularity. At the same time, a new method of administering cocaine was becoming popular outside of the United States. A coca paste smoking epidemic erupted in Peru and the Bahamas during the s and early s. Some social scientists believe that cocaine abuse in Peru and the Caribbean in the late s presaged the United States' coming crack cocaine problem and may have been the precipitating event.

During the s in Peru -- a cocaine producing country -- General F. Raul Jeri, M. Jeri found an urban pattern of cocaine abuse among smokers of coca paste. Smokers were reportedly becoming so obsessed with their smoking that they suffered from malnutrition and ill health and resorted to crime to obtain the drug.

Robert Byck of Yale University expressed alarm at the phenomenon and urged "the Federal Government to engage in an educational campaign to prevent a drug abuse epidemic" in the United States. In later testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations on July 15, , after the crack cocaine crisis had begun here, Dr. Byck would proclaim that "[t]oday we are in the midst of the predicted epidemic.

Just on the heels of the Peruvian crisis was the outbreak of a similar phenomenon in the Bahamas. The cocaine base smoking epidemic in the Bahamas was even more widely reported among social scientists in the United States than the phenomenon in Peru. It represented the first documented nationwide epidemic of freebase cocaine abuse outside of a producer nation. A well respected medical journal, The Lancet , reported that beginning in , the number of admissions for cocaine abuse to Bahamian psychiatric hospitals increased dramatically: from none in , to 69 in , and to in A DEA report identified the substance that was being smoked in the Bahamas as "crack.

James Inciardi, a researcher in the area of illicit drugs, has written several articles on the onset of cocaine base smoking in the Bahamas. He has asserted that the Bahamian coca paste epidemic was caused by the Colombian government's successful attempt to restrict the sale of ether used to convert coca paste into cocaine hydrochloride in anticipation that it would reduce the domestic production of cocaine hydrochloride.

Instead, according to Dr. Inciardi, cocaine producers began shipping unprocessed coca paste to Caribbean and Central American countries in lieu of cocaine hydrochloride.

Inciardi reports that in , coca paste smoking was popular in the Caribbean. According to Dr. Inciardi, immigrants from Jamaica, Trinidad, and locations along the Leeward and Windward Islands introduced the prototype for crack to Caribbean inner-city populations in Miami and New York. Inciardi claimed that coca paste may have been a prototype for crack used in the United States.

Although it is not possible to pinpoint a single inventor of crack, it is likely that one of the earliest appearances of crack was in the Caribbean, especially the Bahamas. From the Caribbean, crack made one of its earliest entries in the United States in Miami sometime in the early s. Around the same time, a similar product called "rock" cocaine began making its appearance in Los Angeles; whether the Los Angeles version of crack had its source in the Caribbean, or represented a simultaneous discovery by a local drug chemist, is not clear.

Drug Fact Sheet: Cocaine. Drug Enforcement Administration. National Institute on Drug Abuse. The Nation. Cocaine: What is the Crack? Anesthesiology and Pain Management. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. A Japanese chemist first synthesized methamphetamine—also called meth, crank, crystal meth or speed—from another stimulant in Methamphetamine was used early on as a medical treatment for narcolepsy, asthma and as a weight-loss drug.

Heroin, morphine, and other opiates trace their origins to a single plant—the opium poppy. Cultivation of the plant dates back to the earliest years of human civilization, and opium use was well known in ancient Mesopotamia.

The narcotic drug has been used both recreationally German chemists originally synthesized MDMA, or ecstasy, for pharmaceutical purposes in Drug trafficking in the United States dates back to the 19th century. From opium to marijuana to cocaine, a variety of substances have been illegally imported, sold and distributed throughout U. Early Opium Trade in the United LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is a hallucinogenic drug that was first synthesized a Swiss scientist in the s.

Marijuana, also known as cannabis or pot, has a long history of human use. The history of cannabis cultivation in America dates back to the early colonists, The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by dramatically increasing prison sentences for both drug dealers and users. Until , this drink contained cocaine. The increasing number of reports on the adverse effects of cocaine prompted the manufacturers of Coca-Cola to adopt a process for removing cocaine from the coca leaves while leaving the essential oils in the drink.

This is just an example of how overflow of information from the field of medicine into society can be exploited by industries. Between and , a number of important advances were made in both technology, such as development of portable cameras, electronic typewriters, and automobiles, and medicine, such as the discovery of x-rays and radiation.

As the developed world was blossoming with these technological advancements, advancements in local anesthetics were not focused upon.

It is quite possible that all these developments were changing the world and contributed to the use of cocaine as a street drug by people for coping with these changes. Throughout history, addictions among people have been focused on some substance or phenomenon, be it alcohol or behaviors. In the early s, cocaine addiction was rampant since consumption of cocaine was new and unexplored.

At that time, cocaine could be easily obtained from a local chemist or a street salesperson. Cocaine abuse is prevalent even today, but the problem had reduced for a while.

In —, both the New York Times and Journal of the American Medical Association reported that cocaine addiction among black people was leading to serious crimes The detrimental effects of cocaine on the society were being recognized. This led to decreased use of cocaine, and by the s, cocaine was largely substituted by amphetamine Further progress in the field of local anesthesia occurred.

In , procaine, a synthetic agent that was much safer than cocaine, was synthesized by Dr. Alfred Einhorn. Further, Heinrich Braun combined procaine with adrenaline to increase its duration of action Since procaine was far less addictive than cocaine, procaine became a much more popular anesthetic than cocaine.

During the following years, several other improved compounds were developed, and the medical use of cocaine reduced further. However, cocaine was an early anesthetic, and its use paved the path for the development of other anesthetics.

Currently, cocaine is known mainly as a drug of abuse and was classified as a class A drug by the Misuse of Drugs Act Although cocaine is still being widely researched upon, a large proportion of this research is focused on its effects in addiction and abuse and not on its use as an anesthetic.

In conclusion, the discovery of the anesthetic use of cocaine was quite remarkable and crucial for the development of the current local anesthetics. Many people were involved in the development of cocaine as an anesthetic, but the credit might not have been entirely attributed as due, as is the case for many medical discoveries.

Cocaine was being used in medicine largely during the end of the 19th century, but the addictive property of cocaine made it less of a wonder drug than it was initially thought to be. Other synthetic compounds that were safer than cocaine replaced cocaine as anesthetics. Currently, in the UK, cocaine is rarely used in medicine, but sadly, it is one of the most abused drugs. Nonetheless, its medical use in the 19th century can be described as a major breakthrough in the field of anesthesia.

Please cite this paper as: Redman M.