From South American coca in the fifth century BC, to Queen Victoria's endorsement of cocaine wine and Freud's use of cocaine in his discoveries, to the discovery of "crack" in 1983, cocaine has played a very important political, economic and social role. In the US, in one year alone, cocaine-related business costs the best part of $125 billion: cocaine as a commodity has an economic importance that far outweighs its intrinsic value. And now there's a new strand to this story - the possible discovery of a vaccine. Is this the end of the line for cocaine? In "Cocaine", Dominic Streatfeild sets out to discover not the history of organized drug crime, but the story of the drug itself. His research takes him from the arcane reaches of the British Library to the isolation cells of America's most secure prisons; from the crack houses of New York to the jungles of Bolivia and Colombia.
- ISBN10 0312286244
- ISBN13 9780312286248
- Publish Date 26 June 2002 (first published 26 April 2001)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 28 September 2010
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Saint Martin's Griffin,U.S.
- Edition American ed
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 510
- Language English