cocaine

[jeanettelaur]

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<TD id=HB_Focus_Element vAlign=top width=&quot;100%&quot; background=&quot;&quot; height=250 UNSELECTABLE=&quot;off&quot;>has cocaine ever been a legal drug and is it true that it was an ingredient of coca cola</TD></TR>
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[jno]

yes and yes. Some details here. I think it was banned in Britain only in the last century or so, but someone may know the exact date

[Drusilla]

The coca leaf has been chewed as an aid to digestion in South America for centuries.
It was used to make a wine called 'Vin Mariani' by Angelo Mariani and was enjoyed by Queen Victoria, Emile Zola and Thomas Edison. It was also highly praised by Sigmund Freud.
In the 1880's John Pemberton tried to make a wine using the coca leaf and the cola nut, but was concerned the growing temperance movement in the USA would hamper sales and so he decided to make it into a 'soft' drink and added sugar and citric acid and this became coca cola.
It was marketed as both a drink and a cure for morphine addiction. However, by 1910 the first evidence of nasal damage had been reported as a result of using cocaine (Not coca cola, I hasten to add) and by 1912, the authorities in the USA held cocaine responsible for 5000 deaths. It was banned in 1914 in the USA, even though it was still used as a reliable, local anaesthetic, particularly for eye and ear operations.

[Peter Pedant]

yes it would be a legal drug before the first drugs act which was in the 1890s about. (UK)

1890s were a time when you could buy laudanum over the counter and give it to chidlren to pacify/sedate them

Sherlock Holmes used to take cocaine - there wasnt an implication taht he was breaking the law, but only that he was a damned fool